Category Archives: Resources

Communication, Resources

Day Nineteen of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

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Lego Librarian rare books at the MacOdrum Library, Carleton University

What do you do?

Are you tired of explaining that library workers do more than “just” checking out books all day? I am!! It’s important too, but we do lots of neat things!

Check out this list of real job titles people are using across the Library and Information Science (LIS) profession – it’s pretty amazing!! When I teach the Foundations class to LIS Master’s degree students, I always have them look at this list to help them think about the range of potential jobs they might look for as they work on their degrees.

Does it give you any ideas about trying for a fun new job, or changing around your job responsibilities?? At CMLE HQ, we are here to help with job hunting, policy/procedure redesign, and other strategies for making your job highly satisfactory for you!

Here are a few samples of jobs that might be not only cool, but just right for you!

  • Audiovisual/Special Materials Cataloger
  • Bioterrrorism Librarian
  • Copyright/Reference Librarian
  • Document Analyst
  • Extended Campus Librarian
  • Federal Depository Librarian
  • Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Librarian
  • Humanities and Fine Arts Librarian
  • Information Resource Officer
  • Manuscripts and Archives Librarian
  • Photoarchivist
  • Strategic Information Manager
  • University Archivist
  • Wired For Youth Librarian
  • Zoo Librarian
Books, Resources

Day Eighteen of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

LOC Main Reading Room Highsmith

The Library of Congress belongs to all of us. Not only is it an amazing resource for anyone in the library profession, but it also as an amazing symbol of the value of libraries and national access to, and storage of, information! We are a pretty amazing profession, and the LOC is our professional home.

Check out these Fascinating Facts about the LOC, and click on their page to learn even more!

Origins

The Library was founded in 1800, making it the oldest federal cultural institution in the nation. On August 24, 1814, British troops burned the Capitol building (where the Library was housed) and destroyed the Library’s core collection of 3,000 volumes. On January 30, 1815, Congress approved the purchase of Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of 6,487 books for $23,950.

Statistics

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with more than 164 million items on approximately 838 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 38 million books and other printed materials, 3.6 million recordings, 14 million photographs, 5.5 million maps, 8.1 million pieces of sheet music and 70 million manuscripts.

The Collections

The Library receives some 15,000 items each working day and adds approximately 12,000 items to the collections daily. The majority of the collections are received through the Copyright registration process, as the Library is home to the U.S. Copyright Office. Materials are also acquired through gift, purchase, other government agencies (state, local and federal), Cataloging in Publication (a pre-publication arrangement with publishers) and exchange with libraries in the United States and abroad. Items not selected for the collections or other internal purposes are used in the Library’s national and international exchange programs. Through these exchanges the Library acquires material that would not be available otherwise. The remaining items are made available to other federal agencies and are then available for donation to educational institutions, public bodies and nonprofit tax-exempt organizations in the United States.

Continue reading Day Eighteen of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour! →

Materials, Resources, Special

Discover rare archives online from the Delaware Art Museum

Are you interested in archives, digitization projects, or art? Then you will definitely appreciate this news from the Delaware Art Museum!

Recently, they launched their new web-based platform which allows selections of their archival material to be viewed online. Some of this material includes “original letters from Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti to his mistress, photographs of artist and illustrator John Sloan in his studio, and scrapbooks chronicling the Museum’s history.”

Through the Delaware Heritage Collection, The Helen Farr Sloan Library & Archives has digitized for free access some of their most famous collections, including the “John Sloan, Howard Pyle, and Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft, Jr. Pre-Raphaelite Manuscript Collections.”

There are currently 500 archival items available online, with more being added daily and plans for hundreds more to be added this summer. The museum is excited to reach more members of their audience and to be better equipped to handle research and reference requests.

Read more about this project here!

CMLE, Resources, Services

Day Twelve of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

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Giovanni Leardo, Venice, 1452 Mappamundi (Map of the world); The map depicts the parts of the world known to Europeans in the late Middle Ages. It is considered the finest example of a medieval mappamundi preserved in the Western Hemisphere

There are so many different kinds of libraries across our profession, it is always interesting to hear about new ones. One of those is the American Geographical Society Library, at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee!

“The American Geographical Society Library (AGSL), one of the premier collections of its kind in North America, contains over 1.3 million items supporting instruction, research and outreach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and around the world.

The collection contains maps, atlases, books periodicals, film media and digital data files. Its scope is worldwide with coverage from the 15th century to the present. Its resources have been used to produce an ongoing series of digital collections, including an award winning website on Afghanistan, a comprehensive site on world transportation and collections featuring unique photographic documentation of such places as Tibet, the Republic of Georgia, Korea and World War II Poland. The AGSL offers scholarly programs for the campus and local community throughout the year and welcomes visiting scholars from across the US and the world.”

Some of the collection:

  • The AGS Library contains over 520,000 maps of all types covering the world at a wide range of scales
  • many items that are extremely rare and valuable
  • over 11,000 atlases ranging from 15th Century editions of Ptolemy’s Geographia to the most modern compilations in paper or digital format
  • over 135 globes, most on permanent display
  • over 300 maps, including a large assortment transferred from the UW-Milwaukee Department of Geography in 2005
  •  nearly 584,000 photographs and slides
CMLE, Public, Resources

Day Ten of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

Parking lots may seem boring, but as we know about libraries already: there is always the opportunity for something wonderful!

The Kansas City, KS Public Library is home to the most interesting parking garage I’ve ever seen! I was on a library research trip a few years ago, and this was one of the libraries I visited. (It’s great, by the way – definitely worth a trip!) But I didn’t know about this feature, so it was a fantastic surprise!

Library District Parking Garage

“The Community Bookshelf is a striking feature of Kansas City’s downtown. It runs along the south wall of the Central Library’s parking garage on 10th Street between Wyandotte Street and Baltimore Avenue. The book spines, which measure approximately 25 feet by 9 feet, are made of signboard mylar. The shelf showcases 22 spines which list 42 titles, reflecting a wide variety of reading interests as suggested by Kansas City readers and then selected by The Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees. Their final selection was made on March 16, 2004. The bookshelf was completed between March and the fall of 2004.”