In July our colleagues in Technical Services and Cataloging added 604 items to Special Collections holdings. Nearly all fed into the main print collection (which we call REST), with only a few items going into ACU Authors and ACU Archive collections plus a couple of hymnals into the Taylor collection. We added catalog records for two new archival 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. As usual, we added a few 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. Special Collections Librarian and Archivist Erica Pye sleuthed these books and contributed several new records. Between her work and a student upstairs dedicated to the tract project, July was a fine month on the cataloging front. The tract project received focus attention in part due to some much-needed renovations in Technical Services. With new carpet, fresh paint and some general cleaning up, the space is looking great. But the renovations hampered their ability to handle the usual cartloads of old books I send their way. The tracts were much more manageable, all things considered.
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.
604 new items…cataloged, shelved, and ready for research: Continue reading
