Linking Name Authorities and Wikipedia Entries

I love the idea of linked data. As a comic book, science fiction, and fantasy geek the relationships between different works, titles, series, and the characters in them are fascinating to me and the idea of being able to explore all those relationships just by following links is basically Nerdvana. I will also confess to having spent entire evenings following link to link to link on TV Tropes  (it’s roughly as addictive as breathing oxygen) and reading Night Court/ Doctor Who crossover fan fiction on Archive of Our Own (yes, it really is a thing).

But I try to read papers on linked data and they start to talk about FRBR and triples and RDF and my eyes glaze over. I just don’t get it very well without seeing it work. But I found a way to at least create links between data that doesn’t require a massive database or knowing SPARQL or having access to paid subscription tools. I don’t think it’s real linked data because it’s one way and there’s not a described relationship, but it’s a start, and it’s something I understand so I’m going to roll with it for now and try to build on this later.

The short version is that there is a really easy way to add Library of Congress Control Numbers (LCCNs, the unique identifiers for Name Authority Records, or NARs) to Wikidata pages, which are in turn linked to Wikipedia pages. So that’s what I’m going to describe here.

The first thing we need to do is find a Wikipedia entry without an LCCN. The LCCNs are shown in the Authority Control template of the Wikipedia page. As a counter-example of what we’re looking for, I chose the Wikipedia page for Weird Al Yankovic. Of course Weird Al’s page has his LCCN listed, because he’s Polka Megastar Weird Al Yankovic. The arrow shows the location of the LCCN, which links to the Name Authority Record. Some Wikipedia pages don’t have the Authority Control template, and that is fixable, but involves editing the page and is beyond what we’re doing here so for now we’re just looking at pages with that template.

weird_al

In keeping with the novelty music theme, I found a Wikipedia page without an LCCN. That page is for Barnes & Barnes, the musical duo best known for their 1978 hit song “Fish Heads” (the video was directed by Bill Paxton, no joke, which is another reason I want linked data to take off because the world needs to know this when they Google Bill Paxton.). As you can see below, there’s a MusicBrainz ID, but no LCCN for Barnes & Barnes on their Wikipedia page. We’re going to change that.

barnes_and_barnes

We need to get the LCCN so we search authorities.loc.gov to find Barnes & Barnes Name Authority Record. Once we find the right record we copy the LCCN, but please make sure you have the right record so you don’t add an incorrect LCCN. In this case the 670 is for Barnes & Barnes 1980 album Voobaha (the reissue includes “The Vomit Song”), so we’ve got the right record. I’m trying to keep this open and accessible to everyone, but if you’re not familiar with NARs and searching authorities it might be wise to get a foundational knowledge of those before trying this. Copy the LCCN (shown here as LC control no: ).

barnes_and_barnes_record.PNG

And then go back to the Barnes & Barnes Wikipedia page and click on the Wikidata item link.

barnes_and_barnes_wikidata_item

This takes you to the Barnes & Barnes Wikidata page, which is where we’re going to add the LCCN we copied earlier. Scroll down to Identifiers, and then click on + add statement at the bottom.

barnes_and_barnes_wikidata_page.PNG

This will open up the box, just type in LCCN and the Library of Congress authority ID will appear. Click on that option.

barnes_and_barnes_LCCN.PNG

Then paste the LCCN you copied earlier into the text box. For this entry we need to (1) delete the space between the n and the 9, since URLs don’t like spaces. If there is no space in the LCCN you copied, you can just paste the number into the box as is. Then (2) click on save. If you’re not logged in, you’ll have to do a captcha to save.

LCCN_added.PNG

And once we’ve saved, we can see the LCCN in the Wikidata page. It’s a link, and you can click on it to make sure you’ve entered the right number (recommended just in case, I really suggest avoiding creating incorrect links). And there it is.

lccn_added.PNG

This won’t appear in the Wikipedia page for Barnes & Barnes right away (it seems to take about 24 hours to refresh, but that’s just a guess), but when it does we get this:

fish_heads_woohoo.PNG

Success! I didn’t add the Worldcat Identies, I suspect that was done automatically when the LCCN was added, but I’m not sure and there may be more people interested in adding links to Barnes & Barnes than I suspect. And now the Wikidata page (and the Wikipedia page through it) is linked to the Library of Congress Name Authorities. The link is only one way (we didn’t create a link from the NAR page to the Wikidata page), and there’s no relationship described so I’m pretty sure it’s not linked data, but it’s at least something I understand and can tinker with for five or ten minutes while I’m waiting on something else.

On the other hand so what, who cares? It’s a fair question. And I don’t know what this accomplishes at the moment, beyond the obvious (anyone who does know, please comment). But it at least connects NARs to a big open database, and hopefully people experimenting with that database will find a use for it. Until then, I’m happy just doing it for the sake of doing it.

If you’re looking to experiment with this yourself, for some reason it seems like a lot of musical groups don’t have their LCCN on their Wikipedia page. And they’re easy to pull out of authorities.loc.gov, just do a keyword authorities (all) search for music group and then pick one and check the Wikipedia page.

Thanks!

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Creating Name Authority Records

I’m going to start off by saying what this post is not. It is not comprehensive instructions on creating Name Authority Records (NARs). It is not a how-to guide on creating simple NARs. It is most emphatically not all you need to know to create NARs. It is just a quick description of the mechanical steps that are (roughly) what you would do to create an NAR. So don’t take this as a guide, or even a reference because things change over time, but with that very lengthy disclaimer out of the way if you’re curious about how people create NARs, this might be helpful.

You do need to go through NACO training to add records to the file, but you can experiment with this up to the point of adding them to the authority file if you’re curious. If you try it and like it the training is done remotely for new institutions, and there is an option to become a part of a funnel if that works better for you than becoming a contributing institution (it would depend on how many records you think you’ll generate). You can find more information on all this at https://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/naco/training/, and everyone I have worked with through NACO has been fantastic.

I work in OCLC Connexion by the way, so  that’s where my images are from. Hopefully it generalizes to other people’s cataloging software.

Step 1 is to catalog something that has an author without an existing NAR. For me, this usually means something older, like this 1909 pamphlet in our Abraham Lincoln Collection. The author is a U.S. Representative from Illinois, so when someone put the author in the 100 field they found the life dates and built the 100 field like an NAR. They didn’t create the NAR to control it, but they used the basic formatting and information you would find in an NAR, and they could do that because he was well known enough that information was available. This makes it quite a bit simpler to create the NAR, and sometimes you only get the author’s name (or even less) from the work in hand.

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So you search the authorities to see if Rodenberg has an existing NAR. I did and he didn’t, but it’s also a good idea to search for personal names in OCLC records to see how which name he used when writing his works. He might also have written something under a variant name that might have an NAR attached (Bill Rodenberg, for example). You go through the OCLC records and the statement of responsibility in the 245 field to determine what name he actually used when writing, and once you have that figured out you can begin creating your NAR. I use the Macro in OCLC.

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It’s literally as simple as dropping your cursor in the 100 field (or 700 field if you’re doing an additional creator), and running the macro, which gives you the below. This is the bare minimum NAR, and if we didn’t have those life dates and the name was all we could find, that would satisfy the requirements for an NAR if it was a unique string that wasn’t the same as another NAR. If there is already another author with that NAR assigned, you would need to do something to differentiate them (adding a middle name or year of birth and/or death are probably the two most common ways). In this example, we would also need to add a 670 citing OCLC for the life dates, and the 046 field with those years. But that would be enough to create a valid NAR.

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But that’s no fun. We can add a lot of other information too, and I’m a big enough believer in linked data I’ll usually take the time to do it, especially if the creator has relevance to my area of Illinois or especially Illinois State University (the people who sign my paychecks). The record below is considerably more fleshed out, and has an

-024 field which links it to his entry in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (link)
-046 field giving his full date of birth and death (should be in edtf format)
-370 field giving his place of birth and (in subfield b) place of death
-373 field giving an affiliated institution
-374 field giving his profession
-375 field giving his gender (be careful with this one, mis-gendering people is not cool)
-377 field showing which language he is associated with
-378 field showing a fuller form of his name (if he had written some of his works as William Augustus Rodenberg I would have included this in the 100, but I couldn’t find any where he did)
-A 670 field showing the work in hand I generated the NAR for, and a second 670 showing where I got all that other information from

How much of  this you add depends on how much research you want to do. I had a Wikipedia article handy so I could add things quickly (and could have added more information if I wanted to or thought it was relevant).

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We cross-check each other’s NARs here, so we save them to the online file and email each other numbers to check, but generally once you’ve done all that optional (but fun) stuff and are satisfied with your record you check again to make sure no one else has added an NAR for the creator you’re working on in the meantime (all this checking is because multiple NARs for the same creator are really bad for authority control), and then you submit it to the authority file. This is as easy as clicking a button in OCLC (normally it would be blue, I was logged into an account that doesn’t have permission to add authority files at the time).

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It then goes into distribution, gets an ARN and LCCN, and in about a week will be in the public view for the authority file.

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Once it’s in distribution you  get the joy of going through OCLC and controlling the headings in the bib records and seeing them turn blue (I know how to have a good time!). We don’t do it for non-English language bib records (other countries don’t necessarily use Library of Congress NARs and dislike us changing their records), but for some of the more historical authors it can really pull a lot of variant 100 fields together under a common heading.

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And then we get into the super optional area here, but if I used a Wikipedia article to generate an NAR, I try to remember to drop the LCCN into Wikidata so the  two are linked. It’s super simple to do, you just go into Wikidata and paste the LCCN into the field and hit save.

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Takes less than a minute and you’re done.

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So this is super basic and very general (and I omitted or glossed over a huge amount of things and special circumstances you need to be aware of it you’re creating NARs), but I think it describes the basic mechanical process of how a creator gets from the item in hand to the Authority File well enough. Questions, comments, suggestions always welcome.

Thanks!

Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFTs) and the Finding Aid

I mentioned the LCGFT finding aids in a previous post as a way to pull all your MARC records for finding aids out of your OPAC, but I’d like to talk about them a little more. The critical thing, as noted here, http://id.loc.gov/authorities/genreForms.html is that “The Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT) is a thesaurus that describes what a work is versus what it is about.”

And it goes on to give an example and explain a little more. What interests me is that a lot of these are applicable to materials in archival collections. Perusing the list (warning: link goes to PDF) at https://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/FreeLCGFT/GENRE.pdf I see Annual reports, Maps, Minutes (Records), Business correspondence, Personal correspondence, School yearbooks, Scrapbooks, Records and briefs, Death registers, Obituaries, Vital statistics, Ephemera, etc. And most of these have several narrower terms if you need to describe your stuff more specifically.

Please put your sunglasses on for this blinding flash of the obvious, but those are also series names in a lot of finding aids. Series 1: Business Correspondence; Series 2: Personal Correspondence, etc. You probably don’t have a lot of series named Wizard rock (Music) (or maybe you do, I don’t know what kind of collections you have), but I think this has some interesting implications.

Archivists have been grouping materials under genre and (I think especially) form headings for a long time, either as a side-effect of preserving original order or because that made sense to us when we were arranging materials. We just call them series instead of form headings apparently. And libraries are starting to see the use in providing access by form or genre as well (or at least they’re generating tools to do so). So it seems fair to say that patrons are interested in searching by what something is, not just what it’s about, in both primary (archives) and secondary (library) material.

One of the fun things about archives that most people will  tell you is, we’re quite often surprised about what our patrons use our records for. Either they’re using them to study something in ways we never thought of, or they’re doing something with them that the creator certainly never envisioned. So does this mean that libraries are also kind of saying, “We’re not just going to tell you what something is about (via subject headings), we’re also going to tell you what something is via our catalog records and see what you do with it.”? I hope so, that’s very exciting to me. I would love it if someone walked into a library and said, “Show me all of your Teen films.  I have a project in mind and I need all the angst I can lay hands upon.”

But it also makes me wonder why we’re not including genre and form terms in finding aids. Take a look at the list. That’s a lot of terms. A lot of terms. A lot of nuance there. A lot of them might never apply, but would archive users be better served by our finding aids if they included some of these terms as metadata in addition to existing as series headings? They’re still discoverable via keyword searches as series headings, sure, but that has all sorts of problems. Mainly that it’s pretty sloppy and will give you a lot of false positives. It doesn’t seem like it would take much extra work to start adding genre and form terms from a controlled vocabulary to our finding aids (although one problem is I don’t know what section that would be in, and it seems most closely to resemble tagging to me, which never seemed to really catch on) for patrons who aren’t necessarily interested in a particular creator’s records, they just want personal correspondence from a certain time frame, or annual reports of businesses, etc.

Thoughts? Comments? Oh, and in case you’re wondering Wizard Rock is music about the Harry Potter Universe. So I assume some of it will show up in an archive eventually.

Tech Tricks: Copying Folder and File Names from a Directory into a Word Document

I don’t know if anyone will find this useful, but sometimes there are simple tech things that I don’t do just because I don’t know I can do them. Once I find out I can do them my life gets a lot easier. For example, what if I have a directory with folders or files in it and I want to copy just the names of the folders and files into a word list? Say I have a folder with a bunch of images, and I want to send a patron a list of the file names, but don’t want to send all of the files themselves for whatever reason. I could screen shot it, but that can be annoying if I have to grab an image, scroll, grab an image, scroll, etc.

I also can’t just open the directory, select them, and do a CTRL-C because it will copy the contents of the files and folders and not just their names. But what you can do is open the location of the directory in Firefox (for whatever reason this doesn’t work in Chrome for me), copy the filenames there, and paste them into a text editor (word processing programs seem to bring formatting information that doesn’t format well for me). I’ll walk you through it (and demonstrate how far behind I am in gaming) using a folder on my computer with the caveat that usually you would use this for a lot more files.

Just navigate to the directory with the files and/or folders you want to copy the names of. The folders I’m using for my example live in my computer at C:\GOG Games.

001

Click in the location bar and copy the address.

002

Open Firefox (or possibly another web browser, this doesn’t work in Chrome for me) and paste in the location of the folder.

003

Firefox will now show those folders and files in the browser window. You can click and go into them or open some files in your browser window, but we don’t want to, we just want to copy the names.

004

So you can either drag to select some or all, or CTRL-A, and then CTRL-C to copy the names of the files and folders you want to make into a list. I did a CTRL-A so it’s going to grab everything.

005

Then just paste using CTRL-V into a text editor to get rid of formatting info. This shows it in Notepad, and I usually start in a text editor no matter where I’m ultimately going. If I don’t put it in a text editor and then copy (CTRL-C) it again, it brings weird formatting information with it (tips on making it not do this are welcome).

006

The image below shows the folder names in a spreadsheet program after I’ve copied it into Notepad, selected it and copied it again, and pasted it into LibreOffice Calc. From there it’s easy to delete columns with information you don’t want (file size or last modified information maybe), and sort the file names if you want to.

007

That’s all there is to it. I hope it’s useful. One of those things that’s easy enough to do, if you know you can do it in the first place. Any improvements to the process, questions, or suggestions are very welcome.

Genre headings for finding aids in the library catalog

We recently had an Archon problem. Due to some compatibility issues with a PHP update (I understand there is an update in the works) finding aids created or edited after a certain date no longer displayed container lists. Staff could still see them by going into the administrator side of things, but they wouldn’t display in the public view.

This was a problem (that we’ve since fixed by migrating to a local platform) and patrons could still see the rest of the information, but it made me worry about what might happen to our ability to display finding aids to the public if Archon ever went down hard. Since we create MARC records for our finding aids anyway, I asked our cataloging unit to add a genre term for “finding aids” to the MARC records in our OPAC.

The Library of Congress Genre/Form terms includes “finding aids” as an official term. By adding this to our MARC finding aid records using a 655 _ 7 Finding aids $2 lcgft field we tied our finding aids together with a controlled vocabulary term.

We can’t do a search by just a genre heading, but by using Rayfield (the name of the archives) as a keyword (it shows up in the preferred citation field in every finding aid record) and the genre term finding aids we could create a pretty simple canned search for all of our finding aids (that only returned the finding aids) in the catalog.

For anyone who wants to see it, the search is:
https://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/vf-isu/Search/Home…

A more thorough explanation of the LCGFT can be found here:
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/genreForms.html

And the complete list of forms here:
https://www.loc.gov/a…/publications/FreeLCGFT/freelcgft.html

under the Genre/Form Terms (PDF, 77 pages, 492 KB)link (warning, PDF):
https://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/FreeLCGFT/GENRE.pdf

It’s not an Earth-shattering idea, but I thought it was handy and seemed worth mentioning. Your mileage may also vary depending on how your OPAC and/or display is set up. We had a little less than a hundred finding aids to add the genre term to, and I was able to provide a list of OCLC numbers, so we just did it by hand. If you have a lot of catalog records you might want to look into a more automated way to go about this though.

The Curious Case of Accession Number 1985-23

The Society of American Archivists ran an archives short story contest in 2015. You can read the winning entry and two honorable mentions at http://www2.archivists.org/news/2015/winner-of-the-archives-short-fiction-contest. You  can also read the winning story for the 2016 contest and honorable mentions at http://www2.archivists.org/2016-fiction-contest. They are all really good.

And then there’s my story. It didn’t win, but I had a lot of fun writing it, and I thought I’d share it here.

The Curious Case of Accession Number 1985-23

by Eric Willey

In order to satisfy the practicum requirement for the MLIS core curriculum I have begun my internship at the university archives. There I will be processing the collection of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, a local author of some small note. This journal will document that project per the syllabus guidelines.

[[]]

This collection appears to have been donated some thirty years ago. When I inquired as to the time gap my supervisor referred to the collection as part of their “strategic processing reserve.” In any case, I shall endeavor to process this collection to better provide access and make it available to patrons.

[[]]

I did not know archival processing involved quite so much mouse poop. Fortunately, the vermin effluvium appears to be a part of the collection, and does not indicate an infestation in the archives.

Still, I am enjoying getting my hands dirty (figuratively and literally!) and soldiering on with the rough inventory. Will be washing my hands thoroughly and eating my lunch sandwich with a knife and fork though.

[[]]

Having completed the rough inventory and observing the principle of original order as discussed in class I have attempted to reconstruct the intellectual context of how Lovecraft used his records, and how he had them physically arranged. I am confident that Lovecraft had a meticulous and logical arrangement to his records (which would be of great interest to researchers) before his records were hauled out of filing cabinets by the handful and randomly dropped into an assortment of emptied liquor boxes for transport to the archives. Regardless of the ignominy of their conveyance, I am attempting to reconstruct this original order to preserve the intellectual and physical arrangement of the records. I feel confident that future patrons will recognize and value this effort.

[[]]

My supervisor has offered the sage advice that sometimes the deed of gift can offer some insight into how a donor arranged their records. I was led to a file cabinet, in which deeds of gift are arranged alphabetically by the name of the creator of the collection. The form for “Lovecraft” was located, which according to my supervisor was quite the stroke of luck. Apparently most donors do not wish to fill out the requisite paperwork, and prefer to simply force materials into the hands of the first person they see, cackle maniacally, and flee into the night. Alternatively, collections are delivered by long lost relatives who want to get the deposit back on the estate’s storage unit and can provide no information on the collection beyond, “Well, it drove poor old grandfather quite mad, yes quite mad indeed, and at least one investigator who looked into it is now locked away, gibbering madly and howling at every shadow, insisting that mankind’s doom draws nigh. Perhaps you can find something or other to do with it?”

In any case, the deed of gift for the Lovecraft, Howard Phillips Collection indicates there was not a formal donation process, merely several boxes found in front of the staff entrance on a dark night when occurred a series of unspeakable events which still stain the town’s honor with the blood of innocents.

According to my supervisor, this is another favored donation technique. In the absence of background information from the donor, I shall merely apply sound archival practice, and I am certain the original order shall become apparent as I familiarize myself further with the materials.

[[]]

The bottoms of each box are littered with sticky notes, which I would not expect of a collection from this time period. Perhaps they were added by the mystery donor in a scheme of their own devising? It is of no consequence, and I am sure it will be obvious which documents they attach to, and they will add relevance and depth to the materials in the collection.

[[]]

I have come across a wide variety of material which does not seem related to this collection of random musings of a somewhat eccentric local writer, and suggested it be weeded. My supervisor, upon checking the accessions log, informed me that the collection came with a small financial donation from an obscure relative in Europe, who did not supply contact information beyond a temporary address here in town. This donation specifically prohibits weeding without materials being offered to living descendants first. Having no contact info for descendants or any means of obtaining it, I have created a series for “forbidden knowledge” which will include these various tomes.

I have inquired with my supervisor if this might warrant an access restriction, and they informed me that forbidden knowledge, secrets beyond the ken of man, and generally any sort of document which might cause the patron to be driven mad with the sheer, awful burden of the secrets contained within would have warranted an access restriction in the past, but it proved too much of a temptation for staff to look at the restricted materials, and no one likes to sit on a hiring committee because a fellow staff member was driven mad by knowledge from beyond the stars after taking a peak into a restricted folder. This is useful information which I will carry with me to my future workplace.

[[]]

I must confess, I am having difficulty discerning the original, or even a sensible order, to this collection. I can feel it tugging at my mind, pulling me in certain directions, but can never quite bring it into focus. I have tried combination after combination of series and sub-series, but none feel right. It is as if a shadow were pulling my mind one way or the other, as if my body danced to the changing angle of the sun and its contortions of that gray reflected void of self. I shall consult with my supervisor and soldier on tomorrow.

[[]]

Today, at the suggestion of my supervisor, I looked at T.R. Schellenberg’s black box method of appraisal. I followed the flow chart, one box to another, an endless labyrinth but one where no minotaurs of the mind sought to waylay me. I could get lost in that beautiful flowchart for a million lifetimes, following it as I worked my way through this collection, examining every facet of the Lovecraft collection like a brilliant ruby, thumping with the rhythm of a heart in love as I held it in the blazing sunlight of reason to process this collection.

I shall wind my way through this beautiful labyrinth, follow it’s branches and paths, and emerge from the exit with a finding aid which shall be the envy of my peers, a document testifying to the power of archival processing, a seamless bridge between the researcher and the collection that will allow patrons to feel as if they have known Lovecraft’s work for their entire lives, that will answer questions they did not even know they had, a perfect Jungian archetype of the archival finding aid.

Addendum: My supervisor just returned to tell me that they had forgotten to mention that no one ever really has time to use the black box. Considering the amount of time remaining in the semester, I fear that is the case. Eh, I’ll try to keep the basic idea in mind.

[[]]

The sticky notes. My God the sticky notes. They are a swirling ocean of scrambled metadata in the bottom of the boxes, and I fear that I am drowning.

[[]]

A fellow student in class tonight complained that More Product Less Process required processing at the box level, how that wasn’t appropriate for some collections, and that the authors were merely trading one arbitrary standard for an another, inferior standard. I sat in stunned silence, trying to contain my rage and scorn, as the professor cocked her head, and asked if anyone else had thoughts on the article.

I tried to bite my tongue, but my reason left me and I laughed and laughed and laughed, choking out the words that MPLP does not prescribe any particular level of processing, but merely encourages that thoughtfulness be applied, environmental conditions and patron usage be considered, and resources not wasted in the routine over-processing of collections.

I tried to halt my tongue, but the words tumbled over my lips as memories of my work with the Lovecraft collection flickered across my mind. Was I a hypocrite? Was I failing to follow MPLP, even as I extolled the virtue of the flexibility it offered? I knew, deep in my heart, that I was but a Judas, a betrayer to MPLP, that the collection of Lovecraft had driven me to this apostasy, that I should let the sticky notes go and embrace MPLP! But I could not. I could only stand in the cold darkness of full processing where the world should be simpler, easier to understand, and where I had a place, though that place be inferior to the one I rejected. I had gone too deep into the collection to accept anything less than perfection, though it destroy me. Though it destroy us all.

The professor congratulated me on my understanding of the article and relating my practicum experience to theory, but firmly suggested that I try to limit the mad howling laughter in the future. I fear that my mania may cause my class participation grade to suffer.

[[]]

There is a logic to the sticky notes. I am certain of it. I can perceive it, but only from the corner of my eye. The curl of the corners, the lint stuck to the adhesive strip on the back, there is design here, purpose, method. But when I look too closely it falls apart, a broken mirror reflecting back at me, my hands moving the opposite direction of that needed to put it back in to order. The sticky notes are reality, and we are merely their reflection.

[[]]

I have arranged and rearranged and rearranged again, but no matter how I divide the collection into series and sub-series, there is always one small pile left over that does not fit anywhere. Three items, whether they be letters, or ephemera, or photos, that do not fit anywhere in my carefully constructed model. My world has come to revolve around these objects in their infinite permutations. A series of remainders that are made of different components, but always equal. How can this be? Is there no correct answer? Was this why the collection arrived in the dead of night, like a thief, and why the mysterious relative insisted that no part of it be weeded?

Is this collection the key to something larger, a shocking insight into the nature of humanity, that no matter how one lives one life, what components one builds their existence out of, the answer is always the same? An unavoidable conclusion in which the calculation, the very factors of the equation themselves, are utterly irrelevant to the final product?

Are we destined, no matter how we live our lives, to have an unavoidable remainder, a haunting remnant of what could have been, but through our choices was not? Will all our lives be incomplete, by their very nature? By our very nature?

I have brought this matter to the attention of my supervisor, and was told just to throw them in a folder called “miscellaneous” and not to think about it too much.

[[]]

Today I realized that “sticky notes” is an anagram of “kitty scones.” This means something.

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Today I submitted the final draft of my finding aid to my supervisor, who praised my work and encouraged me to contact them for a letter of recommendation should I ever need one. They seemed quite pleased with the finding aid, and thanked me for my work. What I did not, could not tell them, was that was not the real finding aid.

The real finding aid left with me, and though I should feel remorse, I cannot. It is a reflection of my soul, shattered upon the prism of the collection. Blood and pain poured forth upon the pages, and when I can bear to look at it, it is both hideous and beautiful. There is no biography, nor a scope and content note, nor an arrangement note. It is merely a container list, written upon warped, twisted paper glued and cut into the shapes which mimic how Lovecraft used his materials.

Sticky notes, blank ones brought from home and distressed to match the aged patina of those in the collection, line my finding aid. I can still see the words written upon them, but may never know their meaning. Were they a warning against… pride? Hubris? Or an attempt by another to divine the original order of this collection. I do not know, and have grown weary of the question, resigned to whatever fate awaits me.

But I do take no small pride in the semester I spent among the collection, and hope that my efforts help scholars who will use the materials, and that they might profit from my effort. The original sticky notes are foldered, and await a wiser person than I to divine their meaning. I hope they use whatever information they find well, and that the finding aid is annotated appropriately.

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Addendum: Today I received an email from my (now former) supervisor. The donor has contacted the archives, stating that they have found a “few more boxes” and wondered if the archives might like to add them to the collection. They were accepted by the archives, and as I am familiar with the materials, and a small donation was included, my supervisor queried me about processing it next semester at an hourly wage.

And I laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Proposal for a Digital Archives Program at the Dr. Joann Rayfield Archives

This is a link to a proposal written to offer library administration several options for creating the infrastructure needed to archive born digital materials at Illinois State University. The intended audience is library and university administration so we tried to stress the importance of archiving our born digital materials, and avoid jargon. Link goes to the institutional repository page, the report itself is a downloadable pdf.

http://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/fpml/75/

If you choose to take a look, I hope you find it useful.

Monographs in Archival Collections

A lot of archival collections come in with monographs. Either works written by the creator of the collection, or used in their research, or just left in the office/attic/basement whatever and thrown in the boxes with everything else.

Archives usually don’t want to retain mass published monographs. They’re bulky, they’re commonly available (really, who’s going to drive three hours and sit in a reading room to get something they can pick up at the local library or bookstore), and once something is in the archives it’s usually there for a very, very long time. So you’re paying to store those books for a very, very long time and taking up valuable shelf space.

But what do you do with them?

One approach is to photocopy the title pages, put all the title pages in a folder in the collection, and get rid of the books. Maybe you check if it’s the last copy or rare, but the point is the books don’t stay in the collection. Or if you have an attached library you can ship them over to the stacks.

But what if you want to preserve the intellectual place those books had in the collection, still put them in the stacks, and also create links between the finding aid and the catalog records? One of our donors, Bruce “Charlie” Johnson is a clown and has donated not only his personal papers, but is in the process of donating his extensive library of books on clowns and clowning.

I also wanted to get the books in the library catalog and shelved rather than in boxes. I also wanted to create links between the archival material and the books. That way patrons could find the books  through the catalog (instead of just the finding aid), and staff could pull them from the shelves rather than sorting through boxes. Here’s what I ended up doing:

We use Archon for our finding aids. The noting the books in the finding aid part was simple. Under “Related Publications” in Archon I added a list of the books. For the ones I have cataloged, I also included the call number and a link out to the catalog record. Like so:

3 Ball Juggling by Ken Benge. GV1558.B46 1982 Link to catalog record

That’s a line from the finding aid, or you can see the whole thing here: http://spcfindingaids.library.illinoisstate.edu/index.php?p=collections/findingaid&id=9&q=

This shows someone looking at the finding aid that the book is part of the archival collection, the call number is right there if they want staff to pull it, and if they want more details about the book (edition, publisher, whatever) they can click and go to the catalog record. The books without this information I haven’t gotten cataloged yet, but at least they’re in the finding aid. And I threw in a paragraph in the scope note explaining all of this to patrons.

That was simple enough, because a finding aid is (at least in part) just a big list of stuff anyway. They’re good at showing that sort of information. The trickier part was getting the catalog records to document that a book was part of that collection, but once you know how to it’s not that difficult. If you go to the catalog record (link above) and click on “staff view” (next to the little yellow triangle) in the upper right corner, you’ll see the MARC codes.

The crucial piece here is the 730 field. The 730 is an “added entry-uniform title” field. You can see the full explanation with all the notes at https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd730.html

Basically it’s there so that if the item being cataloged is part of something larger, you can provide that information. In this case, the book 3 Ball Juggling by Ken Benge is part of the Bruce “Charlie” Johnson Collection. But that’s not true of all copies of 3 Ball Juggling, so we add a $5 INS field to show it only applies to our local institution. Now the catalog knows that the book at ISU is part of the archival collection (just make sure the title in the 730 matches the title of the collection exactly or the catalog will think you’re referring to something else), but another copy of 3 Ball Juggling at another library isn’t. We’re part of a cataloging consortium, so we have to be careful to make these distinctions even in our local catalog.

We also add a 541 field in our holdings record which says “Special Collections copy donated by Bruce ‘Charlie’ Johnson.” The 541 field is the “immediate source of acquisition” note, or in English, donor note. It tells us where the book came from, and we make it public so patrons can see that as well. It’s probably not as useful to the catalog, but it’s highly visible to patrons (shows up even in the brief search results) and it’s another link that might point them towards the archival collection or other books.

So I’ve got the finding aid linking the books in the archival collection to the catalog, and the catalog understands that the books are part of the archival collection. If someone searches our catalog for Bruce Charlie Johnson, it returns the books and the archival collection. And patrons don’t have to go the finding aid to figure out we have the books. Otherwise a patron searching in the catalog for Bruce Charlie Johnson would just get the archival collection (we put records for our finding aids in the catalog), have to go to the finding aid (in Archon) to find out about the books, and then go from the finding aid back to the catalog for the books. Which seems like a lot of unnecessary steps when I can do this instead.

I want to stress that I’m not arguing that archives should begin keeping monographs because this is possible. Unless you have an associated library and want to retain the books in question anyway, I wouldn’t change current practice. And I haven’t done the studies to prove that patrons even care about this. But I’m cataloging the books anyway because we have a large collection of circus monographs, and it’s not much more time to add them in a list to the finding aid and provide the call numbers and links, and it’s another access point that might get someone to something they didn’t know they were looking for, and it gets them out of boxes and on shelves which is better for our space management. I will probably keep doing this given the minimal extra time involved.

Any questions, comments, or advice? All are welcome, and I hope you found this useful.

An introduction.

This isn’t really about me. I’m a half-cataloger half-processing archivist (which is basically the worst mythological creature ever) at Milner Library, Illinois State University. I’m a very boring person.

What is interesting to me though, is that for my job I use some pretty different different standards and platforms to describe archives and cataloged items. And when you start playing around with both of those at the same time, things can get interesting. So this is where I try to talk about cataloging to archivists, and archival practice to catalogers.

Hopefully it makes sense more often than not.