The Holidays and Donors

I have been currently been working on my digitization project for a class I am taking. I also have to start getting ready for tax season receipts.

We usually send out bibliographic receipts to material's donors whenever we get the materials and catalog them, usually within the space of a few weeks for most donations. However, there are circumstances, like the number of books donated, that prohibit us from following our normal work flow procedures. We then must do a receipt more in line with traditional donation receipts, listing the total number of books received broken down by type (hard cover, softcover, etc.) and then just a count.

This year, we should have no problems completing our donations receipts.

One thing that is beneficial for the libraries: If you wanted to donate a little something, but didn't want to give just a few dollars, we encourage you to consider giving a subscription of a periodical to the libraries as a possible donation. Talk to us about what magazines / journals / periodicals would be beneficial to our libraries. We can tell you what we already receive, or whether a subscription of something we already get is coming due soon, or even if there is something we should be getting and do not do so. All is definitely appreciated.

Bad Librarianship

I was thinking this past weekend what a disservice we do to everyone when we miscatalog something based upon our own personal perspective. I mean, one of my pet peeves is that many of the items cataloged about humanism, free thought and the other similar topics are most often cataloged by a person who catalogs Religion.

Why is this bad you might ask? Well they might touch on a few aspects of what these subjects are, but more often than not, you see that they get lumped into the classification of Humanism, not secular humanism, or those specific areas, just humanism. Or even worse, they get cataloged under the dreaded "Religion -- Controversial Literature" or "Jesus Christ -- Controversial Literature."

Problem is, that is not specifically what the book is about. In the case of Jesus, many items should go to "Jesus Christ -- Histrocity" if it is dealing with the question of whether Jesus existed, not "Controversial Literature."

Humanism itself fits under several categories. The philosophical aspects go under (philosophical aspects of)Humanism (B 821), and (other aspects of) humanism go under BL 2747.6 (Rationalism as a special theory under religion). There is a difference.

Additionally, just because a work is critical of religion, does not make it secular or controversial of religion.

With the above reasoning, I also should not catalog anything regarding agriculture (with the possible exception of crop circles) as I have no experience in dealing with it as a subject.

More fun research

One of the fun research projects I get to do around here is hunt down images for use in videos and identify photographs. I will be looking for a specific photo that was used in our earlier fund drive videos that we cannot find its source. I also have been compiling a collection of various free thought related speakers photographs from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

I hope to place these images with identifying information so that we will be able to identify these free thought personages quickly. I also may be the holder of all the digital images we use in the company. Right now, everyone maintains their own...

Wikipedia

Many people have a problem with Wikipedia. Because anybody can change what is said there, you have a situation where just about anything can be said about anything...

What is forgotten is that a every one of the people who take the time to write the various Wikipedia articles feel it is important enough to take the time and write something there. Whether it is truthful or not.

However, it should also be remembered that in the long term of this tool, that the truth will eventually come out. If someone sabotages an entry, it is pretty easily repaired.

Librarians don't like Wikipedia because they feel it is not reliable. I don't use Wikipedia as an authoritative source. I use Wikipedia as a starting point to find the authoritative source. Most of the time, it can be used to track down sources relatively easily, as Wikipedia does require sources be listed, or there is a warning tag stating this.

Should librarians dislike Wikipedia? I don't think so, as long as it is able to give a starting point for better research.

Freethought Librarianship

One of the most unique things we have at our CFI Libraries is our various freethought items.

From Wikipedia:

Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that beliefs should be formed on the basis of science and logic and not be compromised by emotion, authority, tradition, or any dogma. The cognitive application of freethought is known as freethinking, and practitioners of freethought are known as freethinkers.

(I shall discuss Wikipedia in a future blog, but suffice it to say that Wikipedia is usually a good starting point)

Anyway, we have a very good collection of these items, including some of the rarest, such as Ingersoll, Cohen, Joseph McCabe, Joseph Lewis, Bradlaugh, etc. A large portion of the rarest items have not yet been cataloged, but I am currently working on them.

There are very few of us out there any longer who maintain freethought collections, but University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has a "Social Protest" Collection, which is included within their scope, the American Atheists have some within their collection, and then we do. There are other places that have freethought as well, but these places have the largest and most well-known collections of these materials.

More Rare Book cataloging

I've been concentrating on finishing the cataloging on all the rare items I still have in my office. I am finding quite a few items we did not know we had. Many of these items are very unique and will require that I do some original cataloging on them.

I also spoke to our architect, and I should have revised plans and bids for our new spaces within a few weeks. Hopefully we can afford to complete this expansion, but I don't really expect it to happen any time soon.

I will be working on a PowerPoint presentation on our libraries to be used at a regional QuestionPoint meeting to advertise the AskUs24/7 Subject specialists (I am the paranormal expert). This may also be used as a webinar, but I will also derive a new presentation for our donors and potential donors as well.

E. Haldeman-Julius books

Within the last several years, we received a donation of almost every Little Blue Book, as well as a large collection of Big Blue Books and other EH-J books. These Little Blue Books numbered up to about 1,915, but there were a few numbers not used, and many with the same number but with different title, or variants of titles. I was told that the collection we just received is only missing about 150 of the titles.

I recently found some more in the rare collection I am going through. We also had a significant number of the LBB before this collection came in, and I have not yet compared the items we already had to the ones received as part of the collection.

I am hoping we will have many of the "missing" items in our existing collection.

Displaying artifacts

I am working on an exhibition right now that involves the multiple use of our materials. I am currently in a Digitization BootCamp that is being sponsored by WNYLRC. A class requirement is to post at least 15 images for use at WNYLegacy.org.

A while back, we were contacted about a bottle that was found at a historical site. Taking the bull by the horns, our Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell and I were able to establish quite a bit of information on this bottle. Due to this project, we decided that between us, Joe was going to write a report for the archeologist, we were going to write an article, use the materials for a display case, use digital photographs for the Skeptiseum, and use the digital photos and other materials for my digitization project. Many uses but all still regarding the same items.

We have also discussed possibly writing a book expanding a lot on the materials, but giving a history of Dr. R.V. Pierce, the subject of this information.

More Ingersoll!

Tom Flynn, curator of the Ingersoll Birthplace Museum, received a bunch of cool new items from a descendant of RGI. Included are what appears to be the printing plates from the Dresden Edition fronts pieces. Each is a different picture of RGI taken at a different point of his life.

Additionally, there are some rare pictures and a scrapbook put together by the family.

I have been asked to assist with one of the plates that is somewhat different from the others, and I will write more on that when I find out more.

Also, I will be cataloging some more Ingersoll items rather soon as we have a box of materials from the former library director (Gordon Stein) that was acquired about 10 years ago, but never cataloged.

We are also getting ready to put together an exhibition of artifacts from Dr R.V. Pierce, a mail order practitioner of nostrums that may or may not have been effective. This also ties into some articles coming out soon from Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell, and my digitization project for the WNYLRC.

Cataloging is fun!!!!!

I am one of the very few people left in the world who catalog in a library. I mean catalog items from scratch, not copy catalog from OCLC or somewhere else. I do copy catalog out of OCLC for many items, but there is nothing like adding a record to OCLC or the library catalog that you have done yourself.

I have been going through a lot of rare items that have been cataloged prior to my arrival here at the Center. Once completed, every item will have been recataloged since my arrival. The old library director was not as much a librarian as a bibliophile, although he was an expert in the areas of freethought, humanism and some areas of the paranormal. So the catalog was not very good. He had students help him, but his knowledge of cataloging was not very good, so I had to redo everything.

I have found some rare Ingersoll sentiments, lectures and other related items recently. I will be going through all the rare items that have not been cataloged at all very soon, once I complete these old somewhat cataloged items.

I also found some works signed by Ernst Haeckel to TB Wakeman. Haeckel is a philosopher from around the turn of the 20th century. Wakeman is a freethought advocate and periodical publisher and lecturer. For more information on both, see The Encyclopedia of Unbelief.

Rare Book librarianship

I went to a lecture yesterday called "So You Want to be a Rare Book Librarian in the Digital Age" by Sid Berger, rare books librarian at the Peabody Essex Museum. Excellent discussion on what is happening to "the book" and how to prepare for a career in this area. A lot of the lecture was discussing the drawbacks of technology, including the bad info out on the web, and the idea that the computer does save some work, but that we are now expected to do three to five times more work because of it.

Another area of discussion was how we as librarians have created the need (actually it is a desire) for instant information to be available for patrons. In academic settings, if we have a book in the OPAC, a patron wants the table of contents. If we have the ToC, then they want the book digitally available. Cost is not an option for them, but we see the trend toward instant gratification becoming more and more prevalent.

One other area discussed was that donors do not always understand how much it costs to catalog materials that are donated. Many feel "I have given you the materials, how much more do you want?" Dealing with donors of library materials on a fairly regular basis, I make sure that they understand that there is a substantial cost of both time and money to get materials cataloged. Will we refuse a collection because someone cannot give us money towards cataloging? Of course not. But with cataloging costs what they are today and dwindling resources, the best course of action is to keep the donor informed. Discuss with them why something is not cataloged. If they donated the materials, there is a good chance that they explicitly know the particular item that might be causing you a cataloging problem. If other collections have changes the priorities, then let them know. Let them know that the amount of time spent cataloging their materials has changed for whatever reason it has happened. Communication is a wonderful thing.

Our new blog

I am starting yet another blog that will be related to our libraries. The Libraries have a lot to offer, and I hope to share what I can with you about our libraries, libraries in general, and all things library and CFI Libraries related.

Thanks for the look!

Tim