[Genealib] Why do you rearrange your collection? and the RedBook

Mon May 8 09:29:49 EDT 2006

I hung on to this post to reply when I had time, and as the string has
developed now have a couple of things to say.  First, all jokes aside,
when I rebind a much-used title, I always match the color of the cover
as best as I can.  Not only patrons, but long-time staff members look
forget titles, authors and call numbers, but remember "the little red
book on the top shelf" and "the fat blue book next to the set of skinny
black books."  I finally put a fluorescent orange sticker on the spine
of one ready reference book that no one could seem to locate without my
personal assistance after re-binding (I was the villain who had it
rebound, therefore it was my responsibility to find it every time).  We
won't even talk about the atmosphere around here after shelf-shifting,
especially since that always involves choosing "victims" that are
inevitably somebody's pet resource to be moved to closed stacks to make
room in the Reading Room collection for new titles in more frequently
used categories.

Regarding arrangement of the collection:  The earliest part of our
collection is 101 years old, and to my knowledge the Archives Library
has never had a complete collection and/or catalog overhaul.  When I
direct patrons to our family history book collection, cataloged as 929.2
and Cuttered by main surname, I always tell them it is "mostly"
alphabetical, since after many versions of Cutter tables over the years,
the collection has not been in correct alphabetical order in a couple of
decades. 

We catalog county records transcription/index books in 929.3,
alphabetical and Cuttered by county, with individual Cutters for each
title.  This results in a few Cutters like "C582abc."  When we reshelve,
we don't put the titles within a county into strict Dewey order, we just
keep the books for a specific county together.  Our county history
collection was kept in a separate shelf area, where the 975's would
fall, but was cataloged the same way for years, until the Head Reference
Librarian, who preferred the alphabetical county style of arrangement,
went on vacation (10 or 12 years ago), and returned to find that the
cataloger, who also worked as a reference librarian and was addicted to
Dewey, had recataloged the entire county history collection into Dewey.
A map with the county names was marked with the Dewey number for each
county and taped to the backwall of the shelf to assist patrons (and
staff) in finding the Dewey number needed for the county being sought.
(The same was done for Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Maryland and
Ohio, the border state counties whose resources are also kept in the
Reading Room.  All other locales are in closed stacks).

Regarding the RedBook, I received an Ancestry Product Watch this morning
tooting the "new" and "updated" 3rd edition of the RedBook.  As far as I
can tell this is the exact same text that has been sold since 2004.  We
have a staff member who takes great pride in regularly purchasing and
then donating to the Archives Library new editions of several standard
reference books as they are published.  He bought this one in 2004,
which was great, but he bought it again in 2005 thinking it was "new."
He also subscribes to Ancestry Product Watch, and I just now had to
convince him that he didn't need to buy it again today, that it was the
same thing he already gave us. In addition to this staff member, I have
had patrons donate "new" editions of works that actually were reprints
(sometimes with different covers from the first printing), without even
a new preface or illustrations to differentiate the "new" from the
"old."  I urge everyone to check with me first, but of course they
seldom do so. 

Once past the initial release and the first year of sales, I think it is
fine to advertise a product as the "most recent edition" and give the
copyright date of the revision, but I think it is misleading to use the
terms such as "new" and "most up to date," etc., without any dates, past
that point of time.  Am I being too picky? 

Susan Scouras
Librarian
WV Archives and History Library
The Cultural Center
1900 Kanawha Blvd. East
Charleston, WV  25305-0300
(304) 558-0230, Ext. 742

	-----Original Message-----
	From: genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu
[mailto:genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu] On Behalf Of Craig R.
Scott
	Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 4:18 PM
	To: Librarians Serving Genealogists
	Subject: Re: [Genealib] Why do you rearrange your collection?
	Importance: Low

	The major reason to rearrange your collection is to find all of
the items that got misplaced and misfiled since the last time that you
rearranged your collection.

	My personal preference is by size and color. I really hate
publishers who reprint titles and change the covers so that when you are
looking for that red book it is now blue. Seem a patron liked the red
one and you had to replace it with a blue one. Fortunately The RedBook
will always be red, or will it?

	C.

	Craig R. Scott, CG
	President & CEO
	Heritage Books, Inc.
	65 East Main Street
	Westminster, MD 21157

	800 876-6103
	410 876-6101
	(fax) 410 871-2674
	crscott at HeritageBooks.com

	Visit our websites www.HeritageBooks.com and
www.WillowBendBooks.com

	Subscribe to Heritage Books eNews
http://www.HeritageBooks.com/hbsignup.htm

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