150 Years of Federal Government Publications at Illinois State (Normal) University

1. The Early Library¾A Rented Room with Donated Documents

When Illinois State Normal University opened for classes October 5^th, 1857, its classroom and library were housed in downtown Bloomington, on the third floor of Major’s Hall above “Humphrey’s Cheap Store.” Students were encouraged to bring books with them for their studies.

2. Donations from Prominent Congressmen

Of the 197 books making up the library in the rented room, more than half, 103, were donated government documents. Three nationally recognized Illinois congressmen—Senators Stephen Douglas and Lyman Trumbull, and Representative Owen Lovejoy—gave from their personal collections to lay the foundation for the University’s Library.

    

 3. The First Books in the CollectionAn inventory of the initial 197 books does not exist, but volumes in the collection reflect donations by inscriptions. This inscription is found within the title page of the federal government publication, Patent Office Report published in 1856.  Edwin B. Fiske received this book, now part of Congressional Serial Set volume 905, from Owen Lovejoy in February 1858.

4. Adding to the Library Collection Federal Depository DesignationRepresentative Owen Lovejoy not only gave from his personal collection, he also appointed the University as an official repository for government publications thereby ensuring that the Library would continue to grow without incurring added cost. 

5. Ongoing Tradition

The long standing tradition continues. Milner Library is  one of approximately 1,200 libraries in the nation guided by the principle that citizens have a right to “free, unimpeded, local access to official information produced by their Government.” Government resources, distributed originally in print and as well as electronically are a significant curricular resource for students at ISU. The value given to government information teaching and learning continues and civic participation evidenced by the University and promotes the concept of livelong learning.

FS and FTC progress

Two students working in the larger “General Reference” unit of the library have been diligent at typing up lists. Student N. and C. have typed up the a good chunk of the Federal Security agency books and all of the the Federal Trade Commission books. I’ve discarded 177 of the FTC documents. That’s equivalent to about four shelves (12 linear feet). It was roughly three hours of typing. I need to do better job of keeping track of staff hours devoted to these lists. My time is a wash, because I’m here in the library forever or connecting through the VPN at home anyway, but, the student hours are another story completely. I’ve had more consistent help from the students being paid than the community volunteer students. Volunteer student M. didn’t show again for her scheduled time.

Heard back from Admin on the staging issues–where to put the discard lists, what to put them on. The big news: I can wheel up to three carts into one of the associate dean’s offices. [Strange.] New carts were ordered yesterday.  Older wooden carts will be available soon. Kind of anti-climatic.

Off to make more collection decisions.

Onward and upward.

More discard lists

Volunteer Student M. finished discard list of Health Education and Welfare of 100 volumes. That list was posted today. She began working on a new list from Federal Trade Commission. A big, full chart.

I sent a query out to Admin asking about staging area for these discard books. No word on carts or empty shelving to put the lists as they wait for their six week wait. No word yet back.

Map of Docs Shelves Finished!

Today Student Volunteer K. finished the excel map of the documents shelves on the main floor of the library. Each three-feet documents shelf is represented by an excel cell that has been labeled with the beginning of the SuDoc class stem. With this map complete I can now begin to compare the space of documents against the use data I have dating back to 2000. After just a brief review of my use data against the map I can see some obvious collection decisions that can be made. Though the Federal Security Agency consists of 30 shelves, the bulk of the use is for the Office of Bulletin titles rather than the Public Health Service. I wish all decisions were so easy.

The HEs are going to be a real pain. Health and Human Services versus Health, Education and Welfare is going to take a while to sort through.

On the less pleasant side of the reorganization I sent out the Index of Patents discard list. This clears five shelves.  This is a drop in the bucket compared to the 100 shelves I need to move out.

Volunteer Student M. didn’t show up today (again). Maybe tomorrow.

Big and Little Volumes

Volunteer Student M. continued to type discard lists for the WTIC Commerce publications from the 1950s through 1960s. This series is crazy because it has maybe 50-80 separate titles bound into a book about 2-inches thick. It’s a lot of work to discard these books.

I took an easier route. I began typing a list of Patent and Trademark reference books from 1970 through 1997. Individual volumes can sometimes have a binding 4 inches thick. I quickly typed up 64 volumes in five minutes that remove about five shelves from the stacks. The difference between a big and little volume. Sigh.

Clearly, I should concentrate on removing the big books from the collection, but I can’t bring myself to look at size as a criteria for collection withdrawal.

Volunteer Student K. couldn’t make it in today. Such is life and depending on volunteers.

Hello world!

Every day in the library brings new and unexpected projects. Milner Library has been a federal depository library since 1857 and offers a great collection of government information to its ISU campus and community. Unfortunately, for as long as I’ve been at Milner, there have been special projects always requiring extra special work, usually involving collection development assessment.

Since 1999 I’ve been assessing the documents collection in our offsite storage facility. We need to have all older historic 300,000+ government resources out of this builidng by June 30, 2007. Most of these items have been discarded, though  I have saved some of the unique and historically important items.

Concurrent to this gigantic project is rearranging our six floor library. This project entails moving the current federal documents collection of approximately 300,000 print volumes from the main floor of the building up to the Social Science collection on the fourth floor. I was told about this project in February. In theory I need to discard a significant number of docs from the collection so that it will fit onto the Social Science floor. I was told at least 100 shelves need to be weeded, preferably by mid May of this year. (Yikes!) This blog will document this process.

My Administration has given me two volunteer works who will assist my other student worker. Typing discard lists is what the volunteers will be working on in the upcoming weeks. There are lots of other changes going on in the library, but here in this venue I’m really only concerned about my docs responsibilities. I can’t save the world.

I don’t anticipate that anyone out there in the world will care about this blog, but it will help me remember what I’ve done, what I need to do and maybe even help to give me some perspective on these massive responsibilities. Maybe someone will have some helpful advice or encouragement? Stay tuned!