Category Archives: Resources

Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society

From Minitex:

Minitex recently acquired access to a trove of historic periodicals collected by The American Antiquarian Society and made available in partnership with EBSCO. The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections include digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals held by American Antiquarian Society, the premier library documenting the life of America’s people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction. The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections exists as a series of five databases created from a comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1876. These databases include 6,500 titles featuring more than 10 million pages of content from the seventeenth century through the late nineteenth century. The collection also contains titles in more than two dozen languages including French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and more.

How do you access these unique primary sources? Minitex has made them available through the ELM portal at http://www.elm4you.org/. You can also add to an ELM Personalized page at http://www.elm4you.org/personalized or find a direct link for placement on library websites at http://minitex.umn.edu/Elm/Access.aspx#ebsco.

Fragrance-coded card catalog

Copyright Card Catalog Files
I just found this article, and have NEVER heard of this idea – but I’m in love with it!!!

Card catalog cards had a smell to them, say…chocolate. If you, as a patron, were looking for your book you did not have to rely on an indecipherable map, or on your own memory of a specific section of the library. Instead you could just sniff along the aisle until you found the shelf that also smelled like chocolate. Then you browse along until you find your specific book! Amazing!!

Sadly, this catalog is no longer in use – and it clearly has not swept the nation and is not being used in every library.  Yes it would add some challenges to the job of catalogers everywhere to make this happen, but what an amazing idea for helping to make the collection accessible to patrons!!!

Please, please take a moment to click on this article and to admire the scanned newspaper articles about this cataloging system. You will absolutely not be sorry!

Do you have any other seemingly crazy ideas for helping people to connect with your materials? Share them!!! Heck – we will give out up to $300 in mini-grants to people who send us an application with some idea that just needs some funding to get off the ground!! (CMLE members only, please!)

Libraries are here to serve our communities, and to connect them with information through our materials and programs. Let’s keep thinking of interesting new ways to make that happen!

 

Learning About Library Associations: American Theological Library Association

Library science is an enormous field, home to every interest you could imagine! This means that there are many organizations out there for you to join, in order to connect with other people who share your professional interests.

So even if you work alone in your library, there are other people out there doing work similar to yours! Each week we will highlight a different library association for you to learn more about, and depending on your work, potentially join! You can also check out our page dedicated to Library Associations.

This week we’ll take a look at the American Theological Library Association. The mission of ATLA is to “is to foster the study of theology and religion by enhancing the development of theological and religious studies libraries and librarianship. Established in 1946, ATLA is governed by an elected board of directors and has over 800 individual, institutional, and affiliate members.

ATLA has an annual conference, a newsletter, offers awards and scholarships, and an online journal. They recently announced the addition of new materials including journals and records to EBSCO’s EBSCOhost platform, which you can learn more about here.

Their website features On Demand Learning, which is a collection of free professional development webinars. They also have a page full of religion reference training resources, since those tools are rarely covered in traditional library training.

You can learn about the benefits of joining ATLA here, or visit their Member Center for more information.

CMLE Resources: Copyright

CMLE is here for you with all kinds of resources and information. Each week we will share a look at another piece of that information, to help draw some attention to resources that may help you as you serve your community.

This week we look at our Copyright resources!

Libraries and archives are often the locations in an organization where copyright laws meet the demands of your community members. We need to be ready to explain why it is not appropriate (legal) to just scan the latest expensive textbook and put it online for an entire class. We need to provide information on why we can not just photocopy articles from a popular journal every single week to distribute. We need to train our community members in using images online, in sharing information from behind paywalls, and so many more things to help them follow copyright law in their own work.

We provide a lot of information for you on our Copyright page. For some quick basics, check out our “Linking Our Libraries” podcast episode on copyright! Continue reading CMLE Resources: Copyright