Analyzing special collections

I spent the morning learning how to work with Voyager reports in MS Access. [Thanks to Sara Greenleaf!] My goal is to analyze what we currently have in our special collections in order to determine what areas/authors to collect.

I have worked with Access quite a lot in the past, but always with databases I had built myself.  It is a bit different to tackle finding the fields you need from so many different tables.  If not for Sara I would still be lost in that swamp.  Once that hurdle was jumped it was relatively easy.  I’ve set up queries to count the number of titles in each  LC class and dominant authors.  I can then drill down by limiting to a class.

I now have all this information at my fingertips.  Figuring out how best to use it is the next problem. Here is some data for those who are interested.

Dominant classes

• D-History
• PR-English literature
• B-Philosophy, psychology, religion (Hobart was founded as an Episcopalian college.)
• PS-American literature
• E-American history

Dominant authors

• Herbert, George, 1593-1633.
• Muratori, Lodovico Antonio, 1672-1750.
• Hubbard, Elbert, 1856-1915.
• Sismondi, J.-C.-L. Simonde de, 1773-1842.
• Scott, Walter, Sir, 1771-1832.
• Thiers, Adolphe, 1797-1877.
• Pliny, the Elder.
• MacLeish, Archibald, 1892-
• Ruskin, John, 1819-1900.

I’m going to have to contemplate this a bit to see where it takes me.

PR pays off.

I feel liked I’ve been running since the semester started.  Is it Thanksgiving yet?

Last spring I did the talk at one of the weekly faculty luncheons to raise the visibility of Archives and Special Collections.  It worked! I had face time with three different classes, and have had students coming in almost daily (sometimes 2 or 3 a day) to do research.

We also had a very successful open house for reunion and as a result have had even more alum donations and questions.

I guess the website is working as well, because we are getting great response from outside researchers.  We even had a professor from a Japanese university come for two days to use one of our collections.

Hey, it used to be quiet and lonely down here!

About the new library webpage.

There was a committee, which I was not on, to design a new library homepage, and Brian (electronic services librarian extraordinare) made it work.

The piece that I am most excited about is the Find tab.  It is mean for a quick search, when you know what you are looking for.  There is a drop menu that lets you limit to Archives.  When you do a search here it

• Searches the Voyager catalog for anything in archives
• Searches ALL of the Archives web pages
• Searches Special Collections.

Directing people to a finding aid or a list was always complicated.  Finding aids and lists were on separate pages, because one page would be too big.

BTW, the lists are lists of presidents, deans, chaplains, honorary degree recipients, etc. The previous archivist had all of these in a notebook that she title “Book of Lists” so I kept the title.

Now it is wonderful to search by a name and have results whether in a finding aid, list, or cataloged item.  How I love technology!

I’m still here.

I haven’t written anything since my job changed to a 10-month contract.  I’ve been busy getting back into the swing.  I had a comment this morning so I thought I should get started again.

Here are some quick thoughts:

• I now have a camera stand we can use to capture images from books and oversized objects.  You may hear more as I learn to use it.  White balance seems to be the problem of the moment.
• I have another great group of student workers!
• I did a talk about special collections at a faculty luncheon last spring and I’m getting more classes doing research here.
• While working with one class on 19th century women authors I found that 2 vol. our copy of “History of Woman Suffrage ” have book plates stating they were a gift of Susan B. Anthony.
• Library has a cool new webpage. (more later)
• I was thinking of retiring Spike (Vampire) as security guard, but his name still gets me the most hits on this blog.  Till that changes, he will be on duty.

Best reunion ever!

Every year Alumni House asks me to have the Archives open for reunion, but no one comes.  We had a discussion about it and they put up a looping PowerPoint I did inviting people to come and see a display.  The display was most clothes and beanies, etc from yesteryear.

I couldn’t believe the difference.  We must have had close to 30 people.  At one point there were so many I had to call for help!  Here are a few of the things that delighted me:

• A person who had donated many items to us, but I had never met face-to-face.  He wanted to see the fraternity paddle he had given us.
• Someone who had met FDR when he was here receiving an honorary degree and giving the commencement address.  FDR was governor at the time.
• A man from ‘38 who wanted to see his editorials in the Herald.  I could only let him use the microfilm.  As luck would have it one of my former student workers, Dan Goble ‘04, stopped with his wife to say hello.  I had to put him to work finding and setting up the film.  Thanks so much Dan!! I wish I had had more time to talk with you.
• Someone who is going to send me a good size piece of the goal post from the game in which Hobart beat the Uof R at football.
• A man who wanted to know what year Hobart played Army? (1936) What the the score was? (Army 51, Hobart 7) and How many students did Hobart have at the time? (308).  The answers were obtained in yearbooks and catalogs of the time period.
• Someone who wanted to see his Honors Thesis.
• Many looking at the yearbooks.

I was only open on Friday, but am told that people were looking for the display on Saturday as well.  Next year we may have to increase our hours.

It’s a lot more fun when someone actually comes to your party!

A funny thing happened and I’m in a different world!

My position was recently re-evaluated, because it was realized that I didn’t really fit under any current policies. I went from a 12 month appointment where I worked 940 hours per year, with full benefits except vacation, personal days and sick leave…to a 10 month appointment where I work 930 hours per year, with full benefits. Since I have two months off in the summer, no vacation or personal days. This is all at the same pay rate, so I don’t lose anything.

This happened two days before before I left for “vacation.” I had asked for a week and a half, it was actually comp time, but was told to take 2 and a half weeks, to use all of the comp time. The new contract will start July 1st, so I’ll work the month of June, then be off from July 1st until August 15th.

Now anyone in their right mind would say whoopee!! But not being in my right mind, I was thrown completely off balance. I haven’t had this much time off since around 1978, and I’m not that all that great at using time off well. I’ve been keeping busy and using my time fairly well, but still spend a lot of time thinking about work. Perhaps if I write down what I need to do when I get back, I’ll be able stop running it over in my mind constantly.

• Get the Vail photos up on CONTENTdm.
• Figure out how to set up a new finding aid style sheet in Archivist’s Toolkit.
• Inventory the vault.
• Work on a BI for Primary Resources using ideas I’ve been picking up from the book “Made to Stick”.
• Get a list going of projects for student workers in the fall.
• Set up staff training for care of rare books an archives in the event of water or other damage due to an emergency.

I’ll probably be adding to this when I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep, because I’m thinking about work. That may be more than I can do in the month of June anyway. I’ll start working on my August list.

Archivist’s Toolkit 1.5.9

We just did the AT update.  I’m very happy with the search function now.  Before I didn’t see how to search for a word in a title.  Now it’s great. I love that it drills down into the components.

They say that one of the new features is improved stylesheets.  I don’t see any links to the stylesheets and the new features documentation doesn’t cover it so I’m in the dark.

I took a shot at tweaking the old stylesheet, a while back, without success.  Good project for the summer I guess.

Farewell good and faithful Seniors

We had a party to recognize our graduation seniors yesterday. We have started a tradition of having each seniors choose a book to add to our collection, to which we add a book plate with their name.

I will greatly miss

Hayley Mason,

Oliver Meeker,

Deana Stuart,

and Dale Watkins.

Sharing images 2

We had a great meeting yesterday with Alumni/ae house and Communications.  We determined what everyone’s needs are and how we can help each other.  I’m going to share our scanning procedures. Sara will help with organization and cataloging. And we will work at becoming a “lobbying group” to find for the money needed for software and storage space.  I’m quite encouraged.

Sharing images

I learned a few months ago that Alumni House is scanning all of the yearbooks.  I only found out when they needed to borrow one they were missing.  Now Jared, Hobart Alumni Dir, is getting us together to see how we can support each other in these scanning projects.  How great is that?

Also, last week Sara and I went to a OCLC/RRLC workshop on CONTENTdm.  I think the meeting this morning will give us a opportunity to suggest the group lobby for buying CONTENTdm because Alumni House, Communications and the Library can all use it.  We’ll see what happens.