Countdown to London, June 13, 2007

This evening I'm baking three batches of brownies to bring to the library tomorrow. For the past six months I've been working as a cataloging assistant at Columbia University's Butler Library. Columbia has many libraries, with a total of over 700 employees, many of which are librarians. Columbia also has an e-publishing department.
I've been working on a special project involving a private collection. Columbia acquired a building in Venice, Italy, after the death of its owner, Michelangelo Muraro, a well known and respected art historian and critic. Muraro's collection comprises approximately 7,500 volumes of books on art, art history, architecture, criticism, philosophy and history. The books themselves are physically in Venice, and the only existing catalog up to now was a card catalog which had been compiled manually by a person working in Casa Muraro who had had no formal training as a librarian. Needless to say, these cards display a rather creative and inconsistent array of "rules". I have been entrusted with the task of creating the first electronic catalog for this collection, using a combination of copy and original cataloging. My boss is also my teacher at Pratt and my mentor at Columbia. His name is Rick Block and he is the head of special collections and meta data cataloging. Rick and I devised a method for the creation of spare but decent records for the cards that need originals, and as we go along we tweak and improve on the basics as much as we can.
It's been a wonderful experience for me. I've met many amazing people. The librarians at Columbia are full of surprises. Many of them have had varied and fascinating careers; some of them have other jobs; all of them have a variety of fascinating interests. They have all been very supportive and have helped me in my many moments of need. My catalog has materials in many different languages, including of course Italian, but also English, French, German, Dutch, Greek, Croatian, Serbian, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and others I can't even think of right now. I've had good luck with most of them on my own, but my colleagues have been very helpful with the non-Roman alphabets, transliterating for me from time to time.

Here are a few photos of the Columbia campus, reason enough to get up in the morning, if you ask me.

This is Butler Library, where I work. One little drawback to being a cataloger: you will always work in the basement, no matter what library you're in. There are some exceptions to this rule, but not many. Ordinarily, the library orders books, and when they are delivered, they go in through the basement, where they are cataloged and finally sent to the stacks. For this logical reason, the cataloging department of most libraries is in the basement. It's a pity, with such a beautiful campus, that we catalogers only get to enjoy it at lunchtime. I do look forward to arriving in the morning, and we are allowed to sit in the grass, so lunch can be a picnic when the weather is nice.

This is the library on the opposite side of the campus, across from Butler. These photos don't look like regular snapshots. This campus is so beautiful that even an amateur like me can look like a professional.
Today is Wednesday, and tomorrow will be my last day at the library before my trip to London. I have made the brownies for my little going away party, and now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow I will add some links to some of the many resources available in the libraries at Columbia in the e-publishing area.

For now, goodnight and sweet dreams to all!