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

A music therapy student (a violinist) demonstrates how she experimented playing the Turkish spike fiddle before finding more official instructions.

Music without Borders

By Jill Westen | January 27, 2016

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 →

Beth Kilmarx (left) and Charlotte Priddle, RBMS Curators and Conservators Discussion Group co-conveners

Just Lines in a Spreadsheet?

By Erika L. Jenns | January 10, 2016

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? →

Understanding Diversity

By Karen Muller | September 21, 2015

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 →

Improving Retention

By Irene Ke, Kristine Greive, and Porcia Vaughn | September 17, 2015

The University of Houston (UH) has more than 40,000 students from 137 nations. Among our undergraduates, 26.9% are Hispanic, 19.8% are Asian, 10.2% are African American, and 9.8% are international. Many of them are first-generation or nontraditional students. UH is changing from a commuter school to a flagship destination research university, and student success is … Continue reading Improving Retention →

A few of the 75 Civil War–era photographs that were taken from Bangor (Maine) Public Library and later recovered. These images, along with 50 original World War I– and World War II–era posters that were stolen, had an estimated value of $31,000. The image of the officer leaning over his chair helped identify the set as belonging to the library.

Thwarting Book Thieves

By Megan Cottrell | September 16, 2015

What Graves didn’t know was that by the time he brought them to the dealer, the owner had already seen the items at the library a few weeks earlier. “I had been talking about them to the owner while he was visiting our special collections area,” says special collections librarian Bill Cook of Bangor (Maine) … Continue reading Thwarting Book Thieves →

Su Kim Chung (right) and items from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries Special Collections

Bookend: Vintage Vegas

July 14, 2014

Su Kim Chung is head of special collections public services at UNLV Libraries—home to the Center for Gaming Research, which includes a world-renowned Gaming Collection that documents the history, economics, and regulation of the gaming industry; and the Oral History Research Center, which collects oral narratives from local residents. Several of UNLV’s digital collections provide … Continue reading Bookend: Vintage Vegas →

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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