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.