Saturday, February 25, 2012

Week 5

This week I worked on entering more books into the system, and am almost done with a second sheet of LoC numbers. I also printed out my first sheet onto stickers and placed them onto the books. Now 82 books have successfully had stickers placed onto them. My reading this week was called "Use of Collections" and it discusses the need for research in museums. It says that all museums need to do research on their items, for it adds to the knowledge of the museum. It also says that museum staff need to be respectful of people coming into the museum asking for corroboration since they might acquire an unexpected and rare item for their collection. Finally, the article says that the most important point of a museum is not the number of customers/visitors but instead informing people. The museum is responsible for presenting information to the people that come into the structure.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Week 4

This week I only worked on Monday, and I completed my first set of LoC stickers on my spreadsheet. I began a new spreadsheet of titles, authors and LoC numbers. I am slowly working towards entering all of the books into the system and marking them so they can be stored successfully on shelves. This way they will have order to where they are placed instead of inhabiting an area of barley controlled chaos. My reading for this week had to do with the storage of archival materials. It discussed the various methods of storing different materials, and how to keep them safe from too much acidity. I found it interesting that wooden shelves, which are usually seen in libraries, are actually not good for the books themselves unless the shelves have been treated with polyurethane or have lining on them. It was interesting to read all the various ways materials could be stored.

Week 3

This past week, I continued to enter books into the computer database. I am beginning to move from magazines and items lacking ISBN numbers into ones that have stated ISBN and LoC numbers found in them. Many of the books I am entering have pieces of paper or even slides placed within their covers. Some are so old that they are beginning to fall apart. The reading for this week dealt with the handling of rare or deteriorating books and how to communicate to others how fragile books really are. This seems applicable to some of the books that I am entering into the computer since they are fragile as well, and so must be handled with care.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Week 2

This week I focused on entering in the various books and magazines into the Museum's database. It was interesting to find which magazines and books had set LoC numbers and which ones could not be found within the general database. Most of the magazines for instance have no ISBN numbers or LoC numbers, so they can only be entered in by year and name of the magazine. So, essentially I was working on imputing data into the computer systems this past week. I also had a reading about how to correctly handle books, which I found very interesting. The article detailed varoius ways that books were mishandled and how to properly care for books. It was an interesting read.