The library catalog, article finders, online journal and database tools, bento search results, library accounts—these tools all provide a way for library users to discover and obtain the constellation of resources available to them at Duke and beyond. But did you know that these tools also provide a window into a complex system that underpins selection, purchase, description, maintenance, and circulation of library resources?
For twenty years, the libraries at Duke University have used Ex Libris’s Aleph integrated library system to manage library resources in a variety of formats and languages across the acquisitions, description, inventory, and delivery lifecycles. This requires the system to store, interpret, correlate, ingest, and output a variety of data types. Aleph has helped the libraries at Duke successfully steward existing resources and acquire upwards of 1 million new resources since 2004, including a proliferation of eBooks, eJournals, databases and streaming media. On July 10th, we will be sunsetting Aleph and implementing Ex Libris’s Alma system. Alma builds on the functionality and data models of an integrated library system and incorporates these into a library services platform that streamlines and aligns processes for selecting, acquiring, describing and delivering print and electronic resources. Much planning, careful data mapping and cleanup, and lots of collaboration among subject matter experts from across the libraries at Duke has brought us to the cusp of going live with Alma. Stay tuned for a follow-up post in the later part of July in which members of the Duke University Libraries Collections Services division will reflect on the work that led up to go-live and talk about the early days of working in Alma.
What is the MADS partnership and how did it start?
Kristina Thomas
MADS, which stands for Metadata and Discovery Strategy, is a department that works in Collection Services in Smith, Bay 10. I work in the LSC (Library Service Center) as a Senior Library Assistant, where I’ve been for a little over a year. In the LSC, which is off campus, it can be a bit difficult to work with librarians a lot. We’re an offsite storage facility and we don’t see many of them. Dracine Hodges, who is the Associate University Librarian for Collections Services, and Jacquie Samples, who is the MADS department head, developed the idea of the workflow partnership. They worked with the LSC manager, Marvin Tillman, and the Associate University Librarian and Director of Financial and Facility Services, Jameca Dupree, to begin a workflow partnership that would help both the LSC and the MADS department.
As an employee at the LSC, I go over to Smith once a week. I work closely with the MADS team, particularly Jacquie Samples and Heather Baker, on record cleanup, checking records in CaiaSoft and Alma research/implementation. It’s good for our departments to work together because, over at the LSC, we do have a lot of experience in CaiaSoft. It’s also helpful for me because I’ve learned a lot about Aleph and Alma, the new software that DUL is migrating to. A full migration occurs in the summer of 2024. I have also been Alma certified and take notes/knowledge learned about Alma to my LSC coworkers. It’s been a mutually beneficial partnership as we continue to do record cleanup and transition to Alma.
How has MADS helped you become better in your position?
I’ve certainly become more knowledgeable during my time in MADS. I’m not accustomed to working in Aleph Cataloging and I had no knowledge concerning Alma. It was good to be on this team that directly works in Alma. It has helped to keep me on track as we continue the transition. I’ve also learned about several jobs that are completed by the MADS team in software that I didn’t have much experience in, so I’m getting to learn something else that is newer territory. I’ve also worked on record cleanup, assigned remote storage IDs and looked at collection codes, all in Aleph Cataloging. During my time here, I’ve also become more comfortable working with people outside of the LSC in CaiaSoft and I’ve really accepted my role and become more confident in explaining the software and being able to confidently answer questions. Being offsite in the LSC made me feel a bit distant from the other libraries, so constantly corresponding with these librarians has been extremely beneficial for me. I’ve also learned a lot about Alma. I feel more prepared for the migration than I would’ve had this workflow partnership never happened.
What were your challenges and what did you feel most confident about going into this workflow partnership?
I would say that I felt confident about everything that I have worked on in the LSC. This includes all our CaiaSoft functions. I had already met Jacquie and we had an informative conversation, so I felt comfortable because I use CaiaSoft every day. I felt comfortable being able to answer CaiaSoft questions or check items in CaiaSoft and look for item reports. I also felt comfortable in Aleph Circulation as these are both software that are used daily in the LSC.
My biggest challenge was that I don’t work on the same jobs that the MADS team works on. I also didn’t have the same knowledge. They work with Metadata. MARC fields and the terminology are different, so I felt a bit out of the loop. They are, of course, also very knowledgeable in Alma and I was really starting out so I didn’t feel as if I could contribute very much. I now believe that it has become mutually beneficial because I’m learning that our workflow connects both of our software and examines the relationship between them. We can both answer each other’s questions. They were also extremely nice when it came to pacing and stopping to explain things or answer any questions that I may have.
What have you enjoyed the most about this workflow partnership?
For me, it’s a great learning experience. I’ve learned a lot about other software that I’ve become more accustomed to using. I’ve been able to learn a lot about what they do in Metadata. I’ve gotten to work on the other side of Aleph that I never worked in before. As a librarian, it’s good to have knowledge of software, even if you don’t constantly use it. I’m confident that this knowledge will be beneficial as I move forward in my career. I also believe that it has helped me with professional communication skills. As for the LSC, it can be a challenge to uphold communication with other librarians at Duke. We don’t come into contact with them that often so coming to Smith has strengthened that communication and it broadens my interests as well.
What do you hope to achieve going forward?
I hope to learn as much as I possibly can. I’d like to be a well-rounded librarian. It’s important to take the time to work with other groups of people and learn their perspectives. I hope to continue working with the MADS group as well as other groups and librarians around Duke, and even outside of Duke. It’s been a great learning and networking experience. It will help me continue to grow and learn as a librarian. I also hope that my interest and knowledge continue to broaden, and more workflow opportunities are available for me in the future.
As for this MADS group, I hope to continue working with them, even after the implementation of Alma. I hope to be able to continue communicating with them and that this partnership opens up more opportunities here at Duke where I get to work with more people.
Depending on how much you use the DUL Collections Services Documentation Portal (CSDP), you may or may not have been surprised to see this alarmingly yellow banner at the top of the page when recently visiting the space:
Our old space migrated to a cloud environment in a (mostly) seamless transition to a space that looks and feels very much like the old pages. The layouts of both the “Open to All” and “Staff Only” pages should be familiar to users of the previous documentation portal, and hopefully users find the new spaces easy to navigate. The new public page can be found here, and the staff-only page is here. While the old wiki has a link directing visitors to the new space, it is a good idea to update any bookmarks as soon as possible in case the re-directing link disappears at some point.
The CSDP continues to be a valuable resource for Collections Services staff as well as external users, housing over 300 pages of documentation. The pages are regularly reviewed and updated, which means fewer errors due to outdated information, faster updates on improved processes, and easier training for new employees. Upkeep of the CSDP will be critical in the coming months as we transition from Aleph to Alma and update our documentation accordingly.
If you have not yet visited the new documentation portal, we encourage you to browse the pages. If you are Collections Services staff and encounter any issues, please use the online ticketing system to let us know. For users in CS logging into the DUL staff-only site, you will need to use the netID version of your email address to trigger the Shibboleth log in, not the alias version. It should be formatted as netid@duke.edu.
Overall, the transition has been successful, and we appreciate the contributions of CS staff as we look forward to this year of big changes in Collections Services.
What this all actually means is that I don’t have a typical working day. While all of my work relates to serials cataloging in some way, the content of the serials I work on spans a wide spectrum of subjects created throughout written history. As I don’t want to bore you with the minutiae of my work, and there is a lot of minutiae I could bore you with, I thought today I’d focus on my work with a particularly interesting collection, the Edwin & Terry Murray Comic Book Collection, part of the Rubenstein library’s holdings, which I’ve been working on for over six years now.
While the collection is primarily comprised of Marvel and DC comics you’re almost certainly familiar with, it also includes titles from the companies that predate Marvel and DC. (Their origin stories? Sorry, comic book joke.) There are also plenty of titles from smaller independent publishing houses and comics for much younger readers like those published for Walt Disney. Cataloging these materials takes quite a bit of online research involving not only official websites like Marvel and DC’s but also sites like Comic Vine, a labor of love undertaken by comic book fans and collectors.
Why does this work require so much research? Because comic books were originally ephemera, never intended to be collected and preserved. In the past, in part because they were discredited as acceptable reading material for young people by psychiatrist and anti-violent imagery zealot Fredric Wertham and his ilk, the comic books that were catalogued had brief records at best, listing little more than the title, publisher, place of publication and, if very lucky, the dates of publication. Volume numbering was often omitted or merely noted to exist (‘also has volume numbering’, etc.) and the records often had no acknowledgement of preceding or succeeding titles.
Comic book publishing has always been a commercial venture, so if a title fails to sell well, it’s cancelled posthaste. But fear not, intrepid comic book readers! The cancelled character may well be revived even decades later with different writers and artists and, perhaps, a different publisher. In the case of the early Captain Marvel titles pictured, the earliest dates from 1968 and the latest from 1975. These titles were published as separate runs with only the titular character and publishing house, in this case, in common. While it might seem unimportant to omit the volume numbering when you have a title that has 55 numbers published over 12 years, with all issues having the same volume number, that volume number serves as a clue to researchers that perhaps an earlier or later related title exists.
In addition to fleshing out the cataloging records for this collection by adding subject headings for the fictitious characters as well the genre (Arthurian romances, anyone?), we’ve made a conscious effort to credit the writers and artists who produced them, often creating Name Authority records for them for the very first time.
So, you can see why all of the research associated with my role is important and why I see myself as a sort of literary Indiana Jones some days. (Thankfully my fear of snakes is less of an issue than it is for Indy!) Of course, these adventures take place alongside my more general workflow, though calling even that work general isn’t exactly accurate since I’m never certain what language, subject and/or format I will see next. The life of a serialist is never boring, at least to a serialist!
[Blog note: check out this post from 2020 on the Edwin and Terry Murray Collection for even more comic goodness!]
Like everyone reading this post (we assume), the Monograph Acquisitions staff returned from the holiday break ready to start the new year with a renewed sense of purpose, energy, and enthusiasm.
That said, it can be difficult to jump right back into the production line tasks that comprise a significant portion of the work we do in our department. To get back up to speed and keep ourselves churning away at these core workflows, most of us employ a reliable performance-enhancing substance. No, it’s not coffee. (Though that too, certainly – always and frequently.) It’s not drugs. (As we understand it, officially frowned upon by LHR.) No, it’s music that keeps us focused and on task.
MonoACQ contains a number of “heads” who pair distinct music with each workflow to motivate themselves day in and out. Below are some of our go-to soundtracks. We’ve included links to DUL’s holdings wherever possible:
Much of my work involves working with order and fund data pulled from Aleph. (And soon, ALMA!) Internally we report on orders and expenditures by category, invoicing and processing metrics, and copy cataloging productivity.
As anyone knows, staring at an Excel sheet can be dizzying at best, and soul deadening in moments of stark, macro-driven desperation. To stay engaged on these tasks, I like to blast Mariachi music straight into my ear holes. Aside from being music that I find lovely and for which I have nostalgic associations, it adds dramatic flair to running a comparison between column “B” in one report and column “S” in another. It’s like bringing a pivot table to a knife fight:
Now, when I’m faced with a writing task (say, scrambling to get a blog post in by the promised deadline), nothing else will do but the propulsive groove of Booker T & the MGs. Funk and forward motion will get you there every time:
While I’m opening boxes I prefer to listen to music that will allow me to work at a certain speed to ensure maximum efficiency. In my experience, I am most efficient while listening to house music. House music is rooted in a variety of music including disco, funk, and European synth, thus I am constantly bopping as I work. House music utilizes strong bass lines, repetitive vocals, and elements of synth pop to ensure you have to fight the urge to dance while you work.
I have been working on reducing in size the large queue of Library of Congress shipments containing books from India which need copy-cataloging . While I am busy cataloging, I love to listen to an on-line streaming service from the Darbar Arts Culture Heritage Trust, which offers a large catalog of Classical Indian Music artists that have played at the yearly festival in London England that Darbar puts on every year. The music is fantastic! We have many of the artists that play at the Darbar festival in our music collection on cd or dvd, as well as streaming via Alexander Street Press:
While there is a strong chance that on any given workday I’ve listened to at least 5 hours of Dub music, there is one task that all but demands the instrumental groove sublimity of Dub and that is paying invoices. The tediousness and precision of invoice payment requires nothing less than music full of echo, bass, space, effects, repetition and rhythm. YouTube is a great resource for endless Dub mixes but fortunately DUL holds some great examples too, including a top-notch compilation of Studio One dubs from the 70s courtesy of Dub Specialist. And perhaps my all-time #1 selection is Dub Landing Vol. 2, by the Roots Radics and mixed by Scientist and Prince Jammy, originally released in 1982, presented here in a 2-disc reissue complete with original tracks.
DUL offers a shockingly healthy amount of Dub to stream, including this release by the aforementioned Prince Jammy:
I find that I reach for different music based on of course, my mood, time of day, the weather, the state of the world as a whole… But also, that a lot depends on the task at hand. For instance, when I’m copy cataloging shipments of books coming from anywhere from Montevideo to Cape Town to Milan, I find I can really get into a flow state conducive to matching bibliographic records while listening to great ‘80s/90s hip hop like Eric B. & Rakim or KRS-One. Whereas when I’m say, really in my head processing invoices for the diverse materials coming into the Rubenstein Library collections, I may reach for something more ambient like the noisiness of The Dream Syndicate or the dreaminess of Alice Coltrane. And luckily the Music Library carries most of these artists if you want to see how they line up with your work day.
(Sadly we cannot locate the Dream Syndicate’s blissful wall of feedback in DUL’s streaming databases, but below are cuts from Joanna’s other two picks. -BV)
I listen to a wide variety of musical genres, but when I need an extra boost of energy to crank out a cart full of copy cataloging, my go-to playlist is R.E.M., with particular favorites from Lifes Rich Pageant and Out of Time on repeat. A bulk of vexing e-book orders requires the somewhat disturbing and inappropriately funny tunes of The Smiths with Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now first up.
(No streaming of these gems that we could find in DUL holdings, but we can’t deny everyone this hymn to directionless discontent! -BV)
When I’m receiving boxes on boxes of Japanese-language materials, I sometimes find it helpful to remember that the books I handle today might become something else entirely tomorrow – it’s just a matter of putting them in the right hands at the right time.
Take the story “Hashire, Meros” (“Run, Melos”) by Osamu Dazai from 1940 – it’s based on a German ballad (Friedrich Schiller’s Die Bürgschaft), which was based on a Greek legend (that of Damon and Pythias). And then a Japanese band called Wednesday Campanella grabbed it and made an amazing song with a video set in Mongolia. Friendship, and trust, and also traveling long distances are all things that we can understand across time and geography. Wednesday Campanella keeps me company while I cut open yet another shipment of books that has come a long way to be here.
(We did not locate the track “Melos” in our streaming databases, but Wednesday Campanella is represented! Below, the cut in question. -BV)
1. How long has DUL been sending materials out to the Commercial Bindery (CB)? Since everyone who knew the history of binding at Duke University Libraries (DUL) has retired, we had to do a little research to find this answer. (Thanks to Rebecca Pattillo for finding this information in the University Archives files!) According to the DUL Newsletter, v.5 no.2, published January 1958, DUL allotted a budget for binding as early as 1953. The first mention of sending periodicals to the bindery was in 1957. The Newsletter does not specify a binding company name but I have seen the stamp “Southern Bound” inside the back cover of books from the 1960s. Evidently DUL sent some books to the Southern Library Bindery in Nashville, TN. Some other materials were sent to Marking & Repair for in-house binding. The Newsletter also cited sending monographs to the Joseph Ruzicka Bookbinding Company in 1985. My former supervisor told me DUL sent books to Heckman in 1986 for a short period of time. They returned to Ruzicka in 1987. The company has changed names three times since then, with the current name being The HF Group. We have trusted our books and other materials in their care since 1987.
2. Is the Bindery and Monograph Maintenance (BAMM) Section on a timeline for preparing materials for bindery? The Commercial Binding Unit, now called Bindery & Monograph Maintenance (BAMM), is no stranger to meeting strict deadlines. We used to send out materials every two weeks. Since binding has decreased significantly in the last fifteen years, the CB set up a four-week turnaround time. One student worker will be reviewing the returned shipment while the other two students are preparing materials for the next shipment.
3. How can you tell if a DUL resource needs to go to the bindery? When covers are torn or pages are falling out, materials need to be commercially bound. Occasionally materials are water damaged or new materials are accidentally sliced during the box opening process. Sometimes accompanying materials such as posters or maps that are the same size or larger than the book, need a pocket. These are all examples but not an exhaustive list of items that need to go to the CB.
4. What’s the size of an average bindery shipment, and what kinds of DUL materials are in each shipment? The size of a bindery shipment varies from 200 to 400 items. It depends on several factors: backlogs in Collections Services, special projects like renovations where materials are moving and being reviewed, how many physical books are being used by patrons and being returned, water damaged materials, and new materials that meet certain size criteria set up as guidelines within the Resource Description Department.
5. What happens to a book to get it ready for the bindery? What happens to that book at the bindery? Conservation Services staff pick up materials from Access & Delivery Services and refer them to BAMM at Smith Warehouse. They get separated onto trucks according to types of material—paperbacks, hardbacks, sets, and serials, which are processed on different lots in ABLE. Students or staff print new labels, assign new barcodes if needed, and add internal notes in Aleph, if needed. We also bind some new materials—monographs, periodicals, and music scores that are going to the stacks.
When our materials are received at the Commercial Bindery, they go to the check in department first where they create the shop work order according to our shipping record paper work. They run duplicate code stickers which go on the binding tickets and in the back of the books to match the covers to the books. They unpack and separate the books, periodicals, digicovers, music scores, etc. They adhere the stickers and send the books down the assembly line.
The pressing process at the commercial bindery.
Then the collator checks for trim margins and decides if they should be adhesive bound or sewn. The books get measured and that information is sent to the lettering department. They pull in our lots from ABLE, stamp the covers, and send them to page attachment. After that the books are trimmed and the boards are cut. The covers are matched with the books and they travel to the “casing in” department where the covers are glued to the boards. The books are placed in the covers and sent to the press. The final stop is inspection. The shipping department counts the books and adds any extra charges as needed. Then the books are boxed and returned to DUL.
6. How long does it take an item to go through the bindery process, from beginning to end? Depending on when we receive books and periodicals, some materials will be added to ABLE within one week, while others will be added up to 4 weeks ahead of time. Usually we unpack, review, and send the returned books out within a week
7. DUL materials come back from the bindery in different solid-colored covers. Is there a reason for each color? Do the cover colors ever change? Periodicals are assigned a cover color when they are set up in ABLE. Ideally that cover color will always be the same so they will match in the stacks. Formerly we chose from a list of 24 colors. Since library binding cover materials are in short supply, we now have 8 colors to choose from—black, brown, dark green, maroon, navy, red, royal blue, and tan. Monograph cover colors are pulled randomly at the CB. We only assign a cover color for sets—navy blue—so we don’t have to check the stacks for the previous color. The Music Library also requested blue covers for the Miniature Scores collection and the pocketbooks which house scores and parts.
This monograph was sent through commercial bindery to protect the cover.
8. What’s the most interesting DUL resource that you’ve sent to the bindery? I have seen many interesting books come through for rebinding. Atlases amaze me just because of their size, and the world maps are very colorful and informative. Some Government Documents are intriguing. But the one book that stands out in my mind that came through recently for binding was “Afro-Atlantic Histories”. I chose to send this book for a Digicover, where the original covers are digitized, mounted on boards, and bound with a clear cover. You can see by the photo this book cover is stunning. Also, the foredge was a rainbow of primary and secondary color plate sections surrounding the text and art work. If you would like to see this book, it is displayed at Lilly’s Art Exhibition Catalog Collection. You can also find more information on the National Gallery of Art webpage
9. Does Conservation play into the bindery workflow? If so, how? Most people don’t know that we also have a brittle books workflow. Conservation Services staff also refer books to BAMM for boxing. These books are too brittle for rebinding. We box them to extend their shelf life for patrons’ use for many more years. We enter the title, author, call number, and measurements in Excel, and send the spread sheet to The HF Group Indiana office. The books remain on the shelves at Smith. It saves wear and tear on the books, and we don’t have to worry about them getting lost during shipping. The HF Group staff member makes the KASEBoxes, acid free clam shell boxes (similar to pizza boxes) that protect materials, and ships them directly to Smith. Student workers match up the books by the item number printed on the box with the corresponding book on the shelf. They are double-checked by title and call number. Then they glue a brittle book label inside each KASEBox to inform the patron how to handle the brittle materials. The Item Process Status (IPS) is changed if needed, and the boxes are sent out to the owning library or DUL’s offsite storage facility.
Collections Services was pleased to welcome Zhuo Pan (潘倬, Pān Zhuō) on August 14, 2023 as Resident Librarian for Resource Description. It has been a busy and engaging three months for Zhuo and the Resource Description Department and we are glad Zhuo was here to share them with us. Zhuo received his Master of Library and Information Science at the University of Washington earlier this year, where he also served as a Library Data Specialist in the UW Libraries. Zhuo received his Bachelor of Library Science from Wuhan University. Though new to Duke in Durham, Zhuo is returning to the wider Duke University community. He worked at Duke Kunshan University Library, both as an intern and as Library Assistant for Technical Services. In his current position, Zhuo forms one-half of the inaugural cohort of DUL’s Residency Program, which seeks to enable recent graduates of an MLIS or related graduate program to gain experience in a highly specialized area of librarianship.
Book cover showcasing figurative art with beautiful fabrics and flowers.
In his position as Resident Librarian, Zhuo describes materials to make discovery possible through the Duke University Libraries Catalog. His work also contributes new and improved records to WorldCat, which is a catalog of library resources from all parts of the world. Because catalogers must learn to use subject knowledge across a variety of disciplines and to apply complex international standards when creating catalog entries, gaining expertise is a long-term process and hinges on training and mentoring. Zhuo brings to his current position experience both with hands-on cataloging at Duke Kunshan University Library, as well as experience with the international set of elements and guidelines for creating metadata for library resources from his position at UW libraries. It has been gratifying to build on Zhuo’s knowledge and experience by working to describe books awaiting description. During his first three months, Zhuo acquainted himself with internal workflows, policies, and the tools and documentation that support these. He also spent significant time assessing and categorizing materials in the Chinese language cataloging queue. This facilitated a training strategy focused on specific types of description, starting with literature, then transitioning to comics and graphic novels, and moving onto local history. For a snapshot of Chinese language books cataloged in the last 3 months, check the catalog. Zhuo provided description for over half of new titles added during this period. The Monograph Acquisitions department, where books with records that are complete in WorldCat at the time of receipt are processed, provided description for the remaining portion.
This graphically eye-catching cover needs to be cut open (carefully!) in order for the book to be described.
Most recently, Zhuo has worked on books about art and photography. This is an especially complicated area of description with many special requirements for noting creators and subjects associated with artistic works. In addition, art and photography books often reflect their discipline, meaning they get artsy with how the physical book is presented. This adds an extra layer of challenge to describing the physical resource. Zhuo has come across books that are portfolios with loose plates of images, books with pages that fold out to create larger-format reproductions of photos, and even a book that is sealed in its entirety and needs to be carefully cut open before he can describe it. Following are some photos of recent art books that Zhuo has encountered. I particularly enjoyed working on the book that included parallel texts in Chinese and Russian languages with Zhuo since we each got to use our particular linguistic strengths to describe it. This partnership is just one example of the myriad ways that original catalogers constantly work together to use combined expertise in resource description. Here is looking forward to many years of working with Zhuo to provide timely and inclusive description of library collections.
Parallel Chinese and Russian edition of the photographic works of V.V. Mikosha.
Hello! My name is Alaina Economus, and I am the Slavic Language Resource Description Intern in the Resource Description Department.
I came to Duke University Libraries in August of 2022, three months after graduating from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and simultaneous to beginning my MSLS at UNC-Chapel Hill. I majored in History and Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies as an undergraduate, and thought this position would be the perfect combination of my Russian language skills and my passion for library and information science. I interviewed for the internship in my dorm room at Smith (College) and thought how serendipitous it would be to begin a new chapter of my life also at Smith (Warehouse)!
When I first arrived at Duke, we had a significant backlog of Slavic language monographs that had been sent to us for original cataloging. Most of the items had not been looked over following their referral. With direction from my supervisors, Jessica Janecki and Natalie Sommerville, I spent the first couple of months looking up every item in OCLC Connexion and sorting them into different categories based on the language of the text and their “problem”; some had no record in OCLC, others had no call number assigned, and others had records with poor copy. Throughout this process, I was able to send many items to circulation, which cleared up a lot of much-needed space.
Now that the backlog has been sorted, I spend much of my time cataloging books from each specific category. This past spring, I decided to focus on Ukrainian-language materials with poor copy or no call number . It felt like something small I could do to support the promotion and accessibility of Ukrainian language and culture. I really value working with these materials, and hope that I am doing them justice.
This experience inspired me to conduct a collections analysis of the Ukrainian-language collection at Duke with Dr. Ernest (Erik) Zitser, Librarian for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies. While it was originally just for a field experience course for my degree, I’ve been able to present the analysis at the TRLN Annual Meeting this past summer, and I’ll be presenting the full analysis at the Ukrainian Studies Conference this month. It has been such an enriching experience to work with these materials both for this project and for my work at Smith Warehouse.
Growing my cataloging skills has been one of the best parts of my experience in Resource Description. A year ago, I knew almost nothing about call numbers, subject analysis, or authority records. Now, I spend most of my time determining if the monographs I work with have accurate description that will make them accessible to patrons. It’s a big responsibility, but I love it! I am hoping to pursue a career in cataloging once I have completed my MSLS degree.
When not at work or in class, I enjoy reading, cross-stitching, traveling, and spending time with my friends, my partner Abbie, and my cat Simon (pictured).
In August, Heather Baker, Metadata Associate at Duke University Libraries (DUL), celebrates her one-year anniversary as a full-time member of the Metadata & Discovery Strategy (MADS) team in Collections Services. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a practicum student, volunteer, and intern on the MADS team, and she now contributes as an official Duke employee. We asked Heather to share some of her experiences with us from her first year.
In what areas did you feel most successful this year?
I think I succeeded in becoming an integral part of the MADS team and taking on tasks so that my fellow team members could focus on time-sensitive projects. Fortunately, MADS has been incredibly supportive and offered their time and expertise whenever I have needed it.
If I had to pick one project that was the most gratifying, it would be a cleanup project that I completed of close to 1.5 million records. While it seemed daunting at the outset, I successfully tackled it and recently checked it off my to-do list. The project involved reviewing and updating internal notes on item records, and it gave me an interesting glimpse into the library’s history. Many notes offered a timeline of a book, for example, “this book was lost in 1977 but has been found.” Some notes were so old that it was difficult tracking down anyone who might remember what those notes meant. One of my favorite notes said, “mysteriously appeared on shelf.” That’s a mystery that will likely never be solved. Overall, I was able to make these records a little bit cleaner, which is always rewarding. I also enjoyed a few book hunts through the stacks—many records had conflicting data, and an item that displayed as “lost” to patrons was actually on the shelves. Those items are now back in the circulating collection.
What did you find most challenging?
What is so interesting about MADS is that we don’t concentrate on only one process or project. There is always something new to do, and it might be completely different from what I worked on last. My challenge has been reminding myself that I will continually be presented with unfamiliar tasks and that it’s okay to feel like a beginner even after I’ve been here for a year.
What areas did you focus the most energy on?
My focus has been on data cleanup when I’m not working on routine tasks. I enjoy the meticulousness of record cleanup, and it feels good to know that I’m improving the discovery layer with each record I touch. And data cleanup has been a great way for me to learn a variety of Aleph and Aleph Reporting Center (ARC) services. It’s fun to narrow down what I’m trying to accomplish, figure out the logic of how to do it, and then find a way to execute using Aleph and ARC. I’m not always successful the first (or second, or third) time, but I enjoy the trial and error, and I have a great support system in MADS with many decades of combined expertise.
Did anything surprise you about Duke, Collections Services, or your team?
I’m surprised at how the novelty of coming to work every day has not worn off, and I think part of the reason is because I haven’t met anyone in Collections Services who appears to not like their job. In my experience it’s rare for an organization to have staff who all seem to genuinely enjoy what they do, and it makes for a great atmosphere to work in every day.
What have you most enjoyed about working in MADS?
What I’ve found most challenging has also been what I’ve most enjoyed. The new experiences that I have weekly, if not daily, make for an exciting list of projects, and as a team we enjoy figuring out solutions to new problems. It has also been great completing some less urgent projects that the team had not been able to get to in the past. The small but mighty MADS team gets the job done!
Another thing that I love about MADS is that there is never a shortage of book recommendations. My to-read list has grown considerably since I started. And chances are that someone on the team has read whatever I’m reading, so there’s always someone to discuss it with.
What do you hope to achieve in the coming year?
I’m looking forward to helping in any way I can with the Alma migration. It’s exciting to make such a major change and have everyone learning a new system at the same time. I’d also like to focus on bringing the Collections Services Documentation Portal up to the standards of Duke’s latest Web Accessibility Guidelines. Thanks to a fantastic DUL Libraries Summer Camp session on writing alternative text and helpful Duke staff, I feel ready to do what I can to improve the quality of our Collections Services resources.
If you’ve listened to Time Has Come Today, the 1967 hit by the Chambers Brothers, you have likely been psychedelicized. And possibly politicized too.
You’ve probably heard at least parts of the iconic song in films and documentaries covering the music, culture, and civil rights struggles of the late 1960s. But if you haven’t listened to the full 11 minute LP version, I can’t recommend it enough. I remember the first time a friend played the track for me in a small, falling apart rental house in Boone when I was in school at Appalachian. It was unlike anything I’d heard before – the constant ticking of the cowbell mimicking a clock (rivaling any better known songs featuring cowbell, ahem), the alternate speeding up and slowing down of the tempo, the steady bass/drum rhythm melding into an extended break of a hypnotic fuzz guitar solo punctuated by a repeated chorus of voices chanting “TIME!”, bouts of foreboding laughter, and wails of “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” Yeah, this song is a whole mood, as they say.
The Chambers Brothers were four brothers from a sharecropping family in Mississippi – George, Lester, Willie, and Joe– who sang in the fields together before forming as a gospel group at the Mount Calvary Baptist Church in 1954. They later joined up with English drummer Brian Keenan, making up one of the first interracial rock bands in the U.S. They’re often described as a psychedelic soul band that mixed gospel, blues, rock, funk, and R&B.
Time Has Come Today was written by Joe, the youngest of the four, after he sat in on a class with “hero of American consciousness” Timothy Leary; brother Willie later added the music and the psychedelicized line. The song was first released in 1966 as a single version coming in at just over two minutes but didn’t make a splash until it was re-recorded in 1967. Legend goes that producer David Rubinson rebelled against Columbia Records president Clive Davis’ explicit directive NOT to re-record the song and asked the band to come into the studio an hour early where they got the song down in just one take, resulting in the extended version that went to #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 5 weeks. Not only did the song serve as an introduction to psychedelic rock, it seemed to simultaneously comment on the upheaval and social unrest of the time and also foreshadow what was still to come. Without being too overtly political, it leaves a lot to the listeners’ interpretation: what has the time come for? Reflecting on the lyrics this Juneteenth, I like to consider what kind of expansive emancipation the brothers might have been calling for:
Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can’t put it off another day
I don’t care what others say
They say we don’t listen anyway
Time has come today…
While we’re talking Chambers Brothers, make sure to check out two of their other notable albums. Love Peace and Happiness is a double LPcombining studio material with a live show from Fillmore East.Released in 1970, the album features the truly excellent 16 minute side-filling song of the same name, also written by the brothers and produced by David Rubinson. Like Time, this song includes the brothers’ signature elements of psychedelic guitar, layered crescendo of voices, rhythmic cowbell clanging, and a plea for togetherness. Flip to the other side and take in their simultaneously rocking and plaintive version of Wade in the Water, as well as their soulful rendering of Curtis Mayfield’s iconic People Get Ready.
Finally, don’t sleep on the 1966 LP Barbara Dane and the Chambers Brothers for a politically charged collaboration with the singer and activist that mixes folk, gospel, and pop with bare instrumentation, harmonica, and hand clapping. The album opens strong with the brothers doo wop harmonizing along with Dane’s full-throated voice in It Isn’t Nice, a powerful anthem on civil disobedience written by Malvina Reyolds after she participated in the San Francisco Palace Hotel Sit-Ins:
It isn’t nice to block the doorway It isn’t nice to go to jail There are nicer ways to do it But the nice ways always fail It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice You told us once, you told us twice But if that is freedom’s price We don’t mind
We received this disc thanks to the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings nonprofit record label which makes custom copies from their collection along with original liner notes. All of these titles are available to check out from the Music Library in the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building so what are you waiting for? The time has come today!
For twenty years, the libraries at Duke University have used Ex Libris’s Aleph integrated library system to manage library resources in a variety of formats and languages across the acquisitions, description, inventory, and delivery lifecycles. This requires the system to store, interpret, correlate, ingest, and output a variety of data types. Aleph has helped the libraries at Duke successfully steward existing resources and acquire upwards of 1 million new resources since 2004, including a proliferation of eBooks, eJournals, databases and streaming media. On July 10th, we will be sunsetting Aleph and implementing Ex Libris’s Alma system. Alma builds on the functionality and data models of an integrated library system and incorporates these into a library services platform that streamlines and aligns processes for selecting, acquiring, describing and delivering print and electronic resources. Much planning, careful data mapping and cleanup, and lots of collaboration among subject matter experts from across the libraries at Duke has brought us to the cusp of going live with Alma. Stay tuned for a follow-up post in the later part of July in which members of the Duke University Libraries Collections Services division will reflect on the work that led up to go-live and talk about the early days of working in Alma.
Comic book publishing has always been a commercial venture, so if a title fails to sell well, it’s cancelled posthaste. But fear not, intrepid comic book readers! The cancelled character may well be revived even decades later with different writers and artists and, perhaps, a different publisher. In the case of the early Captain Marvel titles pictured, the earliest dates from 1968 and the latest from 1975. These titles were published as separate runs with only the titular character and publishing house, in this case, in common. While it might seem unimportant to omit the volume numbering when you have a title that has 55 numbers published over 12 years, with all issues having the same volume number, that volume number serves as a clue to researchers that perhaps an earlier or later related title exists.
House “Liquid Love”
Destroys The Invaders “Conspiracy On Neptune”
1. How long has DUL been sending materials out to the Commercial Bindery (CB)? Since everyone who knew the history of binding at Duke University Libraries (DUL) has retired, we had to do a little research to find this answer. (Thanks to 
