Library Day in the Life: Day 2

As I stated yesterday, I am participating in Library Day in the Life, Round 8. Today is much more quiet than yesterday, as Tuesday is our "dark day" at the museum. This provided me an opportunity to do something a bit different with my day today.

Just as I was walking in this morning, one of the folks from our cleaning crew asked what exactly I did, and why my office is card-access. I told her very briefly what I do as a cataloger, and what my other duties are. I also explained to her why my office is locked. After I told her, she said that I must have one of the coolest jobs in the museum, and I cannot really argue with that. Nice to hear it from someone else, though! Afterwards, I wrote my first letter for the Month of Letters challenge and began searching the catalog and compiling a list of books I might want to look at for my presentation.

I am giving a lecture/presentation on March 11th at the Fayetteville Public Library about the museum, the library, and our collection of color plate books, with special emphasis on books from that collection that pertain to the Civil War. It is slated to be between 30 and 45 minutes, with a question and answer time to follow. This is the longest formal talk I have given since I was in the classroom, and so I have some background and refresher reading and research to do.

While I was pulling books from the stacks, I ran into several books by a colleague of mine, who (it dawned on me) is an expert on topics that pertain directly to my presentation. I stopped, and wrote him a letter asking for some advice to help with the presentation. It was a nice opportunity to say hello as well.



Afterwards, I moved to the other part of my desk (without a computer on it) and started reading and taking notes for my lecture. As we are closed to the public today, this was really a great opportunity to research and refresh myself on what is one of my favorite topics. I took several pages of notes, and my reading helped me to begin forming an outline for my accompanying slideshow.

After lunch, I came back and started work on an accompanying bibliography for the presentation - mostly on books that cover color printing in the Americas, but also for references for example books I will use in my presentation from our collection. I also began my search for public-domain scans or digital reproductions of these works to use in the presentation, as we do not have facilities to digitize rare books on-site. I am beginning to be excited about the presentation, and so if you are in the area, feel free to come and check it out!