In November our colleagues in Technical Services and Cataloging added 218 items to Special Collections holdings.  Most (135 or so) fed into the main print collection (which we call REST) and the general rare books collection (which we call ‘C’).  Of the 135, about 90 titles joined the bound or unbound REST periodicals collection.

The remainder were added to the ACU Authors, ACU Archive, and Taylor hymnal collections.  As has been the case for several steady months, most of the additions to REST are tracts and pamphlets.  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. Right now we are filling the fifth filing cabinet and we will soon reach 6,000 titles, with many titles represented by multiple copies. There are probably above 7,200 items already cataloged.

If you look closely you will see new a couple catalog records for manuscripts and personal papers in this group, too.  As usual, we added 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.  This month we added about 55 select western Americana and Texana items to the general rare books collection, including some very nice additions in Mexican history.  This month the circulating collection also gained more items in this area from this donor.  We’ll have more to say about this gift soon.

Callie Faye Milliken (Special Collections Librarian) and Dr. John Stevens (President) at the beginning of the transfer of books from the ‘old’ library in Chambers Hall to the ‘new’ Brown Library. Dr. Stevens, holding a rare copy of Biblia Sacra, led a procession of students and faculty carrying volumes into the new facility. From https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth597528/?q=books

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.

218 new items…cataloged, shelved, and ready for research:  Continue reading →