In August our colleagues in Technical Services and Cataloging added 185 items to the Center for Restoration Studies, University Archives, and Rare Books collections.  Among them are books, periodical issues (both bound volumes and many, many boxes of unbound issues), and a few A/V items in various formats, plus a few hymnals.  A few of the additions this months to ‘unbound periodicals’ are publications by a single congregation, yet these bulletins were intended for wider distribution than the local congregation and contained teaching content rather than strictly news information.  I neglected to mention in earlier monthly installments that these unbound, single issue periodicals have been a special focus of cooperation between Special Collections and Technical Services for quite some time now.  A couple of years ago we began in earnest to get these issues sorted, collated, and cataloged so that researchers can know we have them, and so we can know where the gaps are in order to build out a fine, complete collection.  Shan Martinez, Director of Technical Services, has cataloged over 700 boxes of materials already, and is moving ahead rapidly with the remainder.  Her work builds on the sorting and collating work of student workers Avery Reinoehl, Brianna Mullins, and Chava Green.  Many items added in during the summer of 2020 (and now continuing into the fall) are not only new to us, the work performed on them reflects original cataloging, which is a tremendous contribution to knowledge about information resources from and about the Stone-Campbell Movement.

Abilene Christian College. Prickly Pear, Yearbook of Abilene Christian College, 1952, yearbook, 1952; Abilene, Texas. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Christian University Library.

Our goal is to build a comprehensive research-level collection of print materials by, for, and about the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement.  But beyond assembly and preservation, a collection should be discoverable by those who need the information.  Collecting and preserving is only part of our task; those objects must be described and made available.  Thanks to the close and careful work of our colleagues upstairs, who describe our holdings, these materials are now discoverable. By discoverable I mean a patron can utilize our online catalog (such as by searching by author, or title, or subject) to find these materials.

185 new items…cataloged, shelved, and ready for research: