Poster Board Number: 65
Title: The Weird, the Rare, the Beautiful, The Old: Are There Hidden Treasures on Your Library Shelves?
Purpose: This poster provides suggestions to assist librarians in the identification of valuable materials that may have been overlooked in their library holdings.
Brief Description: Knowledge gained in an MLA continuing education course, “Rare Medical Books: A Hands-on Introduction,” alerted the authors to the possibility that valuable resources already in their library holdings may be unidentified. One must understand that a book’s “value” can result from numerous factors other than age, and “value” is not always monetary. Scarcity, local interest, publishing anomalies, archaic subject matter, author affiliations, unusual formats, or obsolete publishing practices can make an otherwise insignificant book quite valuable. Recording these valuable attributes in the bibliographic or item record of the library’s online catalog is essential to communicate this specialized information. It is also important to take these issues into consideration when weeding your collection.
Results: An understanding of these factors will help librarians look at their collections with a new set of eyes. The identification of these unique resources can provide added value to the library’s existing services. An edition of Gray’s Anatomy printed with Chinese woodblocks will add visual impact to a display; books on deadly diseases of the past bolster the historical significance of the collection; identification of a multi-edition cardiology textbook authored by a local faculty member demonstrates the institution’s impact on medical practice; and historic works on a local yellow fever epidemic increases community awareness of the library’s holdings.
Conclusions: Understanding and applying the guidelines presented in this poster can assist librarians in increasing the intrinsic value of their collections without the expenditure of additional funds.
Authors: Dee Jones, AHIP, Head, Cataloging Section; Deidra Woodson, Metadata and Digitization Librarian; Medical Library; Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Shreveport, LA
