A New System for conducting The Rare Books Inventory:

1. A New System for conducting The Rare Books Inventory: An interview with Bess Missell at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries Conducted by Karen Tripp

2. Where: Smithsonian Institution Libraries • A combined collection of 20 libraries with approximately 1.5 million volumes • Formally organized in 1968: the various museum and research center library collections were united together into a single umbrella organization. • The SI Libraries include 40,000 rare books, housed in several collections within different museum libraries.

3. Rare Books collections • Housed primarily in two libraries • The Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, in the American History Museum • The Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, in the Natural History Museum • There are also smaller Rare Books collections within several other museums library collections, including: • The Freer Gallery of Art & the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Library • National Air & Space Museum Library • American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library

4. Who: Bess Missell • Librarian, Smithsonian Institution Libraries • Metadata Services • Systems Support • Led the Task Force to develop a new Rare Books Inventory system

5. What: A new Inventory System • Implemented the use of laptops using Excel Spreadsheets to upgrade and streamline the process of conducting the periodic Rare Books Inventory • The special nature of the Rare Books Collections necessitates the periodic review of the inventory • The books and other materials in the collection are located physically located every book and check what is actually on hand against the official record • Each collection runs such a review every 2-3 years

6. Why: The motivation • The previous system was slow and cumbersome: • Each library would contact Bess Missell when they were ready to conduct their inventory and she would print a hard copy of that collection’s entire inventory • Volunteers would go into the stacks with _huge_ reports (hundreds of pages long) and do a shelf-read • Prone to inaccuracies • Small discrepancies in the way items were recorded on the shelf versus in the system • Items were frequently listed as “not found” • Not very helpful for later review or consultation • Ended up with pages of hand-written notes

7. The Proverbial Straw that broke the camel’s back • Last winter the Dibner Library – one of the Smithsonian’s larger Rare Books collections was starting to do their latest inventory • Very slow and time-consuming without yielding very good results • A group of librarians approached Bess about how to improve the situation • They decided to create a Task Force to look at possible solutions

8. HOW: The steps to design a New Inventory • The task force met several times to discuss ideas • Constrained by the realities of small budgets and lack of fancy equipment • They came up with a plan to make use of resources they already had on hand: • Latop computers (the IT department had several for librarians’ use for special projects) • Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets

9. The New process • As requested by a Rare Books Collection librarian, Bess creates an Excel spreadsheet from the ILS catalog • 2 people work together: one carrying the laptop and the other doing the shelf-read • Any relevant notes about discrepancies, etc, are typed directly into the laptop. • Chose the American Art and Portrait Gallery as their test inventory (relatively small– only about 800 volumes.)

10. Preliminary Results • Simple but effective • Much more efficient and accurate • Can sort the data various ways and use the find feature! • Problems: • Most area do not have WiFi, so there is no possibility for a live comparison to the ILS • Requires two people at once; it isn’t practical to juggle the laptop while looking in the stacks

11. What’s next • Task Force is still meeting, and a more ambitious test case is planned, using the Cullman Collection (about 10,000 volumes) • They are scheduled to present its final report to the Office of the Director this summer; at this point Bess thinks the recommendation will be to use the system they’ve come up with for the foreseeable future.

12. Some Reflections: • Real-world technology implementation can be surprisingly low-tech • Relatively low-tech solutions can still yield fairly powerful results from the perspective of those on the ground • Even such simple systems seem to require fairly complex steps to accomplish (task force, etc--) and still are relatively slow to be implemented

13. questions? Comments?