Show and Tell

Wednesday isn't just a day in the middle of the week, it means that Rare Book School will soon be coming to an end. When we leave here we'll take our workbooks and notes, our photos and memories, along with the plans we've made to integrate all we've learned into our day to day activities. It's exciting to think about returning to work bursting with new plans to implement and ideas to explore with colleagues.

We explored plenty of new ideas today. We returned to the topic of access, picking up where we left off yesterday. Photocopying was a primary issue in this discussion and several items were proffered to facilitate the process. Face-up copiers were suggested as an excellent means to copy large and delicate materials. Inclusion of copyright statements on photocopies can be accomplished by overlaying a mylar sheet with the copyright statement printed on it, embedding the information on every copy. Scanning images emerged as a trend to supply some photocopying needs such as interlibrary loan requests.

Perhaps the best conversation of the day centered around instruction and collaboration with faculty to enhance classroom pedagogy and use of special collections. Some suggestions included inviting new faculty to view special collections to promote educational opportunities, hosting an open house for students during new student orientation or the first day of registration, and including educational access information on the special collections web page.

Another topic of the day was faceted browsing. This, we were told, is the way students want to navigate a university's catalog. If you've ever used search engines like Clusty, which gathers information in clusters that allow the user to drill deeper into a subject, then you have a good idea how faceted browsing works. The page displays tag clouds of terms on the left, draws the most appropriate hits from all areas such as books, media, e-journals, and pulls up finding aids and special collections. Programs such as Primo and Aquabrowser are the bigger names while open source options are also available.

For me, the best part of the day centered on a presentation from special collections of books from some of their largest donor collections. We were allowed to view a stunning array of titles. Many of the items were associated with Thomas Jefferson including his personal copy, privately printed, of the Notes of Virginia with corrections tipped in on slips of paper written in his own hand.

Two other Jefferson items included the first journal of the first meeting of the Board of Visitors for the University of Virginia, May 5, 1817, and his hand drawn plans and calculations for the Rotunda. The Board of Visitor's journal is in Jefferson's hand. The membership included Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and David Watson. Three out of four members were U.S. presidents. Not bad for a membership group. One short entry was made when the board was apprised of Jefferson's death with the notation that Madison would now assume Jefferson's leading role. The Rotunda plans, amazingly enough, were drawn on paper made by prisoners in the Bastille.

Other treasures included a proof copy of Diderot's Encyclopedia, each page marked with lines. My personal favorite was the salesman's sample of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, the last pages filled with orders. This is the only surviving copy that contains the famous defaced illustration. When the defacement was found, all copies were recalled and destroyed. Somehow this one escaped and it is the sole remaining evidence of a crude joke.

We learned a good deal about ways to "show and tell" our collections today. Everything from the most recent catalog improvements for displaying information to new ways to foster educational opportunities and facilitate patron information requests. And to top it all we got to look at some great books!