A View From the Stacks - Kersti's Journal Week Three

Our Library Interns have headed off for the summer.  They are missed and certainly not forgotten.  They've left us with some great journal entries written during the course of the summer.  I hope you'll enjoy reading about their adventures and efforts over the next few weeks.  - L. C.

                                                                              

Intern Journal- Week Three

Week three at the JOC Library was incredibly busy. This week’s theme was cataloging, and so I spent the first part of the week learning about the library’s catalogue system from behind the scenes. This was really interesting to me- I use libraries all the time, but never really thought about what goes into the process of creating a functional catalog.

Laura showed me the library’s cataloging program, which, like most programs in use by the OCLC consortium, uses MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging), a type of cataloging language. In MARC, categories are described by a series of numbers  (go here for a full description of the MARC process- it’s a little complex! : http://www.loc.gov/marc/umb/um11to12.html#part11) which ensures that data can be translated into catalogs across the globe. MARC’s useful because it provides a standardized system for libraries to use- before it was developed by the Library of Congress in the 1960s, this process was done by sharing “union catalogs”, copies of card catalogs that were both difficult to change and expensive to create.  I spent some time updating our catalog, but then turned to the project that dominated the week.

VERTICAL FILES

The Library’s Vertical Files contain information about artists, whether they’re represented in the Museum’s collection or not, and their works. My fellow intern, Jamie, is working on organizing the information the library has on hand about the Chryslers, so to help out we both tackled the seemingly endless files to determine whether or not a file would be helpful to a researcher looking for relevant material on the Chryslers.  The files are made up of various clippings and letters, so digging through to find any reference to the Chryslers took some time.
This project took up the rest of the week- although we didn’t finish the process (to be honest, we were only able to get through about the first 6 letters of the alphabet even though we spent all week on it) Jamie was able to get enough information to begin creating a database of those files deemed useful.

Just one of the many files we dealt with

The vertical files are incredibly useful because they’re the first stop for anyone looking for information on an artist or a work exhibited in the Museum. Although Jamie is still working on putting the database together, I moved on the next week to the wild world of… COLLECTIONS DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT!

These files are just on Picasso alone!

-Kersti Francis, Summer 2011 Library Services Intern

Postscript: Jamie and Kersti very diligently finished this project before the end of the summer. The database will help researchers looking for information about Walter P. Chrysler Jr.'s collection and will also help focus future cataloging of the Vertical file collection.  More Intern adventures next week!

  - L.C.

A View from the Stacks: Intern's Journal Week 5

Our wonderful interns Casey and Chelsea have completed their internships and are headed back to school, but they left us with a vivid journal recounting their summer adventures in the Library. Stay tuned for future editions of "A View from the

Stacks" which will continue to appear on the blog during the next few weeks.

Week Five - Archives and Vertical Files

After a week’s vacation spent relaxing beach-side, week six of my library internship was spent easing back into my work and my winter wardrobe. After spending a day in a stylish loaner sweater, I’m comfortable saying the process of sorting archives was the easier transition.

We began our study of archiving by reintegrating the vertical files from the Women of the Chrysler Show with the rest of the Library’s massive collection of manila folders containing academic articles, exhibition flyers, news clippings and other information on artists and works relevant to art research. After dealing with a few finicky filing drawers and some alphabetizing doubts, Casey and I moved on to a couple large office boxes of newspaper clippings. For the rest of the week we learned about the nature of archival work as we sorted through years of art-world news comprising the hard work of long-time library volunteer, Gizella Pongracz.
We sorted the boxes first by subject and artist, and then by the relevance of their content to academic research in Yes,” “No,” and “Maybe,” piles. Though my education in academically useful material began on day one of my internship when I returned dust jackets to books (in case any included an important image), my doubts about archiving led to a massive “Maybe” pile. Almost every article had an important fact or unique picture, but without knowing what else was in an artist file or if anyone would be interested in reading fifteen articles on the same modern Chinese art exhibition, definite answers eluded me. At the end of the week I had made a rather large dent in the box, and read some really great articles. I have also learned a little about the purpose and importance of archival sorting.


- Chelsea Reinhardt 2010 Summer Library Intern