Catching up

Dear readers,

While it's been some time since I last posted to this blog, I feel the need to strike the keys once again and continue traveling the long and winding road of my special collections journey.

When we last met, I had returned from a course at UVA's Rare Book School on Special Collections Librarianship, taught by Alice Schreyer. Each and every night I posted on the day's activities and now, some two years later, I can say that the class workbook is on my desk as I type. It is quite a handy and useful collection of items. I turn to it as a resource regularly.

To bring us both up to speed, I attended the Special Collections Librarianship course for two reasons. First, as a former bookseller and mid life career changer, my goal to become a special collections librarian would benefit from this course. Second, thanks to the great folks at the University of South Carolina, especially my advisor, Dr. Samantha Hastings, I was able to include the RBS course as part of my plan of study. It was Dr. Hastings who suggested I maintain a blog for the course and I enjoyed the task immensely.

And I meant to keep it up afterwards, but final classes and nearing graduation took over and I abandoned my post, as it were, until now.

What brings me back, you might ask? The answer is simple: I'm returning to Rare Book School this summer. This time I'm attending Mike Widener's course, Law Books: History & Connoisseurship, in my new role as Visiting Staff Librarian at West Virginia University's College of Law. I am currently serving as the Archives and Rare Book Librarian and it is a job I truly love. I feel fortunate to have been given the opportunity to do what I love and the support to continue my special collections education and further develop skills that will enhance my work.

So, you might be asking yourself, how did I occupy myself between courses at RBS? How have I filled the intervening time? Quite busily I must say. After graduation from USC I worked diligently to keep up my skills while also applying for positions in a very difficult market and I would recommend the following activities to any job searchers: I joined groups that suited my skills and interests, such as the Appalachian Studies Association, the Rare Books and Manuscripts division of ALA, West Virginia Library Association, SHARP, the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, APHA, the American Printing History Association, among others. I attended conferences, I networked with colleagues, and most importantly, I presented original research at each conference I attended. In short, I got my name out, I met people, I worked diligently on a research project and published the results.

The publication, "Portraits of Appalachia: The Identification of Stereotype in Publishers' Book Bindings, 1850 - 1915," was published in the Journal of Appalachian Studies, vol 15, Nos. 1 and 2, Spring and Fall 2009, is part of a long term research project that examines nineteenth century cultural attitudes as displayed on the covers of publishers' bookbindings. This research is based on my work as rare book room staff at WVU's Rare Book Room in the Wise Library at the Downtown campus, an independent study at USC, and the education I received from an earlier Rare Book School course, Publishers' Bookbindings, 1830 - 1910, taught by Sue Allen. The research focuses on the identification of stereotype on the covers of nineteenth century books on Appalachians and the Appalachian region. Other papers are in preparation for submission to journals and I am currently working on a book proposal for this line of research.

But by far the high point after graduation was receiving the call to work for WVU's College of Law as archivist and rare book librarian. As I mentioned earlier, this is a job I love. I have the pleasure of putting my skills to use and developing new ones. My work entails the arranging and describing of the papers of an eminent legal scholar, development of policies and procedures for the rare book room, conservation and preservation activities, research and rare book cataloging. Life is rich.

The next post will take a look at the pre-class readings for the RBS course. I am well along the way in my readings and I've made notes as I've read. I'll share them with you and we can once again, travel this road together.

Back to work

After an entire day spent laboring over mountains of laundry and a bit of relaxation tucked into odd moments I was ready to return to work today.

I don't know if I can adequately describe what it feels like to unlock the door to the Rare Book Room, swing it wide and step inside. It's a Dorothy kind of moment for me. Every day I feel like I'm walking into a land of delights. I've often described this feeling as akin to a settler in an undiscovered country - just so much to explore! I had that same feeling when I entered the RBR, as I call it, today.

Now that I'm home and back at work I've gone through my notes and created some short lists of topics I'd like to explore:

1. Instructional ideas:

• Invite new faculty to tour special collections and share the rare book pedagogy model developed by an English professor designed to assist faculty and introduce students to primary source materials.
• Host an open house in special collections for new students during orientation. Students are given a tour of the library, so why not include a visit to special collections?
• Initiate a student book collector's contest. I plan to enter the collector's contest at USC. Offering the contest at my institution will foster scholarship, create a new class of future donors and expose students to the world of books.

2. Guidelines:

• Examine the rules currently in place for the reading room and suggest adjustments, if needed.
• Compare security guidelines to those discussed in class. Consider options addressed during class for adoption, if needed.

3. Archives:

• Seek information about archives and archivists.
• Search for ways to gain experience in archives.

4. Join!

• RBMS
• SAA
• ALA

One of the best ways to meet people, keep current on issues and learn more about a field is to join a professional organization. I spoke with several folks during my week at RBS who had joined one or more of these groups and worked on committees. Everyone of them urged me to participate. It's the next step on the way to my professional development.

Last call

Thursday night. My last evening at RBS. It's beautiful this evening. Ribbons of crimson clouds stretch across the dusky sky. It's a wonderful night to be outside.

Tonight is Bookseller Night at RBS. Most booksellers, and there are quite a few here, stay open late for RBS students. Downtown is just a mile away and I walked with a friend I met here last year. I guess you could say we're serial RBS students. Both of us are attending for the third time. We had a great time strolling downtown, poping in and out fo shops, seeing classmates everywhere we went. We stopped for dinner at Basil on the way back. I love that place. After a week loaded with carbs it's pure delight to have one of their incredible salads!

I'm taking a few books back home with me. I was pleased to find a bright first edition of Gordon Keith, by Thomas Nelson Page, in the binding designed by Margaret Armstrong. Bindings by Miss Armstrong are the strength of my personal collection. I hope to find all 345 bindings designed by her. I'll add this one to the entry I'm preparing for USC's Student Book Collector's contest next spring.

But enough about that. It's time to return to work and the day's work was exhilierating. The discussion began with donor relations. It can be a tricky business, dealing with donors. Personal collections are just that, personal. A collection is representative of a person's point of view, their own take on what' s important and that can make donor relationships challenging. It was said that the number one reason donors give their collections to institutions is to keep them together, in tact and away from the children. Yes, donors have the most to fear from their own children. After all, it's not their collection and they're more than likely to break it up and sell it. Shivers!

Security was a big issue as well. Discussion centered on several easy solutions to common problems that could enhance security in reading rooms including:

• Registration: Know who's using your collection.
• Keys: Sign in and out, know who has what key and when.
• Item requests: limit the number of items a patron can request.
• Enclosures: Remove all items from boxes to prevent theft.
• Folders: Archival materials should be dispensed one folder at a time.
• Marking: All items must bear marks of ownership.
• Inventory control: Know what you have and you'll know if it's missing.
• Detailed records: Should theft occur, detailed records will help in identification.

The afternoon session was packed with presentations, exercises and a visit to the digitization center. After viewing the digitizing facility I believe all of us came away with what has been referred to among some students as "equipment envy." A 24 foot long flatbed scanner called the Cruse scanner was designed for maps. Two fine Digibook scanners were facing retirement due to incoming upgrades. There was also a terrific digital camera set up and yes, a couple of standard table top flat bed scanners.

With all this equipment the digitizing center is able to produce 3 - 400,000 images a year. It's not all online though. There is a roadblock to their progress and it's called metadata. This is somethiing that they're still working on and conversations about this subject tended toward the revolutionary. According to our host, cataloging will take up the metadata work for scanned images but the detail level of records will be greatly reduced in an effort to get the material online. This is their prediction for the future, all records will be at a minimum level for all materials, print included. It's going to be a different world.

There was also lots of discussion about digital repositories for managing digital images. Fedora is used here at UVA.

The afternoon was all about archives after that. Jackie Dooley at UC Irvine, who teaches a new course this year, Archives for Rare Book Librarians, discussed tools and processing. I found this conversation to be very interesting. I haven't had any experience with archives and was unclear about the means of processing a collection. Jackie did an excellent job explaining the process to non-archivists. I'm moving her class to the top of my RBS class list.

We closed the class day with an exercise. Jackie's class joined ours and we divided into groups of three. We were given three web sites and a specific item to search for at each site. The next step was to rank the sites for ease of use, define the best features in three short sentences and then draw a wireframe representing our design for the interface. Lots of fun and very helpful when considering usability studies for university sites.

Tomorrow's our final class day. Soon we'll head back to our lives, our work and our familiies. But we won't leave empty handed, we'll be taking so much back with us.