Collins Unbound

I’m pretty bad at endings. The conclusion is always the hardest part of a paper for me to write. I’m rubbish at goodbyes. This blog post has taken me the longest to write.

But, I still have to deal with them.

This summer has been absolutely incredible. I have had such a blast working here in the Archives & Special Collections, and I’m sad to see the end of it. I loved getting to learn about indexing methods, getting really familiar with Excel, solving mysteries, doing an oral history, finding weird advertisements, and dealing with the Library of Congress website (I may or may not have used the list of my earlier blog posts to make that list).

There were some frustrating aspects. Technology was sometimes less than cooperative. I was stuck inside for 8 hours a day yearning to be outside in the stunning Tacoma sun. It often felt monotonous—not in a bad way, just that it involved a lot of doing the same thing over and over again.

All and all, I’m so pleased with how my project has turned out (I’m still working on the finishing touches of putting it online) and I cannot think of a better way to have spent my summer. The most valuable thing about the summer, though, is that it gave me a look into the career possibilities in libraries and archives. As a recent college graduate, I’m still trying to figure out what it is I’ll end up doing with my life but this summer has allowed me to experience working in an archives which I’m now thinking I’d like to do in the future.

Archives & Special Collections, you’ve been good to me. Thanks for a fantastic summer!

Students leaving Collins Memorial Library, circa 1965

By: Jillian Zeidner

Those following the blog this summer will be aware of the work Jillian has been doing.  If you would like to hear more about Jillian’s project, please join us on Friday, August 9 at 10:00am, in the new Archives & Special Collections space outside of room 211.  Jillian will provide an overview of her work and findings from the student newspaper, The Trail.  Light refreshments will be served.

Stay tuned for next week when Jillian will be back on the blog to share her conclusions on her summer work.

I was out of town AGAIN this past week so I don’t have too much to report. But here, have another funny ad! This is for the 1965 Dodge Coronet.

The smaller text says:

“Chuck’s a swinger,” says she. “His Coronet is quick and clean, with a lean and hungry look. It’s equipped with a 426 cubic inch mill that will mock your turtle at the strip or on the street. He’s got four-on-the-floor, buckets, belts, carpets, console, spinners, and a padded dash. And he said that everything but the four-speed stick and the 426 was standard.” The she broke his back by asking, “Didn’t you pay extra for some of that jazz?” Don’t let the truth hurt you. Better see the all-new, hot new Dodge Coronet before you buy a (cuckoo), a (cuckoo-cuckoo), or even a (cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo).

Car ads have always been weird.

By: Jillian Zeidner

This week, I’m wrapping up the indexing piece of my project and beginning to actually format my Excel spreadsheets so they’ll be easier to transfer when I have to start putting the information online.

Right now, this is what my spreadsheets look like:

See all that red? Those are my random notes on what the subject heading of the article should probably be. What I’m working on is making all of those random notes into Library of Congress (LOC) official subject headings. The blue ones are headings that are closer to being LOC but may need to be updated or reformatted. But how to find the official LOC subject headings (which are called “authorities”)?

This (not) beautiful and (not) straightforward website. You’d think that the authoritative website on authorities would be much more streamlined. After all, it’s run by a place full of people whose livelihoods consist of cataloging and organizing information, and this website does not make one feel as if the information is at their fingertips. Using the LOC Authorities website requires a lot of digging and word manipulation.

But enough complaining. Ultimately the website is incredibly useful for finding relevant subject headings and determining where certain articles belong. I’ve just had to spend quite a bit of time finding those relevant subject headings.

Luckily, I’m not the only one who has struggled with using the LOC Authorities. A former UPS librarian created several thesauruses for specific things related to the University (a thesaurus in indexing is the specific system/group of headings consistently used in the index). And it’s in a much more user-friendly format…

Yep! Good old Excel. Much easier for me to use and does not require tons of word manipulation. Not everything in here is LOC official but it’s at least a lot closer than my own random headings that I’ve been using.

What’s the big to-do about using LOC Authorities? Using LOC headings will make the indexed articles searchable by subject and accessible to the general public, not just the campus community. It will allow the index to be included in larger database searches, not just in Sound Ideas. It makes my project mean so much more.

BONUS!

Right as I began to wrestle with the LOC Authorities website I came back across an article from the October 28, 1964 issue of The Trail about Collins Memorial Library’s conversion from Dewey Decimal system to the Library of Congress classification system, which is way more popular today. It doesn’t involve the LOC Authorities, but deals with the general domination of the LOC over all aspects of library life.

By: Jillian Zeidner

I’ve just returned from a ten day vacation, so I haven’t had time to really prepare a juicy blog post for this week. But I would like to present to you this gem of an advertisement from a 1964 issue of The Trail.

Because I definitely ski in a cowboy hat.

By: Jillian Zeidner

With each year, the columns in The Trail changed as old writers and new writers came in. At the beginning of the 1964-1965 academic year, one of the new columns/features was the provision of comedic “proverbs” as if they were serious advice. They were mainly space fillers, and for the most part they were just placed in random spots throughout each issue. Like this one:

Pretty much all of them are dubious and kind of weird. I know that’s supposed to be funny but…I don’t get the humor.

In the first few issues, the proverbs were contained in a column entitled “Confucius Say”. They were framed as if a non-native English speaker was writing them in the form of Confucian adages. I doubt that The Trail would run a column with this format, or at least worded this way, now. Some of the proverbs are hilarious.

From October 1, 1964:

My favorite is hands-down “Girl who wear glasses look better than girl who drain too many.”

From October 8, 1964:

These proverbs were very obviously things that everyone needed to keep in mind. They certainly provided some dubious advice.

By: Jillian Zeidner