Next phase: moving books from Reference Annex, Reference Stacks, and Reference Folio to Main Stacks

This is not the time or place for full documentation of process or details of the workflow, but this is an introduction to some of the interesting challenges we have faced in the process of launching this project.

I needn't even shed a tear -- while I do mourn the future loss of the beautiful black powder-coated metal shelves, custom-made black powder-coated metal book ends, and the solid wood ends of the ranges (major nod to the designers and architects that made such a classy space in 1996/1997, that it does not look dated now), I am on autopilot negotiating communication, delegation, and organization of handling, moving, and interfiling so many books.

Do we ever consider the provenance of Reference books? We have had a Reference Annex separate from the Reference Stacks collection since I began work here in 2001 as a student. Over the years it has moved locations multiple times and has undergone major weeding. At this final stage, we have identified what we desire to keep, and my student workers and I go about the task of interfiling them with the regular Reference collection to make Access Service's work easier when they shift and shelve the titles in the main stacks.

Further, the Annex materials are in the unique position of possessing three marks identifying them: a "REF ANNEX" sticker label on the spine, a "Ref" or "Biblio Ref" preceding the call number on the spine, and a  sticker on the inner cover that says something like "For Reference, Do Not Remove from this Room."

Any library worker doing due diligence will authoritatively assert the need to cover these labels. "For aesthetic and informational needs," I said in the meeting in where we discussed this.

Last week we began our work. We started at 1 pm pulling one cart (that's three shelves filled on both sides, a total of 552 cm of linear shelving), brought it upstairs, and began removing or covering up these labels. With two of us working on it, we did not finish until 5 pm. FOUR hours spent covering or removing labels. Besides the lack of sustainability in this, our scissors kept getting gunked up with the adhesive from the tapes we were using, which led to finger injuries when cleaning with rubbing alcohol. Not to mention the sheer amount of supplies we would blow through.

Example 1 of spine label covers.
We removed the "REF ANNEX" sticker on the top of the spine,
and covered the "Ref" part of the call number on the spine. 

Example 2 of spine label covers.
We covered the "REF ANNEX" sticker on the spine (brown cloth tape),
and covered the "Ref" part of the call number label with White Out -- this because the call number
was written in something similar to White Out rather than printed on a label. 

Example 3 of spine label covers.
The "REF ANNEX" sticker was close enough to the "Ref" part of the
call number label that we could use one strip of cloth tape (blue) to cover both. 

Example 1 of covering up the label on the inside cover. 

Example 2 of covering up the label on the inside cover. 

Example 3 of covering up the label on the inside cover.

It pains me to say, but I ended up being the one that advocated for the elimination of this step in our process. My colleague who is the Stacks Coordinator made a good point -- by bearing their vestigial REF mark, each volume signifies its provenance and identity as a Reference work.

Yesterday I broke an emoji bottle of champagne over the proverbial bow of the first cart, and officially began the project by bringing the first cart to Cataloging to have their records updated. They are now in route to Access Services and their new home in the Stacks. We're working backwards, which is the other funny thing, starting with the Z's, and we're moving over 10,000 volumes in less than 6 months hypothetically.

Update to Slack, the PM communication/social media tool we're piloting for this project.

Glad I am feeling unsentimental -- I was given the charge of taking care of this whole print collection for nearly 15 years, and on the eve of my entrance into the professional realm of library work, I have been charged with lovingly disposing it all. As if to say, Congratulations on finishing library school, now you are faced with choosing virtual Reference if you have allegiance to Reference work, or choosing Special Collections if you have allegiance to the physical object.

If I love the Reference print collection, must I set it free? Will it return to me from the main stacks to prove its requited love? I suppose just as with medieval manuscripts and platinotypes, no inanimate object can ever return love...

"And then we came to the end" ~ Last 3 carts of Reference Discards

Today is a monumental Monday! I brought the last 3 carts of Reference titles for discard back to Tech Services today. Undoubtedly I will come across some stragglers as we begin the next phase of the project, the phase where we move all the green-flagged titles to the Stacks, but for now, this is it!

Of note, these carts included Humanities Index, Book Review Index (1965-2008), Book Review Digest (1980-2009), Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature (1890-1982), Collier's Encyclopedia, Academic American Encyclopedia, and Encyclopedia Americana. The old faithful Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature is now covered online in Readers' Guide Retrospective 1890-1982. Volume 17 of Book Reviews Index has a cute spine label:

Peeps gotta get a kick out of the Dialog throwback!

Otherwise to note, one mutilated volume of Encyclopedia Americana is lacking  a couple sections, which is something countless menders have had to address by tipping in ILL photocopies of the missing pages. At least you don't have to worry about that with online encyclopedias!

Strip of paper's edge where a section on China has been cut out of the encyclopedia

This is my last blog post for Reference Discards. Throughout this process of blogging each cart, I have come to a high level of acceptance about the project: these titles are better to be discarded and to be replaced with online versions when available. I shed few tears, except for those ageless ones that witnessed beautiful literary criticism sets go straight in the dumpster. Food for the worms!

The next phase of the project, moving tens of thousands of titles from Reference to the Stacks, is too large in scale to blog each cart. (I could try, but it would be pictures only -- maybe a project for Instagram?) Now that we are upon the planning portion of this next phase, I'm really going into a cold sweat: soon the Reference Room will be empty. Soon instead of the charge of stacks maintenance for reference, I will be overburdened with managing 50 or 100 more computers... :'(

Reference Discards: New York Times Index

I started the week off energetically by collecting all 121 volumes of the New York Times Index for discard. I think after this we've got 1 or 2 more carts of discards...

Large empty spot in Ref stacks where the NYT Index used to be... 

Reference Discards in the As

The return of the traditional printed Reference work!

- Did you know that in 1989, Belgium used 361,014 terajoules of natural gas?
- Did you know that 25 x 25 is 625?
- Did you know that Nicholas Cage's birth name is Nicholas Coppola and he was born in Long Beach, CA?
- Did you know that the 1983 winner of the Greyhound Derby was a dog called I'm Slippy?
- Did you know that on 17 Dec 1989, Brazil elected its first president in nearly 30 years, Fernando Collor de Mello?

All these random facts are brought to you by the 1997 edition of The Cambridge Factfinder, a perfect example of a previously extremely useful printed Reference work. We have the internet now, so these are falling out of use. And this particular one is on the Reference Discard Cart -- which is probably the second or third to last cart until the project is done (I discovered today there are many volumes of the NYT index we have to get rid of... this week I tackled the 22 volumes of the NYT personal name index).

We got rid of printed museum directories and subscribed to The Official Museum Directory online (I hope people find it to use it... some of this stuff kept under lock and key languishes since a Google search is easier (but not as comprehensive)).  

Also on this cart are two Book of Lists, which I remember fooling around with back when I did the evaluation and mending project on the Reference collection. A nice fat encyclopedia, and every school child's quintessential  World Book encyclopedia, those familiar blue covers and orange stripes. I know you have a story of discovering something in one of these when you were a kid... share it!

Lastly... I am totally biased when I say these 31 volumes of An Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities should have gone years ago... book reviews... printed indices of book reviews... so 20th century.

I wish to pause now and offer two sides of reflection that keeping this blog has allowed me. One, that we have done a good weeding that may have helped keep our united Reference collection relevant, and it is too bad that the weeding was only prompted by the directive to empty the room--I feel regret over this although it is totally out of my control. Two, I feel much less sad than I anticipated. By keeping this blog, I have worked out my regret, and I offer each entry as a memorial tribute to Reference as a discipline within library science, as well as a memorial tribute to each printed Reference work that has put itself in our service for so many years.

Here's our week in Reference discards!

Discards BX 905 C425 2001 - AS 2 G36 2001

In all likelihood this is the penultimate cart of Reference Discards so I went to great lengths to find some gems. I must confess I am not in the mood to read reference works for fun this morning (most likely because I have medieval Chinese manuscripts on my mind) yet I persevered for the sake of my dear reader!

When I looked at the Gale Directory of Learning Worldwide, I was like, "Who has use for this boring thing? --certainly not me." Whoa buddy, was I wrong. Turns out a reference work like this would have been helpful when I was crafting my Fulbright application in 2011, and later when I was arranging my educational leave from. For example, can the internet give such a comprehensive list of libraries in the Netherlands as this can? Not from what my Google-Fu can tell...

I like the ditty below because its covers are like red pleather pillow cases. For reals tho, it can be fun to poke around outdated theological encyclopedias... looking to see what they have to say about the Gospel of Judas... just kidding! That bad boy wasn't discovered until well after 1979. 

Was happy (and surprised) to see an entry for Apollinaire in this Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion... are they suggesting surrealism is a religion?... lol

The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy delivered with a definition of Schrödinger's cat, etc... if you want to sound smart, just read this and intersperse its terms in daily dialog/FB posts/Twitter rants and you will see your standing rise (or others' regard for your pompousness rise).

Thanks to this little ditty, I have a new Russian author to check out... one that apparently writes on themes of China and San Francisco? This is too random to have been planned. Ivan Alexeievich Bunin (Google is trying to correct me into typing Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin... to which I say, Back off buddy!) FTW (hashtag the gentleman from san francisco) 

Last but not least (well...) I'm bringing it all home with the Dictionary of Behavioral Science... don't read this one to make yourself sound smart, just read it to get bored/fall asleep/contemplate the meaning of the classic printed Reference work. 

Nonetheless... in case you were wondering about the pleasure principle... I regret to inform you it was not first coined by Gary Numan... nor Janet Jackson!

Here's our week in discards! 

Discards CT100 C97 - BF575 G7 N38

The bulk of this week's discards are Current Biography, which we have 3 catalog records for and which were shelved in two different locations. (1940-1950 were in the Reference Annex and marked keep in Ref; 1951 - 2012 were in Reference marked for discard and to find an online version.) I took care of these descrepencies and we are discarding them all, although we have yet to secure access to an online version.

Otherwise there are a handful of theological reference works, including the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, which got cataloged and shelved in BL, but I wonder why not in the Q section? ...Ah the deep mysterious of cataloging ;-)

Discards CT 213 G37 - BX 801 C364 1981-2004

I am so close to finishing the discards I can taste it!

I am working backwards from the Zs to the As and today I made progress through the CTs up to the BXes. Nothing too sentimental or very noteworthy here (or is it that I have my focus on the study zone project and would rather be getting creative with the new signs!). The cool thing I found is some directories of archives and manuscripts repositories, which is important to remember -- they must exist in digital format now, and they will come in handy if I need to do that kind of work in the future. 

This week we discarded more of the Who's Who and biographies, and moved into the Catholic directories.