This week gave me the opportunity to begin acquiring some hands-on experience with conservation needs, processes, and challenges in a small shop. High on the list of important tasks is providing stable and safe storage for all special collections & archival materials. Most of this may be accomplished with the appropriate archive boxes, acid-free folders, etc.

The challenges for the special collections & archives at Butler University have been the challenges that virtually all academic libraries face: money and space. The current special collections librarian has done an admirable and remarkable job setting the special collections & archives in order after some years of chaos. However, there is always more to be done.

As part of my learning experience, I am reviewing the current storage situations for all books in the collections dated before 1650. Over the course of the next week or two, I will measure each of these books and place an order for Kaseboxes that will keep these rare and valuable books safely housed. Such close handling has allowed me to examine the books to learn more about book construction, etc. but also to engage in conversations with my mentor about the various needs for housing and handling such books.

This work has also led to conversations about how to determine priorities in conservation, how to handle different conservation issues (i.e. what does one do about all the lanolin seeping out of leather bindings that a previous special collections librarian slathered all over all of the leather books?!)

Proper housing and storage of special collections & archival items becomes particularly important when those collections are housed in a section of the larger library that was not designed in any way to house those collections. Issues of climate control, pests, and security all need creative solutions under such circumstances.

Over the next few weeks, I will gain more hands-on experience conservation and minor repairs.

The online exhibition project requires that I forge partnerships with people all across the Butler University campus. We are combing the archives to select items for digitization and use to tell the stories of these influential figures. I am working with the scholarly communication librarians and their student assistants to build a cutting edge exhibition using Omeka software. The exhibit will have a vibrant, accessible splash page that will allow visitors to explore the exhibit in a variety of ways, as well as explore the archive of digitized images. We have found inspiration for this exhibit in looking at the bicentennial statehood web sites created by other states such as Alabama and Missouri. We hope to launch this online exhibit by the end of July 2016.

My work with this exhibition is intended to lay the  foundation for additional, regular online exhibits that will highlight fascinating, but perhaps less well-known items in Irwin Library’s Special Collections. There are many interesting and useful models for such a program available on the internet. I have found a great deal of inspiration in the exhibits at the University of Michigan Library web site.

In working with my mentor to develop projects & goals for my internship, we decided that creating an online exhibition to highlight items in the Butler University Special Collections would provide a valuable learning experience and help establish a larger online presence for Special Collections. Fortunately, a topic for the exhibition was already at hand: the celebrations for Indiana’s 200th Anniversary of Statehood in 2016.

The Indiana Historical Society has already published a book entitled, Indiana’s 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State. Among those mentioned in the book are quite a few who have close ties to Butler University. The exhibition will focus on these eleven individuals and families whose lives and work have impacted not only the state, but Butler University, as well.

Finishing up Week 1 began with reviewing what I learned in the library faculty meeting:

My follow up discussions with my mentor centered on my only real question about the core competencies: while the competencies did an admirable job of covering most major aspects of current academic librarianship, one segment seemed missing: the requirements of scholarship.

The Butler University librarians earned faculty status, though without tenure, some years ago. However, the competencies did not mention scholarly activities that would be required of any library faculty position. Library faculty often have concerns about maintaining and promoting faculty status equity with other university faculty. It would seem that clearly outlined requirements included in core competencies would demonstrate the value Butler library faculty place on all aspects of faculty status. This issue will no doubt be discussed in a subsequent meeting.

Tuesday. 17 May 2016

My first day at Butler University began with, appropriately, a library faculty meeting. I found the primary business of the meeting particularly relevant (and useful!) to my interests and future career.

The Butler Library faculty convened to discuss the language to be included in the Librarian position description competencies. The assistant dean of the libraries distributed and asked for comment from library faculty on the language to be used when describing required competencies for future library positions. The competencies were based on examples provided in The Expert Librarian, Chapter 6: “Preparing Librarians for the Future, Identifying and Assessing Core Competencies at the University of Minnesota Libraries,” pages 139-149.

I found the discussion of the core competencies particularly useful and enlightening. As the assistant dean made clear, this description of competencies truly reflects who the Butler librarians are and what they value as librarians. Much of the discussion centered on the “philosophical” nature of the competencies and how these competencies could best be assessed in potential job candidates.

Having no role in the meeting allowed me to listen and get a sense of the “worldview” of the Butler library faculty. I also had the opportunity to get a sense of the how the various individuals at the meeting interacted with one another–as a way to better understand the political and power dynamics of the organization.

This blog has been created in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Library Science from Indiana University, Bloomington. I am acting as an intern at Butler University, Irwin Library under the direction of Special Collections Librarian and Archivist, Sally Childs-Helton during the summer of 2016.