In March our colleagues in Technical Services and Cataloging added 497 items to Special Collections holdings. About 315 items fed into the main print collection (which we call REST), plus 120 or so hymnals for the Taylor Collection, only one book this month into ACU AUTHORS (thank you Dr. Hodges!) and another large batch of rare Bibles (about 50 in this batch) cam into our general rare books collection. Most of the additions to REST are tracts and pamphlets, though we added several monographs, too. 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 with most of new entries for REST coming in the form of newly-processed tracts, booklets and pamphlets. We will have a fine set of tracts, all cataloged, when this project is complete. It might be complete, that is…backlog eliminated….by the end of the school year!
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.
497 new items…cataloged, shelved, and ready for research: Continue reading