Greg and I have spent yet another Saturday cataloging at the Audubon Center. This Saturday it was bright and cold and all around beautiful. There was a board meeting in the library so we hauled all the books that needed cataloging into the Lab. As we are getting down to the end of the line we are coming upon more decisions that need to be made. Should there be a prefix or a suffix for Reference Books? Should the very few fiction books be shelved with the traditional Dewey Number (813) or should we create a separate section for the handful of fiction books?
One of the nicest surprises we found was that one of the larger collections of books that needed original cataloging is a serial. So, only one record needs to be created for the 20 editions of Bird Lore (which is a pretty neat series). I am currently plowing through all the children’s books, which is far more time consuming than one might assume. Originally our goal was to catalog the rest of the collection but as the day wore on and we ran out of Audubon Barcodes, it became obvious that we would not complete the task that day.
Truth be told I don’t know how I will feel when we are done cataloging. It has been nice spending these Saturdays at Seward Park and I have enjoyed getting to know Ali and Joey and the rest of the Audubon Staff better. I had a wonderful and informative conversation about several of the taxidermied birds in the lab. It was fascinating to feel the tail feathers of a woodpecker and how different they are (very stiff) from the tail feathers of other birds. When we are done with the cataloging we will still be working closely with the Audubon Staff but we won’t be spending nearly as much time at Seward Park.
Everything is becoming more exciting and more daunting. Thinking about drafting all the collection development material, training material, setting up the ILS so it works just the way the Audubon wants it to and ensuring the launch of the ILS is successful has become a big mental load to bear (but an exciting one).
Seward Park Audubon Center Library Transformations 