Hi, everyone,
MLK Event
Hi all,
I thought you might enjoy knowing about this event:
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Rededication to the Dream
Join in fellowship for the annual rededication of Dr. King ‘s dream and the sharing of reflections, quotes, and inspiration.
Presented by the Metro Central Unit of the NAACP
With Technical Support from the Oberlin Heritage Center
Join the Zoom meeting at
bit.ly/3t9qswc
What you can learn from Archives!
DEI webinar
ASERL Webinars are free and open to all of us in academic libraries. I will send notices of them from time to time. Here’s an upcoming one on DEI Librarianship that might interest you: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/8910675746569746188
Regards,
Valerie
Goodie bags with a surprise for staff
Everyone who picked up a dessert/surprise bag from the Thornton Room today found a poem enclosed in the bag. I had a lot of fun selecting them and making copies to share with you (there were 6 bags still waiting for someone to take them home when I left the Thornton Room, please get yours if you missed out). “Don’t Go Into the Library” was one of my favorites (below), and I’ll post two more next week. I hope you enjoyed the one you got! This is from the compilation Books and Libraries: Poems, Andrew D. Scrimgeour (editor). Everyman’s Library, Blackwell’s. 2021.
DON’T GO INTO THE LIBRARY
The library is dangerous –
Don’t go in. If you doYou know what will happen.
It’s like a pet store or a bakery –Every single time you’ll come out of there
Holding something in your arms.Those novels with their big eyes and wagging tails.
Those non-nonsense, all-muscle Dobermans,All nonfiction and business,
Cuddly when they’re young.But then the first page is turned and no turning back.
And those sleek, fast, beautiful greyhounds: poems.The doughnut scent of it all, knowledge,
The aroma of coffee being madeIn all those books, something for everyone,
The deli offerings of civilization itself.The library is the book of books,
Its concrete and wood and glass coversKeeping within them the very big
Very long story of everything.The library is dangerous, full
Of answers. If you go inside,You may not come out
The same person who went in.–Alberto Rios
IDEA Committee Survey Regarding Workplace Amenities
Established employees at the OC Libraries know that there are a wide variety of avenues we can take to secure workplace-related amenities. It feels like over the years, we develop a “sixth sense” about what sort of things are appropriate to ask of our department heads, of CIT, of Bill Ruth, etc. However, this information is not well-documented or codified, and especially for new employees, these resources may not be altogether obvious.
The IDEA Committee would like to address this problem by creating this documentation for current and future employees. Please help us in our efforts by answering the survey locations located here.
To clarify, by “workplace amenities” we are referring to equipment, tools, software, etc. that improves your working environment. These should not rise to the level of requests that fall under ADA accommodations. These must be taken up with Human Resources, and the form for those requests can be found here.
Please complete the survey by Friday, January 21st! Thank you so much for your participation.
THANKS!!
Thanks to all the party planners and party goers at today’s New Year’s party. I hope that 2022 will be a great year for all of us and for the OC Libaries!
Regards,
Valerie
Enerel Dambiinyam Interview on Monday
Three Updates from Con Library Technical Services
1. Our internal Con Library Tech Services LibGuide is now open to anyone with the link, and I hope you may find some useful tidbits of info. This is perpetually in progress, so please excuse placeholders! https://libguides.oberlin.edu/con-tech-services (Kim Fixx maintains our extensive Preparations manual separately.)
2. A monthly new titles list for the Con Library is available the first week of each month. You can find them in our Box folder, Conservatory Library New Titles Lists. The folder and files are set to be easily shared.
3. Last but certainly not least, I am delighted to report that we finished a major cleanup project (12,200 items!). The Con Library had an old practice of using one big (but vague) record for complete or collected works by one composer or for large monographic series. These sets or series also had (have) individual bibliographic and item records for each component volume. The dysfunctional umbrella records had ‘extra’ item records with a status of “check shelf,” with no real-time availability.
Back in November of 2018, though the amazing power of Sierra’s Create Lists, we identified 6,104 item records with this “check shelf” status. For each, we confirmed the existence of the ‘real’ item in OBIS and corrected its call number, then deleted the corresponding “check shelf” item. Once each set/series was all finished, we removed OCLC holdings from the set and deleted or suppressed that record. As a bonus, funny-looking records routed to me for troubleshooting were treated to full correction/enhancement in WorldCat and updated in OBIS as well, and sets or series lacking analytic records for some volumes were fully analyzed. On December 23, 2021, the very last check-shelf item was removed, and every corresponding live item record is correct. Many thanks are due to Anne Sprague (retired), who did a lot of the initial cleanup, and to Faith Hoffman, who touched literally thousands and thousands of records during work from home.
A picture is worth a thousand words. I am attaching a file that shows the “before” for the Rameau complete works with links to the cleaned up records.
interesting Slavery & Abolition digital project at Harvard
https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/slavery-abolition-emancipation-and-freedom