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
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
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
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
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
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ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Florida, to showcase new special collections libraries that buck the outdated model and look to the … Continue reading Bringing Special Collections into Today
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
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
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
The answer, to be more precise than that 1st-grader, is “termites,” and the question was, “What hollows out the branch of the eucalyptus tree used to make the didgeridoo?” It’s one of the most organic world-music instruments around and easily one of the best known. The 1st-graders had just finished a unit on Australia, and … Continue reading Music without Borders
Nearly every special collections repository sends some items to an offsite storage facility. As a result, curators and conservators are dealing with issues related to access to and transport for those materials on an almost daily basis. When attendees were asked to raise a hand if their institution sent special collections materials, manuscript or print, … Continue reading Just Lines in a Spreadsheet?
Even if we would like, we cannot know every book in our collection; nor is it likely that we will know the reading interests of every patron. How then do we advise those looking for reading suggestions? Crash Course in Readers’ Advisory, by Cynthia Orr, reviews the basics of readers’ advisory services, starting with a … Continue reading Understanding Diversity
