or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk


Check to ALA from 1919

   June 10th, 2010 Brian Herzog

1919 check written to the ALAIn 2008, Chelmsford started a town-wide history project, to index the historical records in all the various locations around town. We're still chugging along, and a volunteer found something interesting in the library's archives.

This check for $1.50 was written by the treasurer of the North Chelmsford Library Association to the ALA Publishing Board in 1919. The back of the check is interesting, too. We're still discovering things in the archive, so I'm hopeful we'll be able to figure out what this check was for.

There's three more things about this, if you're interested:

  1. The signature on the check is Stuart MacKay, brother of Anna C. MacKay, who the Anna C. MacKay Branch Library in North Chelmsford is named after. North Chelmsford has been, and is now, very supportive of the library, and I like this continuity of history. Also interesting that he was working on Christmas Eve.
  2. Also uncovered in the archive are circulation records from the early 1900's - including every book each patron checked out. An interesting philosophical question is this: at what point do library records go from being a matter of patron privacy to a matter of historical record or curiosity?
  3. For our indexing project, we're using Past Perfect, and will be providing access through Past Perfect Online (but nothing's been uploaded yet). Until that's ready, we're using a Google Custom Search Engine to index all the existing online resources we could find. It works well enough for the time being, and I know this is going to be a long-term project, but I'm looking forward to having a real index available.

Neat, huh?



Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



Town-Wide History Project

   November 20th, 2008 Brian Herzog

Town of Chelmsford sealSomething new my library is undertaking is a Town-Wide History Project. Our goal is to create a master index of all of the historical records in town, so we'll know where different types of information is stored. Phase 2 will be preservation and digitization of as much of this as possible.

Good idea? Yes. Lot of work? More than we realize.

We expect this process to take years, so we're trying to start slow and small so as not to get overwhelmed. We're also trying to document everything as we go along, so we'll have a record of how we went about doing this, and when certain things were accomplished. Since other libraries might be interested in the same sort of project, here's our progress so far (I'll occasionally post updates, too).


Our Process
I'm told that this was tried about eight years ago in Chelmsford, but was abandoned less than a year after it started. The library was approached a few months ago to try again, and I immediately took to the idea. A comprehensive local history finding aid would be very valuable at the reference desk.

In addition to library staff, we also have a volunteer who has been helping with a lot of the work. She's been responsible for most of the data entry and envelope stuffing, and will also be helping when it comes to visiting each site to do an inventory. Without her, most of these steps would have been much more difficult.

  1. Meet to organize project - A project like this will have a lot of meetings. Initially library staff met with our volunteers to define the scope and goal of the project, and to create a rough timeline
  2. Identify groups in town with historical records/artifacts - In our case, we had a few resources that helped with this. Since a similar project was begun a few years ago, some of their records still existed, including a list of the organizations involved. Another tool is our Community Information database, which lists non-profit groups in town. My volunteer also found official Town departments and boards which might have historical records
  3. Compile a list of groups - The volunteer took these various lists and created a master contact list as an Excel spreadsheet, with just name, address, phone, email, website and contact name
  4. Contact the groups - While the volunteer was compiling the spreadsheet of names, we were also drafting a letter that would introduce the project to these groups, and a preliminary survey, which would be sent along with the letter. The goal of the survey was to give library staff an idea of how much materials each group had, what kind of shape it was in, and where it was located:

    To mail them, we did a simple mail-merge between Word and Excel, and enclosed a stamped return envelope. We also enclosed a list of all the groups contacted, in the hopes that the recipients will be able to suggests organizations we didn't think of.

    Also in the cover letter, we invited everyone to a meet-and-greet type introductory meeting, scheduled about a month in advance

  5. Compile the returned surveys - As the surveys were returned, we compiled the answers into the same spreadsheet we had begun. We used a different worksheet, and kept track of who replied, if the contact information had changed, and how they answered the questions. On another worksheet, we aggregated the answers for all groups, so we'd know how many map collections were in town, how many were available online, etc.

    At this point we have outgrown Excel, and need a database for our needs, not just a simple spreadsheet. I'm going to have to find a tool to accomplish this before the project grows more, because the less data we have to rekey, the better.

  6. Introductory meeting - We wanted our first face-to-face meeting not be a lecture by library staff, but more of a conference, where all participates in the group were equal. Library staff did lead the meeting to give an overview of what we had in mind, but once things got going the other attendees really began to take ownership of the idea and see a role for their organization.

This is as far as we are in the process right now - which is to say, the very, very beginning. The consensus at the meeting (which was just last night) was to invite a speaker to give an overview on what kind of materials are historically-important, and what groups can do to prepare for an on-site inventory. The groups also wanted to see examples of what the end result will look like (for our project, we're using communities like Westford, Sudbury and Ipsiwch as models).

We're going to plan that for late January/early February, and then start scheduling site visits for initial inventories. How those first few site visits go will shape how we proceed, and help define who does what. Eventually we will apply for a grant, to help with the preservation and digitization aspects.

It's an exciting project, just massive. I'm happy that the town is behind such a project, and that it is being coordinated by the library. Local history questions are often the most difficult to answer, and a project like this will go a long way to ensuring this information is both available and accessible to researchers and the curious alike.



Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,



Past Search Terms, and the Universal Digital Library

   May 10th, 2007 Brian Herzog

Today I present two short, mostly unrelated topics that came up recently:

Topic One
I was just looking at the stats for visitors to my website this week. One statistic I find particularly interesting are the keywords people searched with that lead them to my website. I will often then perform those same searches, just to see where I rank, and what websites also rank for that keyword.

Usually, keyword searches are things like 30 search tips in 45 minutes, BPL eCards, or something else I've recently posted about. But one caught by eye - I'm happy to report that I currently make the second page of Google search matches for the phrase "library sex."

Topic Two
A post to the Maine Libraries listserv yesterday pointed to an article titled "Myth of the Universal Digital Library." It is a pretty quick read, and provides three reasons why projects like Google's book digitization will never be able to completely digitize the entirety of collected human knowledge. Not that we still couldn't benefit greatly from efforts in that direction, but the article does point out some significant roadblocks.
digitization, google, knowledge, rankings, search ranking, search terms, universal digital library



Tags: , , , , , , , ,