Confessions of a Curator

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ASUS Eee PC 1005H Atom 1.6GHz 10" Netbook $320 - dealnews.com
Walmart.com: Acer 15.6" AS5534-1096 Laptop PC with AMD Athlon 64 Dual-Core Processor & Windows 7 Home Premium: Computers

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Virtual estates lead to real-world headaches

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My Year Of Flops, Case File 1: Elizabethtown: The Bataan Death March of ...

Library 101

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Library 101 is a movement to help move libraries of all kinds forward, so that we don't become obsolete. Their website includes numerous essays about the importance of the survival of libraries from prominent librarians and library supporters. (Seen via BoingBoing).

Plus, bonus points for a fun video introducing the concept:

Their site also includes a list of resources and skills that librarians should have now, and in the future. I wonder how well it matches up with the RBMS/ACRL competencies for special collections librarians list?

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Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Neither fish nor fowl...

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:09:00 +0000

I saw this on twitter, thanks to Merrilee and Mazarines:
Jackie Dooley will be heading up a new survey of archives & special collections in academic & research libraries, that will follow up on the ARL Hidden Collections Survey from 1998.

The update includes an effort to survey even more institutions this time around, including Oberlin Group colleges, ARL libraries, and RLG Partnership members. This is great. I'm really glad to see that there are efforts being made to make the next survey more inclusive.

Unfortunately, since my institution is not an ARL Library, and is not part of the RLG Partnership, or the Oberlin Group, I won't get to take this survey.

We are neither fish nor fowl. We are part of a large institution in terms of enrollment (~25,000 students), but like (I imagine) many other Directional State Universities, our budgetary resources are not very large in relation to the number of students that our university serves.

We're not big enough to be ARL/RLG, and not small enough to be Oberlin Group, so you won't see our approximately 40,000-50,000 dime novels in need of cataloging (we're working on it), our entire range of SF periodicals and pulps that we're slowly working to uncover, and the 12,000+ single-issue comics in our collection as part of that survey, despite the fact that I'd wager that our overall special collections and archival holdings would be larger than that of many Oberlin Group colleges.

I'm really, really glad to see the expansion of the Hidden Collections survey program to be more inclusive of different kinds of libraries. I just wonder when the circle will be cast wide enough to include my library.

Team Caitlin: team photo

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:54:00 +0000

The official Team Caitlin photo from this year's DeKalb County Wheel-A-Thon is here!

The plaque for Team Caitlin as Top Fundraising Team is now on display in Rare Books and Special Collections for the next few weeks.

I'd like to once again give heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated, volunteered to collect donations, and walked in the Wheel-A-Thon with us. Thanks to your generosity, we raised just over $1000 to help people in our county with disabilities live more independent lives.

RBMS Summary: Seminar E: Islands in the Bistream

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:47:00 +0000

This is yet another blog post in a series chronicling this year's 2009 RBMS Preconference that was held in June in Charlottesville, VA. I'm working from notes, so much of this is based solely on my ability to read my own handwriting.
Seminar E: Islands in the Bitstream: Special Collections at the Confluence of Information, Authentication, and Technology.

Presenters: Virginia Bartow, NYPL (moderator); Matthew Knutzen, NYPL; Bethany Nowviskie, University of Virginia; Henry Raine, New-York Historical Society.

Bethany Nowviskie: Humanities Computing and Scholarly Context

Web 1.0=information: online editions, finding aids, text & image based.
Web 2.0=communication/collaboration; outreach
Web 3.0= interpretation? Close scholarly attention: distant reading; digitally mediated close reading vs. data mining.
--semantic & distributed
--mobile & location-based
--neo-geography (applications w/historic maps; geolocated audio)

UVA Scholar's Lab: Geospatial data portal.
--stacks of data results; data sets GIS in web browser geo-rectified to match up.
--emphasis on humanities inquiry--image & text inseperable (graphesis); --EAD-based digital humanities tools
--Worry less about dedicated commitment to Web 2.0 & impact of mass digitization
--Instead Do Web 1.0--> 3.0--> (skipping 2.0) Communities of practice around artifacts.

Matt Knutzen:
--No information exists in a vacuum. GIS can uncover & describe.
--Pushing out collections to new audiences; relating old & new addresses, environmental history
--Reorganizing collections using Google Earth: overlays existing image galleries; scroll through time: fire maps
--Long learning curve for GIS
--Building toolkit open-source map rectifier: allows users to match & rectify maps
--recreate city w/digital data
[LMT: much of this presentation was a demo, and it was COOL. You should check out the Charting North America Project as an example of Matt's work. Really powerful access to historical materials, making them relevant to today's users.]

Henry Raine: RLG Partners Social Metadata Working Group Update
--user-generated metadata: Social Metadatas
--added by users (tags, etc.); informal; generally not structured/controlled.
--anti-authoritarian; subjective; emotional; locally derived; motivated
Examples: Flickr, Amazon
--Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia: users enrich metadata with tags.
--Minnesota Death Certificate: Right on the Record (Minnesota Historical Society): moderated
--Brooklyn Revealed: heavily moderated

Goals of Social Metadata Working Group

ID user contributors and assess
Analyze issues needing resolution for network-wide release
Objectives & Success criteria?
Examples of good social metadata sites?
Extent of moderation? Authenticity? Encouragement?
Vocabulary/folksonomies
Wish list of contributions from users? (photo IDs, copy-specific bib data, bibliographic variants, correcting records, attributions for anonymous works, upload images (eg. missing title pages), cross-references, current terminology/thesauri, context (video/audio files), star ratings/reviews, comments pointing to other resources, leveled contributors
Survey site managers
Refine wish list
More questions addressed
Report late 2009

[LMT: This working group is worth keeping an eye on. Their report will attempt to be comprehensive about a (frankly) moving target, and may give us a look at how larger library organizations are thinking of dealing with the Wild West of User-generated metadata.]

Book of the Day: Faerno's Fables

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:38:00 +0000

Faerno, Gabriello, d. 1561. Fabulae centum ex antiquis auctoribus delectae et a Gabriele Faerno Cremonensi carminibus explicatae. Romae : Vincentius Luchinus excudeb[at], 1565. First edition, third issue.

References: EDIT 16 CNCE 18498, Mortimer 178, BL STC p.242, Brunet II 1160.

Rare Books PA8520 .F347 1565a

This early book of fables is a precursor to the work of La Fontaine and Charles Perrault, from whom we end up eventually getting our much-sanitized Disney Princesses after the Grimm Brothers have had a crack at them. The etchings are based on designs ascribed to Titian or Pirro Ligorio, and in the third issue, there are many impression errors, from sheets rejected by the publisher from previous issues, that provide examples of common printing errors (such as double impressions). This particular copy comes from the collection of Leonard and Lisa Baskin.

This addition to the Rare Books collection dovetails nicely with our popular culture collections, as an early source for many of the kinds of books we already collect.

Tim Pratt, Heather Shaw join NIU SF Archives!

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:29:00 +0000

[photo credit for Heather: Barth Anderson]

I am pleased to announce that the husband-and-wife team of Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw have joined the roster of authors that have donated papers to the NIU SFWA Collection. Mr. Pratt is a Hugo-award winning short story writer, and the author of the Marla Mason urban fantasy series as T.A. Pratt. Ms. Shaw is also a working writer and editor. Together they edited the fanzine Flytrap, and are the proprietors of the Tropism Press, the archive for which will also be coming to NIU. Welcome, Tim & Heather!

Alma Alexander joins NIU SF Archives

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:20:00 +0000

I am pleased to announce that Alma Alexander has joined the roster of authors that have donated papers to the NIU SFWA Collection. Ms. Alexander is the author of the Worldweavers YA series, as well as stand alone novels The Secrets of Jin Shei and The Embers of Heaven. Alma is also a World Fantasy Nominee for her Changers of Days duology.
Welcome, Alma!

Sharon Shinn Joins NIU SF Archives

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:02:00 +0000

I am pleased to announce that Sharon Shinn has joined the roster of authors that have donated papers to the NIU SFWA Collection. Ms. Shinn is the author of the Samaria and Twelve Houses series, as well as numerous stand alone SF novels both for adult and YA audiences.

Welcome, Sharon!

5 things make a post

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:40:00 +0000

I'm having a rather scatter-brained couple of weeks. These are things I'm thinking about.

1. Google Books settlement. Department of Justice ruling. The whole thing has made me generally nervous, since I can't see any for-profit company not leveraging their massive power to make more money rather than giving all of the resources they've invented in for free. If they decide to make all of those scanned books available to libraries for free, knowing that they can still make money with print on demand, they will be the Least Evil Company Ever. Cory Doctorow thinks that we pay for form, not content, which is an interesting thought, but I'm not sure how it fits how the market is changing.

2. Institutional Repositories. We need one. I'm chairing a statewide committee examining building some sort of digital preservation system for our consortium, too. Have been mulling over different approaches. Horror stories especially welcome. This ARL report is interesting. It points out that there are a ton of standards to choose from (too many, really), and that ARL libraries are all over the map on what they are doing or plan to do about digital preservation/curation/repositories.

3. Big libraries vs. Small Libraries. My current place of work is not an ARL library. I'm responsible for ~125,000 volumes and about 200 linear feet of manuscript boxes (or so), with a FTE of 2.5 including me, and some students.

Which means that I'm thinking about many of the same issues raised in that report, for instance, but am unlikely to have access to nearly as many resources (either staff or money).

4. At the RBMS preconference there was a discussion section for small and medium sized libraries about this problem. We have a wiki. You should go look at it, poke at it, and add to it (check out the "discussion" tag for some provocative questions). I'd really like to see perhaps some movement towards perhaps an Interest Group within RBMS for special collections folks working in smaller settings.

5. I have yet to see any reviews of Special Collections 2.0 in the wild. I'd love to see some, if they exist...

Bonus item: Virginia Woolf liked to read Science Fiction.

THANKS FROM TEAM CAITLIN

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:55:00 +0000

Team Caitlin raised $1018!!! We were once again the highest fundraiser team for the event. A big THANK YOU to all of our Wheel-A-Thon contributors! (Pics will come soon).

RBMS Summary: Plenary IV

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:00:00 +0000

This is yet another blog post in a series chronicling this year's 2009 RBMS Preconference that was held in June in Charlottesville, VA. I'm working from notes, so much of this is based solely on my ability to read my own handwriting.

Plenary IV had two heavy hitters: Siva Vaidyanathan and Oya Y. Rieger, who provided two different perspectives on digital objects and their life cycles.

I should note that I'm fans of both of their work, so take this with the requisite grain of salt, as I nod along to much of what they have to say.

The Human Knowledge Project. [audio]

Into projects because of Google Books. The initial Google plan was dizzying: it's a great thing that they're doing it, but to whom do they answer? Concern; critical analysis; userpation, challenge, and a route around library values.

How much do we depend on Google? Is this the best way?
-How Google touches our lives
-Notion of public failure. Stifling ideology undermines public function by by taking over public function by promising better, cheaper, faster--but not necessarily following through.

The Dream of Universal Access to Knowledge
-Alexandria, encyclopedias, LC, Borges, Bush, Kevin Kelly: "scan the book" "Everything is miscellaneous."
-we didn't have the tools & skills to do it... until now.
-Can we build a model? Are we there yet? Tech sufficient
-We have tech, desire, vision.
-We DON'T have laws, policies, coordination, regulatory infrastructure, protocols, funding, etc.
-Make knowledge a level playing field.

What kind of Information Ecosystem do we want to build?

1. Proprietary Content: newspaper sites, Viacom, publishers/Amazon, DRM/disabled media files/iTunes.

In the US, a sudden rollback in proprietary content: can we depend on them to supply what we need? (i.e. Book Review Sections in newspapers)
Accident of history that consumer consumption allowed for massive advertising-->something for everyone.

2. Crowdsourced Global Library

Dave Weinberger. Everything is Miscellaneous. Tagging not subject headings.
Professionalization erodes
Messy, fluid, mismatched democratic organizational methods
Wikipedia, Flickr, delicous
Can't do everything

3. The Library System: (you don't recognize its value until it's not there anymore)

Net access, civic centers, non-commercially marked space
As we discuss information ecosystem policies, libraries need to be at the forefront

From Ad-Hocism to Googleocracy

-72% search market in US; over 90% in much of global market (except China (16%) and Russia (40%).
-Google becomes a 'embrane around the system'-first filters

The Googleization of Everything

Communication: phones (GoogleVoice)
Knowledge: Rank of perceived importance; "Google-bombing"; algorithms; consensus theory of truth; privilege: biased system
US: we interact so much with the company, constantly feeding it information about us. We are their product, not their customers. Cattle-->ranch.
They only care about us in the aggregate--not as individuals
Local custom information-localizing perceptions, leads to feedback cycles, never challengeing knowledge
Our need to SHOP, not to learn.

Googlization is the process of being processed, rendered, represented by Google.

Official mission statement: To Organize the World's Information & Make it Universally Accessible.

academically oriented company
Brin (founder): perfect search engine 'would be like the mind of God'

Why the web is not the world:

Big institutions don't need big web presence (Catholic Church, Pope)
Highly motivated groups get privileged in Google
We don't know how Google tweaks their algorithm

Theology of Google: Omnipresent in our lives; Omnipotent ($); Omniscient (Google map/street view); Benevolent ("Don't be evil" informal motto)

We end up relying on corporations because of governmental failure.

Is this the best we can do?

Shopping mall, wisdom of crowds
What about the wisdom of experience?
Synergies among institutions

Human Knowledge Project: 50 years project.

Figure out how to best connect everyone on Earth to what they want to know
Protocols for what not to know
When to build? Start slowly now: take our time
Quality & utility should trump quantity and expediency
Relying on unstable corporate model
More than books: blogs, data sets
Open access, coordination
Public standards for web search
Governance: don't fear regulation (UNESCO?)
Policy changes: reform copyright, limit DRM & legacy problems, deal w/preservation.

Model: Human Genome project.

Challenged the notion that private does best
Global coordination, collective funding, public domain
Open Content Alliance, OpenLibrary
Goals: Multilingual, networked-linked, accessible, multimedia, malleable, stable & preserved, dependable, protects privacy/confidentiality

Oya Reiger. Enduring Access to Special Collections: Challenges & Opportunities. [audio] [pdf]

Institutional Context & implications of Large Scale Digitization (LSD).

Dig 2.0

Vision framed by enhanced discovery & access; networked into landscape; long tail principle
Quantity may trump quality: quality parameters for digitization & metadata
Substantial investments: expensive staff time
Pressure to move from project to program
Collaborations w/commercial entities & Non-Disclosure Agreements
Preservation in the Age of LSD
Examples: Southern History Collection; Collections online
UIUC: IMLS-funded study.

Why Digitize? Edward Ayers: framing as analog doesn't exist. Maybe? Maybe not.

Transnationalism
Transform the ways in which users discover, search, & use Special Collections
Institutional collections available worldwide.

Implications:

Dig specs: selection (collection level); balance speed, completeness & quality (QA); Metadata (finding aids, collective intelligence); security & special handling; Intellectual Property Rights & donor requirements
Organizational & Technical Infrastructure: moving from project to programs (cliche); mandate culture, staff skills, funds, IT; new forms of collaboration: rely on collective bargaining power w/commercial entities (negotiation checklist for RBSC)
Preservation mandate & Stewardship: bitstream archiving & tech functionality; Enduring access (authenticity); preserving the archival experience
Users & Usability: context & nature of use; new media as a new genre; role of print & physicality (physical context is important cognitive element in research process; content, context structure).

Conclusions:

Situate LSD within broad strategic institutional priorities
Ecological vision: understand the implications of decisions
Evolving scholarly needs & practices
Mission supporting enduring access & preserving archival experience
Involving scholars
Essence of research libraries=Special Collections as defining.

Thus endeth Plenary IV.

Team Caitlin: This Saturday!

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:31:00 +0000

A gentle reminder that Team Caitlin, which is raising money for RAMP here in DeKalb County, will be participating in our Wheel-A-Thon this Saturday. Last chance to donate!

Caitlin says: Thanks!

RBMS Summary: Seminar A: Taking the Shifting Gears Challenge

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:35:00 +0000

This is yet another blog post in a series chronicling this year's 2009 RBMS Preconference that was held in June in Charlottesville, VA. I'm working from notes, so much of this is based solely on my ability to read my own handwriting.

Seminar A: Taking the Shifting Gears Challenge was inspired by the Digitization Matters conference held in 2oo7.

It was moderated by the lovely Merrillee Proffitt of OCLC, and featured Karen B. Weiss from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Laura Clark Brown from the Southern Historical Collection, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Helena Zinkham, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

There was a lovely handout about each presenter and collection, along with the salient points of the Shifting Gears paper.

As Merrillee noted, the presentation is "not about what's best, but what's do-able," and specifically about "lessons learned".

Laura Clark Brown:

Right now, she's directing a Mellon Foundation grant that is a feasibility study, trying to find an extensible model for a long range-program of Large Scale Digitization (LSD).
Build a decision matrix for prioritizing/selection
Sustainable model for LSD program
Digitize 4600+ collections in their entirety.
Archival theory/practice in a digital environment: keep in context rather than forming new collections.
Where to begin? Beginning? Go backwards? Most frequent use? Greatest hits? Least accessible first? Hidden treasures?
Prioritizing broad, important issues in Southern History across geography/chronology: race relations.
Decision matrix stream is not only dig stream (grants, projects, dig-on-demand at folder level). 15 linear feet completed since October 2007.
Programs, not projects. Ongoing resources: must become part of the core mission of the SHC library.
Quantity wins: take a page from archivists
Same user experience as reading room--able to trace back to originals
No tools for web 2.0/user created content available (negative responses from surveyed users)
No OCR
Do it once & iterate: left room for different choices.

Karen Weiss: Scaling Up

EAD finding aid as metadata
No item-level access
Flexible interface design
Collections Online approach: Archivist-->EAD finding aid -->EAD processor-->PDF finding aid & Finding Aid record & Containers
All data in one relational database
metadata from EAD
Representative image per series
Folder level files per series, watermarked images, bread-crumb trail, navigation
Grayscale 300 dpi 1.5 linear feet/week roughly. Color scans for photos, covers only
Scanned in arrangement order
Microfilm scanned by vendor
Clippings not scanned
It's more or less just like microfilming
Most popular link on site
Improving finding aid workflow
Web development team needed
Potential to outsource (easy model)
Digitization funding supports processing & creation of finding aids
Needs full-text search
Web 2.0 enhancements
Open source potential (Archiv. Toolkit/PHP)
Needs better integration w/item-level digitization
A/V collection digital integration
Improved preservation plan
Explore less-than-full processing

Helena Zinkham:

Digital HQ: High Quality & Quantity for visual materials

Can we shift gears without stripping them?

Balance requires 3 tools: handheld camera, fee-based duplication, preservation reformatting. Mass digitization for pictures?

Baseline: researchers & staff use handheld cameras to make their own scans for "quick access" (i.e. initial discovery)

Standard: formal workflows for making & saving images that serve moste use cases. Iterate: high quality scan for exhibits, etc.

Pro: speed, basic. Con: Over-handling/rights & privacy/lose control, revenue

What's next? Digital copy stands.

Programs not projects.

Program #1: Scan on demand duplication: no QA

#2: 1,500 photos / month with QA

More than 1 million pics scanned through vendors
skilled contractors w/good tools
Discovery happens elsewhere (like Flickr)
Choose digitizing over metadata. Scantily clad images + minimal keywords
Brothers w/spare dimes ... partners?
For images: handheld =friend.
Scan on demand + whole collections
Digitize first, describe data later.

{Lynne again}

This was a great session, very nuts-and-bolts for ramping up digitization projects on a large scale, with lots of pragmatic ideas for how to achieve some of this stuff on a smaller scale as well.

5 things make a pre-holiday weekend post

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:33:00 +0000

Drive-by thoughts to ponder.

1. Today is the last day for authors to remain in or opt out of the Google Books Settlement. SFWA posted a good roundup of what authors need to know on their LiveJournal blog feed before making a decision.

I've been asked by some friends what I think authors should do. I would personally opt out, but I also don't rely on income from writing to eat or pay my mortgage. YMMV. BBC News offers an interesting perspective, as does the Chronicle of Higher Ed.

2. In library-related news, Rare Book School's new director is profiled, Cushing Academy in Boston has tossed all of their books in their library in favor of the Kindle and Sony Reader, and CNN has discovered Library 2.0 while still perpetuating stupid false dichotomies about those "new, hip, pierced, tattooed, punk-rock, techno-savvy" librarians that don't "shush or wear buns" anymore in the changing library of THE FUTURE --a story I've been seeing at least annually since I became a librarian 10 years ago. *groans*

3. The Wall Street Journal noticed that we might have a digital preservation problem. Harvard has made their web archive freely available.

4. JISC has put out some new tutorials for using web 2.0 tools. Here's some more information about cloud computing and privacy.

5. IO9 has a round-up of what TV does to your brain from 6 experts. Some nice recent interviews with Jay Lake, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Elizabeth Bear, and Ted Kosmatka, mostly via SFSignal.

Y'all stay safe over the weekend.

Book of the Day: Incunabula

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:42:00 +0000

Behold, one of our new acquisitions this year.

Albertus Magnus. Secreta mulierum et virorum (cum commento). [Leipzig : Conrad Kachelofen, ca. 1492]

This lovely tome brings our grand totals for incunabula to two, and is now the oldest printed book in our collection. Focused on the physiology and "secrets" of women, this "compendium of medieval medical knowledge, magic and folklore related to childbirth" remained popular throughout the Renaissance. Although it has been added to our Rare Books Collection (RG85 .A434 1492za), it nicely complements our Gender Studies collection as well.

The binding is not original to the item, but it's very pretty.

The half-title (title pages weren't common yet).

This book also serves as a great example of how the book market worked in the 1490s. Although it is printed, spaces were left for rubricated or historiated initials to be put in later by book artists.

A close up of the manuscript initial featured at the opening of the book.

This book will be on display in our "New Acquisitions" exhibit through September. It is fully cataloged and available to researchers whenever we are open.

Wheel-A-Thon: Team Caitlin Rides Again

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:22:00 +0000

For the past 4 years, my family has participated in the DeKalb County Wheel-A-Thon , which is the major fundraiser for RAMP, a local organization that helps people with disabilities lead more independent lives. RAMP also provides educational advocates for children with disabilities, to help families ensure that their children get all of the necessary services to succeed in school.

We have benefitted from RAMP's services since we moved here, and have tried to give back each year by helping them to raise money. Hence "Team Caitlin." This is the third year that our participation has been sponsored by the Founders Library Association, which is the social group for our library that throws parties and does service projects.

During the Wheel-A-Thon, teams complete a 2 mile course using a wheelchair, and take pledges for the completion of the course. Two years ago, Caitlin was the Grand Marshall for the event. This year, Team Caitlin (which includes our family and several other families that are friends of ours locally) is hoping to meet our fundraising goal of $2000 (we raised a little over $1600 last year). The event is on September 26th. This is the second year that online donations are possible for the event. If you are interested in helping to support Team Caitlin, click here to make a donation.

Thanks for supporting Team Caitlin, and RAMP! It means a lot to us, and to our community.

5 things make a post? (Back from Vacation)

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:27:00 +0000

I have returned from vacation, and am now suffering from "vacation brain." So this will be short and sweet.

1. As requested, those violently interested in my paper, "Donor Relations 2.0" that was given in absentia (thanks, Jessica!) during Session 401 at the 2009 Society of American Archivists conference may now download a PDF version for all of your 2.0 needs. Please use it for good, and not for evil.

2. In library and archive land, ArchivesNext points out that there was an awesome conference on special collections thrown by PACSCL (our hosts for RBMS2010, btw), and their site now has audio of presentations available. Also, the Academic Librarian has an interesting take on leadership in libraries that is worth a read.

3. LISNews reminds us that it's time to nominate for the 2009 I Love My Librarian Awards. Just sayin'.

4. Jessamyn over at Librarian.net has a nice visualization of copyright based on library collections that is an eye-opener. Rory Litwin notes that figuring out "who owns the copyright" isn't always simple.

5. In SF-world, I got name-checked as a good fan writer to watch, Jay Lake got interviewed, Paul Cornell lists comics to watch for the 2009 Hugos (and perhaps order for your library?), SF authors weigh in on the effect of social networking and blogging on the publishing industry, and writers get photographed in their lairs, including NIU's own E.E. Knight.

You can also become part of my delicious network and get these links in real time as I add them.

Begin radio silence [vacation]

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:50:00 +0000

I'm on vacation from work until August 24th. Expect light blogging, if any at all.

Colleagues on campus wishing to schedule class visits can still do so via email.

See you at the start of school.

Google Reader Round-Up

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:52:00 +0000

It's that crazy time of the summer where I'm trying to clear the decks before going on vacation for a week. Here are some interesting links that might catch your fancy:

SAA has published a bit about The Interactive Archivist
IFLA has published a report about Collaboration in Public Libraries, Museums, and Archives (via Resource Shelf)
Twitter tips for academics
An interesting article on personal digital archives.
Conservation Online has a new home!

Back to the editorial salt mines...

Congrats to all of the Hugo Winners!

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:47:00 +0000

Hearty congratulations are due to this year's winners of the Hugo Awards, which include Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Bear, Nancy Kress, Ted Chiang, the Foglios, Wall-E, Dr. Horrible, Ellen Datlow, David G. Hartwell, Donato Giancola, Weird Tales, Cheryl Morgan, Electric Velocipede, and Frank Wu, and to David Anthony Durham, who will now be sporting the Campbell Best New Writer Tiara.

Congrats to all the winners!

Will Shetterly joins NIU SF Archives

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:41:00 +0000

We are pleased to formally announce the addition of the papers of Will Shetterly to the NIU SFWA Archive. Will is perhaps best known for his novel Dogland, and his work in the Borderland and Liavek shared world anthologies. He was a member of the Scribblies and is married to Emma Bull.

Welcome, Will!

Google Reader Round-Up: Awards Edition

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:32:00 +0000

Apparently, there are some folks that have been nominated for awards recently.

World Fantasy Awards. NIU SF archive nominees include: Catherynne M. Valente and Kage Baker.

Hugo Awards (given away this weekend!) NIU SF archive nominees include Elizabeth Bear, Steven H Silver and Mary Robinette Kowal.

Locus Awards have already been given, but Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette were both nominated.

Best of luck to all of the current nominees, and congrats to all those nominated for their work.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS 2.0 is HERE!

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:48:00 +0000

My contributor's copies of Special Collections 2.0 arrived!

*sings "It's the Best Day Ever" song from Spongebob Squarepants*

Look! A book! In the Wild! With my name on it!!! That you can BUY!

*happy dance*

Oh, and here's where to buy the book. [Libraries Unlimited] [Amazon] [WorldCat] [Keenzo]

Shiny New Reading Room!

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:19:00 +0000

Our reading room was renovated this summer. Here are some photos:

To see more, please go to our Facebook Page, where we have created an album of the renovation (and add us to your favorites, to get regular updates).

RBMS Summary: Plenary III

lmthomas@niu.edu (Lynne M Thomas) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:40:00 +0000

This is the third in a series of blog entries written up about my attendance at the 2009 RBMS Preconference in Charlottesville, VA. The first two can be found here and here.

Today's entry includes a Guest Blogger! Sarah Horowitz , the Special Collections Librarian at Augustana College kindly offered to guest-blog the first bits of Plenary III, as I overslept and missed part of it (you see, I am not a morning person. Shocking.). Thus, I present you Sarah's handiwork:

Plenary III
Historical remarks
The Boston 1980 RBMS Pre-Conference and the Global History of the Book: A Note, for the Record
Ian Willison, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of English Studies, University of London
Ian Willison spoke briefly on the importance of the 1980 preconference, held in Boston. At the conference, RBMS committed to the global aspect of the history of the book. The conference was attended by many great book history scholars, not only from the English speaking world (including the United States, Britain, and Australia), but also from France and Germany. Willison emphasized how important this global approach is to book history, and thinks that the promise of 1980 is only now being fulfilled. As an example of this global approach, he mentioned a panel to be given at SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing) the following week on international mission school publications, based on archival research in India, South Africa, and the U.K.

Collecting, Auctions, and the Book Trade
Katharine Kyes Leab, Editor, American Book Prices Current
Leab opened by acknowledging that the photo-op, sound-bite era had been bad for books. Every talk, she said, has a secret nickname, and hers was 1 Nun, 2 Jakes, and the Reign of Terry. The nun of the title was partly responsible for getting tax laws changed in order to allow unlimited charitable giving. This revision of the tax code was extremely beneficial to libraries because it made giving away books and papers more financially attractive to collectors, who then became library donors.

The first Jake of the title is John Carter, known to the rare book community as the author of ABC for Book Collectors, Taste and Technique in Book Collecting, co-author of An Enquiry Into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets, and many other works. Carter worked for Scribner’s book shop for many years and later at Sotheby’s. In both capacities, he worked in New York, and with numerous famous American collectors. The second Jake refers to Jacob Zeitlin, a west coast book dealer who could not have been more different than Jake Carter. If Carter represented the Eastern establishment and anglophilia, Zeitlin was a friend of many California literary figures, and helped to launch the Primavera Press, an independent publishing company. His most famous sale is probably his negotiation to purchase, for the Getty Museum, the 144 illuminated manuscripts collected by Peter Ludwig.

Both Jake Carter and Jake Zeitlin were members of great networks of collectors, dealers, and librarians. These networks began to deteriorate in the 1980s due to various causes. Terry Belanger reestablished some of these networks and institutionalized them through Rare Book School. Leab recalled parties from the early years of RBS, at Terry’s apartment in New York, where the conversation ranged over numerous topics, from the bibliographical to whether it was possible to tell Perrier from tonic water (the great bibliographer G. Thomas Tanselle claimed that the bubbles in the two were different sizes).

Leab’s talk, which was highly entertaining and filled with anecdotes, gave an interesting picture of the rare book world of the past, and emphasized the need for the continuation of networks among collectors, dealers, and librarians, especially in the age of the internet and sound bites. Leab also congratulated RBS on the role it has played in trying to revive and institutionalize these relationships.

Lynne again:

I should note that I regret not hearing the bulk of this session because from what I hear, Katherine Leab's presentation was one of the best of the preconference. It has been recorded, and may show up on the 2009 Preconference website at some point.

The third section of the plenary (which I made it to) was a chat with the editors of two magazines, Eli Horowitz of McSweeney's and Tod Lippy of Esopus. Both magazines often challenge the notion of the medium, and have devoted, but limited followings. Horowitz and Lippy were really funny, and they provided for a lively discussion of the magazine industry, niche marketing, and being starving publishers. It was especially refreshing to hear about the literary/artistic magazine publishing industry from the publication side, because that is not always omnipresent in our end of the field, especially those produced outside of the academic journal model.

Thus endeth Plenary III. My thanks to Sarah for her guest entry!