First item in Hal Sayre Papers collection available

The first item in the Hal Sayre Papers collection from the UCB Archives is available in the CU Digital Library in the form of Sayre's handwritten, first-person diary recounting the Sand Creek Massacre. The print collection includes numerous diaries, extensive personal and business material, maps, legal papers and business records. A short description of the collection is available on the Archives website (p. 143) and in the MARC record in Chinook.

The Sand Creek diary is being published ahead of the rest of the collection to coincide with the Chief Niwot Exhibit at the Boulder History Museum, which runs through November 25, 2012.

As always, significant collaboration was required to present this material. Metadata Services worked with Debbie Hollis in Special Collections, Holley Long in Libraries IT, and Bruce Montgomery & Dave Hays in Archives to make the beginnings of this collection available, which will be amended over time with additional digitized material.

Please direct questions about the metadata portion of this digitization project to Michael Dulock.

 

Women Poets of the Romantic Period collection available in the CU Digital Library

Through a collaboration between UCB Special Collections, Libraries IT and Metadata Services, the Women Poets of the Romantic Period collection is now available in the CU Digital Library. The University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries has a significant collection of first and early editions of poetry by women writers of the British Romantic Period (1770-1839). The digital collection comprises twenty-one volumes, with more to be added as volumes are digitized. The collection was published to coincide with the 20th-anniversary conference of the 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers Association, taking place in Boulder from June 7-10, 2012.

Metadata for the collection was created by crosswalking the existing MARC records for the entire 400+ volume print collection into a MODS template. Following some manual clean-up, the record set was imported into LUNA and records for the digitized volumes set to display. Metadata Services worked closely with Holley Long in Libraries IT and Debbie Hollis and Amanda Brown in Special Collections in order to create the records.

Please direct questions about the metadata portion of this digitization project to Michael Dulock.

Brackett campus photograph collection in the CUDL

The CMS Digital Resources Cataloging Team and the CUB Archives are pleased to announce that the J. Raymond Brackett Photograph Collection is available in the CU Digital Library. The collection consists of 196 black and white photographs (and a few photo negatives) of the CUB campus taken between 1890 and 1915. The photographs provide an interesting look into the landscape of the university and its architecture as the institution grew and evolved around the turn of the 20th century. Familiar buildings appear alongside some that haven't been heard of in decades, and some current buildings are called by different names. A bibliographic record for the collection will be available in Chinook shortly.

As always , many people worked to make this collection available. The catalogers who contributed to this collection include Josie Fania, Jane Zumwalt and Erin Block, as well as Andrew Johnson, CUB's new metadata librarian. Holley Long was, as always, invaluable in building the collection in Luna. Thanks are due to Bruce Montgomery and Dave Hays from Archives for their assistance with and insight into the materials.

Please direct questions about the metadata portion of this digitization project to Michael Dulock.

Medieval Manuscript Leaves Collection in the CUDL

The CMS Digital Resources Cataloging Team and the CU-B Special Collections Department are pleased to announce that the Medieval Manuscript Leaves Collection is available in the CU Digital Library. The collection consists of 178 individual digitized manuscript leaves selected from among Special Collections' Ege, Hayes, and Miscellaneous Manuscript collections. The leaves date from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, and many are illuminated with colored ink, decorative initials and elaborate borders and drawings. The bibliographic record and Rocky Mountain Online Archive (RMOA) finding aid for the complete physical collection are also available.

As usual, many people contributed to make this collection available. The crack team of catalogers who worked on these records included Jane Zumwalt, Christina Howard, Candy Gobrecht, Josie Fania and Erin Block. Holley Long was, of course, instrumental in building the collection in Luna. Thanks are due to Debbie Hollis, Kris McCusker and Elizabeth Newsom from Special Collections for their assistance with the materials.

Please direct questions about the metadata portion of this digitization project to Michael Dulock.

Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station collection in Chinook

Cataloging & Metadata Services has just completed a project to make all the publications from the Rocky Mountain Research Station that we own available in our catalog. To find these publications, you can search in Chinook for the titles of the individual publications, if you know them, or to see all the publications do an author search for Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station.

The Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station collection consists of station reports and papers published by the Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station Fort Collins, Colorado in conjunction with the Forest Service of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture from 1937-1997. Topics cover mostly forest and range management of the Rocky Mountain Region.

Highlights include:

• “Research Notes” (Gov A 13.69/8:1-84) of the Rocky Mountain Region on the various forest and range management methods such as burning, poisoning and “killing” undesirable native vegetation to encourage forest productivity.

• “Protect Your Pines from Bark Beetles” (Gov A13.69/7:P 52 and Gov A13.69/2:P 65) are pamphlets (mainly consisting of illustrations) published in the 1960s and reissued again in the 1980s on the eradication and control methods of the Mountain Pine Bark Beetle infestation. Insecticides such as DDT and burning as ways to kill Bark beetles were suggested.

• For more information regarding Pine beetle please see the Gov. Info. Blog:
“New Bark Beetle Website Tracks Insects Effects Over 15 Years”
http://cubgovpubs.blogspot.com/2010/10/pine-beetle-information.html

Special acknowledgment goes to Tassanee Chitcharoen, Peter Rolla and Deb Van Tassel for their work on this project. Please direct questions to Tassanee or Deb.

RDA testing at UC Boulder

CMS is now participating in the US National Library RDA Test as an informal tester. RDA stands for Resource Description and Access, the cataloging code that is intended to replace AACR2. A number of original catalogers in CMS are engaged in creating records in RDA, both bibliographic and authority records. Those who participate will create all original records exclusively in RDA, so that they don’t have to deal with 2 codes at the same time.

We have about a dozen bibliographic records and new authority records our original catalogers created using RDA in OCLC and exported to Chinook. Copy catalogers are bringing in RDA records when they are found in OCLC.

Since this is a major endeavor, an RDA Task Force was created and catalogers in other departments were invited to participate. Members are: Diana Anderson, Peter Rolla, Wen-Ying Lu, James Ascher and Steve Mantz. Windy Lundy serves as the Chair and our primary contact with the Library of Congress.

The OPAC display doesn’t look much different as we suppressed new MARC tags specific to RDA records, but you can see some RDA characteristics in the OPAC display:

• Names will show relator or RDA role terms, e.g., author, editor, photographer in personal names, or “issuing body” in corporate names. This is not an error when you see these in Chinook records.
• Minor things such as copyright date with © rather than letter c.
• P., ill. , etc. in Description are now spelled out.

You can identify RDA records if you view MARC display – “948 RDA test”

It is still unknown whether RDA will be implemented. Once a decision is made to implement RDA by the national libraries (a decision should be made next spring), we will have wider communication and consultation with all in the Libraries about the public display, faceting (if possible) and any other considerations.

For those who wish to see these records, here are some examples:
http://libraries.colorado.edu/record=b6082469~S3
http://libraries.colorado.edu/record=b6073546~S3
http://libraries.colorado.edu/record=b6431119~S3
http://libraries.colorado.edu/record=b6551964~S3
http://libraries.colorado.edu/record=b6080450~S3


If you have any questions, please contact Windy Lundyor Jina Wakimoto.

Brushing up on FRBR

All catalogers in the CU-Boulder Libraries have been engaged in reading FRBR together. That is about 35 catalogers in the central Cataloging and Metadata Services Department as well as the catalogers in specialized areas – Music, Government Publications, Maps and Special Collections. The main objective was to discuss its implications, applications, advantages, and shortcomings, in advance of the implementation of RDA.


To begin, James P. Ascher, the rare books cataloger and our invaluable resident techie, posted sections of FRBR online called UCB FRBR Discussion. This was created using digress.it. This approach allowed the readers to comment and post questions paragraph by paragraph. This was done in advance of the first meeting to discuss FRBR. Even before the first in-person meeting, there were nearly fifty comments and several philosophical discussions. There is also an additional reading section where catalogers could post interesting and related articles they found. The workshop comments section recorded the summaries from the discussions and serve to remind us about the challenges as well as the positive aspects of FRBR we observed as a group.

The first workshop was dubbed “FRBR with Strings”, as James prepared color-coded strings to indicate relationships, as we explored Group 1 relationships together. The second workshop had more color-coded strings, as we explored Group 1, 2, 3 and Bibliographic Relationships, e.g., Work-to-Work, Work-to-Expression. At the conclusion of the second workshop, most expressed sighs of relief as they felt more comfortable with the concept of FRBR and felt they understood it, if not totally in agreement with all concepts expressed in FRBR. Whereas the first workshop generated discussions focusing on challenges with FRBR as a conceptual model and challenges with applying FRBR, the group was able to discuss some positive aspects of FRBR at the second workshop.

For the next workshop, we plan to read FRAD together, rather than delve more deeply into FRBR. Please direct any questions or comments to James P. Ascher or Jina Wakimoto.