Shorts
Here are the latest numbers for the Annex move. More information about the project can be found on the Annex Web site.
Monthly Statistics for December 2005 |
| Library |
Number of items moved |
Archival Boxes |
| Asia |
7,843 |
|
| Fine Arts |
450 |
|
| RMC archival boxes (vol. equivalent) |
23,596 |
1,388 |
| From Olin to RMC (medium rare) through LTS |
4,055 |
|
| Olin |
25,611 |
|
| Total |
61,555 |
|
| Grand Total |
173,135 |
|
Cornell Is 64 Millionth Record Library!
Scott Wicks
OCLC’s Worldcat Gold Records crowned Cornell the 64 Millionth Record Library! It’s not every day that a library achieves the million-milestone marker. Entered on February 17, the record was for the book A Survey of Indian Industries, 1962 and was loaded as part of our recent effort to synchronize Cornell’s Voyager holdings with Cornell’s OCLC holdings. But it’s not likely we will hold the “millionth” title long. It seems only yesterday that the Toronto Public Library was crowned the 63 Millionth Record Library. In fact, it was just about a month ago. But, there’s more…. Millions and millions and millions of records ago (or 28 million), Cornell was crowned the 36 Millionth Record Library. It was a cold day in December 1996. I remember it well. The title that won gold in 1996 was 調查浙江長興縣合溪煤田報告書 (or, Diao cha Zhejiang Changxing xian Hexi mei tian bao gao shu for those who aren’t Unicode compliant). Now for the hard part: Can you guess the OCLC number that corresponds to either the record that gained us the crown for the 36 millionth or the 64 millionth? If that one stumps you, how about naming who is buried in Grant’s tomb?
Law of Serendipity: Einstein Paper Located
Some years ago, Neil Ashcroft, the Horace White Professor of Physics at Cornell, was present at a rare event while visiting a colleague in Leiden, Germany: a faculty office cleanout. The visit was a moment of serendipity for the world of science, as Professor Ashcroft rescued a set of books from consignment to the dustbin. The books, an old set of volumes of Leiden Communications, contained a reference to an unknown paper on superconductivity written by Albert Einstein in 1922. Cornell’s physics and astronomy librarian, Pat Viele, obtained the paper from the American Institute of Physics library in 2005. The work was translated and is now accessible in English through the arXiv.
Retrospective Conversion of the Harris Collection
Library Technical Services (LTS) has announced that the retrospective conversion of the Harris Collection is complete. One of CUL’s oldest collections, Harris is made up chiefly of little-known nineteenth-century primary sources in American history, European history, classics, English literature, the history of science, and linguistics. The recon project, funded primarily by an extension of the generous grant CUL received in 2002 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, resulted in the conversion of 37,875 catalog cards into the online bibliographic format. A lot of people have been involved in this work, but Jim LeBlanc cites the following staff for their participation in the project: Charlotte Bosworth, Anne Carson, Eugenia Givotovsky, Cammie Hoffmier, Zoe Stewart-Marshall, Barb Tarbox, and Tensin Tsokyi in LTS; Margaret Nichols, Katherine Reagan, and Marge Robinson in Rare and Manuscript Collections; and especially LTS’s retrospective conversion coordinator, Hana Dedina, for making it all happen.
Retrospective conversion means the conversion of usable catalog card data to online bibliographic records. There were a number of Harris cards (1,800, to be precise) that either contained too little information to identify the piece or were simply unreadable (they are handwritten cards). These items will need to be cataloged (as if new) with the item in hand, probably as part of an inventory/barcoding project sometime in the future, since this work is beyond the scope of LTS’s Retrospective Conversion Team.
Veterinary Library: Transitions in 2006
The Vet Library is transitioning from a traditional academic library with an emphasis on a comprehensive historic and contemporary collection to a public services digital library with a high-use collection, enhanced digital access, and a focus on patron empowerment. To begin the transition, at the end of January 2006 the Library brought the total number of computers available for student use in the Library to twenty-six workstations and four laptops. It also added two flatbed scanners and two NetPrint printers (one color and one black and white) formerly housed in the Vet College’s MicroComputer Center. Patrons will be able to access library resources and services and use the software applications formerly available in the Micro-Computer Center with support from Library and VMIT (Veterinary Medical Information Technology) staff. They will also be able to purchase CDs and other related materials. An additional fifteen laptops will be available in the afternoons and evenings for two-hour checkout at the Library’s circulation desk in addition to the four that are currently available. Another big change will come at the end of 2006, when the library will vacate the downstairs level that currently provides quiet study space and houses about 40,000 volumes of journals in compact shelving units. To minimize the impact on our users, we will initiate a user survey and focus-group discussions to analyze user needs and communicate widely with all college faculty, staff, and students. Over the next few months we will be working to ensure a smooth transition of older library materials to the Library Annex.
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