This week I have spent several hours meeting with the Scholarly Communication Associate librarian, Andrew Welp, who is in charge of maintaining the library’s web site and assisting with and facilitating all aspects of scholarly communication endeavors at Irwin Library and Butler University.

Andrew supervises two student workers and together we have begun crafting our vision of the online exhibition for Indiana’s 200th. I began this process by asking questions about many of the technical aspects of the process. I wanted to know the software that would be used, where the exhibition would “live” (on a library-owned & maintained server or a web-based server), etc. I was particularly concerned with digital permanence.

Fortunately, Andrew shared all the same concerns and quickly assured me that we would use Omeka, that the project (and all others going forward) would live on a dedicated library server, and that his staff was up to the challenge of designing and implementing a well-organized, stylish exhibition.

I thought it was useful to bring several examples of successful, interesting, and engaging online exhibitions mounted by other libraries and scholarly organizations. I chose a variety of examples that contained elements of design and functionality that I hoped we could replicate. I also came to the process with an inspiration: an old class photo from the 1880s.

This class photo from the 1880s had been found at and rescued from a local garage sale by the wife of one of Butler’s Board of Directors. The photo represented the first class of Butler University in which an African American graduated. The African American woman depicted is the first African American to graduate from Butler. She highlights Butler’s long-standing commitment to diversity that has been at Butler’s core since its founding.

The organization of the photos and the sepia coloring became the pattern for the splash page of the exhibition–an homage to this class photo and a nod to Butler’s history. The university was chartered in 1850, just 34 years after Indiana became a state.

Andrew, his staff, and the special collections staff will continue to shape the exhibition as we go forward–we still need to figure out the main elements: exhibition, timeline, archive, etc.

This week began the drawn out process of managing the protection of special collections when the library we are housed in gets a new roof! The process began with a walk through by the facilities management people, along with the Dean of Libraries, the Special Collections librarian, and the representative of the construction company handling the new roofing project.

This walk through gave me insight into how the various parts of the library would be impacted, the major and minor concerns for the library as a whole, and the particular concerns for Special Collections. The construction professionals wanted to know about previous leaks, but also about what needed protection and how that protection needed to work within a working special collections and reading room.

Of course, protecting the collections from construction dust, dirt, and water heads the list of major concerns. But facilitating access to the collections required some thought, as well–creating access points that could be closed up so that staff could get down the aisles proved important! Realizing that plastic-draped shelves restricted air circulation, keeping warm air in place, also caused concern. Security procedures required a quick review to make sure that everyone knew how to handle construction personnel coming and going at different times.

The roofing project is welcome after years of leaks and provides the opportunity for Special Collections staff to consider taking advantage of the plastic draping to tackle a major cleaning project: vacuuming the ceiling and walls to remove dust build up–a necessary, but time-consuming task that cannot be completed very often.

This week I had the opportunity to help pick up the slack when my mentor went on vacation and another staff member ended up having some personal emergencies. Fortunately, I was issued a key and expanded my work hours slightly so that I could staff the reading room that would other wise have had to close early. The quiet of the summer term meant that I wasn’t thrown in over my head, but it did leave me time to reflect on the challenges of staffing in a small shop.

I kept in close contact with the various staff members working in near by offices and I am happy to say, they kept an eye on me! I made sure to provide daily updates to my mentor and the other staff via email and fortunately, I had plenty to do: moving forward on my projects.

The roofing project demanded that we continue to patrol the floor, making sure that our collections remained safe from dust, debris, and water–a challenge, since we had a couple of days of thunderstorms!

This week I have had the opportunity to establish contact with individuals both within and outside of Butler University for assistance in acquiring items needed for our online exhibition in celebration of Indiana’s 200th anniversary of statehood. I contacted the Bartholomew County Historical Society, the Butler Athletics Department, and representatives in a couple of other departments, for images and memorabilia associated with some of the individuals to be highlighted in the exhibition.

The responses have generally been positive, though not necessarily helpful in each case. This is to be expected as, in each instance, the people responding have other cares and concerns. Fortunately, most folks have, ultimately, been helpful–though these things always take more time than expected. It is an important lesson to learn: always give yourself plenty of time to complete your task!

With those entities outside of the university, we had to make sure all issues of copyright were clearly known and dealt with. Similarly, we had to be cognizant of issues relating to costs for the use of images. It is intriguing to see the willingness (and unwillingness) of different institutions to accommodate requests for image use–these costs can mount up and often decisions about which images to use will be decided based on use fees.

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.