Project update 1 - File search

This week I have been trawling through old Admin files to locate information about the development of Rare Books and Special collections. What have I learnt this week?

• The Special Collections Branch was set up in 1963 to manage material and collections requiring special treatment. The term Rare books and Special collections did not come into being until July 1979.
• The 'L' prefix in front of the location number of some material held in the RB stack originates from their previous location in the 'Librarians Room'.
• Special collections Librarians and cataloguers have been stewing over the number of prefixes and " fossilized" notations since the 1960s.

I've also read an interesting article...
Waving not drowning: rare books in a digital Age by Sydney F. Huttner from Rare books & Manuscripts Librarianship 13, no. 2, p. 97-108, '99
You can find it on WilsonWeb - Library Lit & Inf Full Text - The URL link was too long to paste into the blog!

Rare Books on Flickr

Rare Books
Originally uploaded by simonk

I'm not sure what the name of the library is but it is in New Haven! Perhaps we could consider a wall of books in the new Building design! They did it at the British Library as well....

I find it incredibly frustrating to have so many accounts! I have a work email, my home email, a google account for igoogle, a Facebook account, a delicious account, a blogline account, a Skype account and a Snapfish account...I have a Flickr account I don't really want.....I don't want anymore! ( I also have an online banking account!)

I've been subscribing to LibrarianinBlack for a while....I've added Maggs Bros and Rare Book News ( image to the left )

Staff Fellowship project - A review of the Rare Books collections at SLNSW

Over the next 6 months I will be working on my 2008 Staff Fellowship project. Each week I'll be adding content to this blog - new discoveries, questions, issues and ideas. I am hoping that members of the Project Reference Group will log on regularly to provide feedback and ideas. It will be great to also gather information from other staff members who have worked with the rare books collections in the past or the present!

The project plan has yet to be finalised! I'll post it to the blog later in January.