In June our colleagues in Technical Services and Cataloging added 424 items to Special Collections holdings. Just over 400 items fed into the main print collection (which we call REST), with a few items going into ACU Authors and ACU Archive collections. And, we added catalog records for four new archival collections. As has been the case for several months, most of the additions to REST are tracts and pamphlets. As usual, we added several monographs which we either lacked altogether, or lacked in some variant of the edition or printing. Some of the additions are newly published, others are new-to-us, and still others represent a second copy or a new-to-us edition or printing. The tract project continues at a very good pace and we will have a fine set of tracts, all cataloged, when this project is complete.
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.
424 new items…cataloged, shelved, and ready for research: Continue reading