In July our colleagues in Technical Services and Cataloging added 235 items to Special Collections holdings. The tract cataloging project continues with most of the new items coming into that collection. Between tracts, bound periodicals, A/V materials, and monographs, the REST collection grew by over 220 items. We added five hymnals to the Taylor hymnal collection and the remainder went into other collections. Also underway is a few loose ends in ours years-long project to bring all of our unbound periodical issues under control. This month alone Shan cataloged 65 titles (some with only one issue, others with several issues). There are 829 boxes of them, and counting, and the end is in sight. We might see this phase of the project complete by the start of school in a few weeks. Through subscriptions and donations we continue to receive a few each month so the collection will continue to grow. But it is very nice to see the bulk of this project come to completion.
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.
235 new items…cataloged, shelved, and ready for research: Continue reading