The Rice-Aron Library Zine Collection (2.0)

I'm sure I will post this link again when I post more about the process I went through in dealing with the zines but if you want to check out The Rice-Aron Library Zine Collection I built on LibraryThing you can go HERE. Oh, the above photo is the collection. It has only been there for about a year and was built from donations and funding from Town Meeting (Marlboro College is a democratic community and people can bring projects to be funded to be voted on by the community) so right now it consists of about 400+ zines. I believe that it has since grown but currently does not fall within the library's collection development budget and is entirely maintained by students (this had to be a consideration in my planning). The items that did not get cataloged included the run of Punk Planet (because it was decided that it would take more time than it was worth and could remain browsable), some more ephemeral items (music heavy review zines), and the health/sexuality collection (because it was promoted and listed elsewhere on the website, I believe). In total I scanned and cataloged 335 zines.

Top: Punk Planet, Ephemeral Music Zines, Sexual Health (all 3 are browsable, rather than cataloged. Middle: Personal zines (and a really great collection). Bottom: Poetry and Fiction zines and art and comic zines.

NOTE: Each zine was stamped "DO NOT REMOVE FROM LIBRARY" and had a sticker. The stickers corresponded to the subject heading the zine was tagged with in LibraryThing (tags with a "*" were subject the headings, although the fact they were used to maintain shelf order and browsability a the shelf level made them actually more like classification numbers. Oh well.) The stickers also corresponded to the box where it should be shelved. All students had to do was match stickers. Simple.

Top: Collection Rules and Shelving Instructions. Bottom: How to Use LibraryThing. I made these signs. They looked better in person.


LibraryThing Instructions (again) and To Be Repaired Box.

Top: Political and History zines. Middle: Foreign Language zines, zines related to Marlboro College (like the zine Meg Mott, my Political Theory professor, wrote throughout 90s. Awesome!), and Bikes/Animal Rights zines. Bottom: Prison zines (about prisons, about political prisoners, or by prisoners. maybe also some history zines about radical prison groups) and D.I.Y. zines.

MORE TO COME...

Marlboro College Rice-Aron Library Summer Internship 2K8

This summer I returned to Marlboro College to complete a short cataloging internship where I pretty much got to take over their new zine collection, come up with a way to organize it, and make records accessible online somewhere other than in the OPAC. There was some talk in the library about working with LibraryThing for Libraries sometime in the future (god knows the OPAC could use the face lift) and the library also seemed to be getting into integrating web 2.0/social networking, so I opted to catalog the zines using LibraryThing. It made more sense than working with a spreadsheet, building a database, building a webpage from scratch that fit with the school's standard layout (or in the program they use to manage their website), or any of the other options that had been thrown out. In the next day or so (most likely tomorrow) I will post about working with LibraryThing as a sort of additional online space for a small academic library with a limited web presence, cataloging ephemeral materials using LibraryThing, and some of the issues that arose during the process.

In the mean time I am going to post some quick photos from that trip because, well, I want to.

This is where I left from in Pittsburgh. Doesn't that look nice?

Here's the white vibe. Packed and ready for the 12 hour drive to NH and 2.5 to VT.


Here is the little house I shared with some people I went to college with while working at Marlboro College. They liked to talk about the ecological disasters, hating Bush, comic books, and guns. I counted seven spray painted Anarchy logos while I was in Brattleboro. Awesome...

Here is the little room I stayed in. I brought too much stuff with me but it is sort of hard to plan for a month. I am not sure I watched a single DVD I brought with me.

Here is the front of the Rice-Aron Library (The Rice portion, I believe). That balcony on the second flood is pretty much for smoking and drinking while writing papers in the library late at night (The Rice-Aron Library is is open 24 hours a day).

Here is the front of the Aron portion of the library. I worked in this section. Actually, I also had some Political Theory courses in the classroom of the third floor (top window on the right). Looks nice, doesn't it?


MORE TO FOLLOW...