IRIS Photos

Project Missing

Barbara Berger Eden

If any of you have worked with Peter Hirtle, you know that he is always interested in pursuing unsolved library mysteries.  As Peter, in his role as a bibliographer, was reviewing the notifications for missing books, he conducted a search in the stacks.  There he found over 30% of the titles on the list.  His concerns were shared and supported by others who were interested in reclaiming these “missing” titles that are part of the Cornell collection.  A small task force that included Joel Copenhagen, Barbara Eden, and Martha Hsu met and developed a proposal that was given the name Project Missing.  As we analyzed the problem, we learned that the many years of major barcoding projects had generated lists of volumes that were not located.  That was not such a surprise, since the first major barcoding project in the Olin stacks took place in 1990, when over 800,000 barcodes were generated.  Items that were not found in the stacks during that and subsequent projects were looked for again a short time later, and, if not found, were charged to “missing,” without further searching.  There were thousands of items in the “missing” category, and the decision was made recently to withdraw those items from the catalog without looking for them again.  The good news was that LTS had not removed the records from the catalog, although they are not viewable by the public.

In response to the Project Missing proposal, funding was made available to hire student staff who would search for these titles.  They reported to staff in Olin Collection Development, under the direction of Howard Brentlinger, and in Preservation and Collection Maintenance, under Joel.  Lydia Pettis generated a list of 14,000 titles, and the list was divided between the two units.  As of mid-October the student staff has located over 2,000 titles from the list, as well as other long-lost books, as they have searched the stacks. 

The work will continue into the spring semester, as the Kroch stacks are searched and the Olin stacks reviewed again.  Considering the value of our book collection, having located so many valuable titles has made this project a worthwhile investment.  Special thanks to LTS staff for all their efforts and to Lydia for her talents at report generation.

Perhaps we should now develop a plan for what I believe has never happened: a shelf reading of the stacks in Olin and Kroch matched against the catalog records!

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