special collections Archives | Page 4 of 5 | American Libraries Magazine

Life and Activities of Shakyamuni Buddha Incarnate, 1486Photo: Library of Congress

By the Numbers: Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month

By Terra Dankowski | May 1, 2018

39 Years ago that Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week was first observed. In 1990, the week was expanded to the month of May. 1980 Year that the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association was founded. The group formally became affiliated with the American Library Association (ALA) in 1982. 45th Anniversary that the Chinese American Librarians Association celebrated this … Continue reading By the Numbers: Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month →

Alisun DeKock stands beside the species identification iPad in the Shedd Aquarium’s Amazon Rising habitat, as two South American tambaqui fish swim by.

Bookend: A Friend to the Fishes

March 1, 2018

The Shedd’s library of some 7,000 books is primarily for aquarium staff, interns, and volunteers and is not open to the public. The most popular materials in the collection are the field guides to various fish, plants, insects, aquatic invertebrates, and marine mammals. DeKock says that “staff members take them out on field trips because … Continue reading Bookend: A Friend to the Fishes →

The Library of Things

As the sharing economy continues to swell, nontraditional collections become more pervasive, community-specific, and imaginative. Here are some of our favorite unusual items circulating at libraries in North America (click to expand).

Librarian Tara Murray (right) with Victorian-era stamp cases, stamps of the Duchy of Oldenburg from an 1863 album, and books from the American Philatelic Research Library collection. (Photos: Abby Drey)

Bookend: Philatelic Relics

June 1, 2017

For the most part, APRL does not include stamps in its collection, “but they are occasionally included as collateral material. For example, the library owns two examples of the famous 1918 ‘Inverted Jenny’ error stamp, one of which was just recovered in June 2016 after being stolen from a stamp show in 1955. The first … Continue reading Bookend: Philatelic Relics →

Maureen Brunsdale (Photo: Lyndsie Schlink)

Bookend: Not Clowning Around

May 1, 2017

Don’t ask Brunsdale to name a favorite item; instead, “it’s the stories that draw me in,” she says, such as the contents of a 1907 letter from circus magnate Otto Ringling to his brothers, suggesting that they purchase the rival outfit of Barnum & Bailey. Among other highlights of the collection: an elephant harness and … Continue reading Bookend: Not Clowning Around →

The mock-up for the "Greetings from Williams Field, Arizona" postcard used source materials from photographs, including the man in the first "I" and the planes that fly across the top. The text was hand-lettered. The final product was printed in 1943.

Greetings from the Newberry Library

By Ronnie Wachter | April 17, 2017

For the first five days of her first job out of college, as an intern for the Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois, Hamilton-Smith oversaw the transfer and preservation of about 2.5 million postcards and related materials. Each item held a different degree of historical significance, none of them were cataloged, and all were … Continue reading Greetings from the Newberry Library →

These wine labels are part of the Shields Library's special collection at University of California, Davis. Some labels list the names of people who shared bottles with viticulture and enology professor Maynard Amerine. Photos: © UC Davis Library/Special Collections

Preserving the Vintage

By Marcus Banks | March 1, 2017

One could expect that wine libraries are concentrated in California, the top-producing state, but wine collections and digital archives are also popping up in places like Indiana, New York, and Oregon. Institutions are providing for the information needs of wine enthusiasts of all stripes, and in doing so are reinventing and reinvigorating the meaning of … Continue reading Preserving the Vintage →

Developing New Skills

By Karen Muller | January 3, 2017

Let’s start with raising money. The first set of chapters in 40+ New Revenue Sources for Libraries and Nonprofits, by Edmund A. Rossman III, lays the foundation for specific discussions about sources. Rossman covers why libraries might need more than what their traditional funding bases offer, which for public libraries is 85%–90% local, and how … Continue reading Developing New Skills →

Kislak Center for Special Collection, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, designed by Gensler architects.

Bringing Special Collections into Today

By Phil Morehart | June 26, 2016

Representatives from three university libraries gathered June 25 for the Library Leadership and Management Association–sponsored panel discussion “Front and Center: Designing for Special Collections and Archives in the Library” at the 2016 ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Florida, to showcase new special collections libraries that buck the outdated model and look to the … Continue reading Bringing Special Collections into Today →

At the 2016 Rare Books and Manuscripts Section conference, the panel discusses how to prepare LIS students for the market ahead.

Preparing LIS Students for the Market Ahead

By Erika L. Jenns | June 24, 2016

Meyers began her talk, “Evangelizing for Reference: Teaching the Value of Public Services,” by explaining that for years she thought of herself as a special collections librarian who happened to have a reference component to her job. But she has come to realize that she is actually a reference librarian who happens to work in … Continue reading Preparing LIS Students for the Market Ahead →

Frank Bridges, media studies doctoral student, and Christie Lutz, New Jersey regional studies librarian and head of public services in Special Collections and University Archives, with items in the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive at Rutgers University.

Rock in the Vault

By Timothy Inklebarger | May 2, 2016

The do-it-yourself ethos of the local music scene tells a story of dissent from mainstream culture, says Rutgers University media studies doctoral student Frank Bridges, who played in bands and ran his own record label in the 1980s and 1990s near the New Brunswick, New Jersey, campus. He thinks it’s a story worth preserving. Bridges’s … Continue reading Rock in the Vault →

Tiah Edmunson-Morton, archivist of the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives at Oregon State University Photo: Krista Joy Johnson

Hoppy Days

By Sanhita SinhaRoy | May 1, 2016

Edmunson-Morton had been at OSU Libraries for seven years and had the itch to do something different. So in 2013, she pitched the idea of collecting and telling the intertwined story of hops and beer—the first such archive in the US—and within a couple of months it became reality. The first hops were planted on … Continue reading Hoppy Days →

Latest Library Links

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Sheila Craft-Morgan writes: “Citations are a key measure of the impact of a researcher’s work. However, research in a variety of disciplines has found that women are less likely to be cited than men; citations contain geographic bias; and the Matthew effect—in which those who begin with advantage continue to gain advantage—leads to more citations for prominent scholars in a specific discipline. These findings contribute to the notion that scholarly knowledge comes from a homogenous group of researchers, thereby overlooking the contributions of other groups.”

American Libraries column, June
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Mel Baldwin writes: “Regardless of why someone comes into a library, every patron should be free to interact with staff, browse materials, and use the internet without fear of harassment or worse. That freedom depends on libraries upholding patron privacy. With nearly 400 active anti-trans bills pending in state legislatures as of April 2024, it is a dangerous time in the US to be gender nonconforming, someone whose gender expression does not align with the traditional male or female binary. And for trans people of color, studies show the risk of discrimination and violence is higher.”

American Libraries column, June
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Greg Landgraf writes: “On a school morning last September, small groups of 5th-graders crowded around tools connected to scientific research—a microscope, a robotic camera, and even a snake named Morgan Freeman—clipboards and pencils in hand. They were at the Melrose branch of Roanoke (Va.) Public Libraries (RPL), judging graduate students from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on their research. The event was RPL’s second Flip the Fair, introduced in 2022 to help graduate students develop skills to effectively communicate their research while engaging local elementary students with STEM topics and the library.”

American Libraries Trend, June
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Aaryn Bierly writes: “Disability Pride Month is traditionally celebrated in July to celebrate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. The ADA regulates laws regarding service animals, requires employers to accommodate their employees’ physical and medical needs, stipulates the number and placement of accessible parking spaces and restrooms, and more. One in five Americans has some type of disability that makes working more difficult, and the ADA has made working conditions easier for a significant number of Americans. We’ve got several great lists of books for kids and teens of different ages featuring characters with a range of disabilities.”

Herrick District Library (Holland, Mich.), July 1
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“Many people already turn to libraries as sources of trusted information ahead of elections, and organizations like ALA and the League of Women Voters are hoping to expand those numbers. We’ve curated a selection of resources, tools, and ideas to help inform your library’s approach to this important work.”

WebJunction, July 3
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“A federal appeals court in New Orleans is taking another look at its own order requiring a Texas county to keep eight books that deal with subjects including sex, gender identity, and racism on public library shelves. Llano County officials had initially removed 17 books from its shelves amid complaints about the subject matter. The June 6 order was vacated July 3 after a majority of the 17-member court granted Llano County officials a new hearing before the full court. The order did not state reasons and the hearing hasn’t yet been scheduled.”

Associated Press, July 7
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Todd Spangler writes: “In the days after Paramount Global disabled mtvnews.com and mtv.com/news in June—removing a trove of hundreds of thousands of articles about music and pop culture from the internet—the not-for-profit Internet Archive assembled a searchable index of 460,575 web pages previously published at mtv.com/news. The Wayback Machine’s archive of MTV News is not the full complement of what was published over the span of more than two decades. But the new collection at least ensures, for the time being, that much of MTV News’ articles remain accessible in some form.”

Variety, July 2

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