Before working at the library, I had some cataloging experience when working with the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum. The main difference between the two experiences was what I was cataloging. Over the summer, the majority of my work in the back was spent either reshelving books in our library, and the digitization of camera film slides from the collection.
My cataloging here in the library has been spent on organizing and giving call numbers to campus records from the archives. These records were from Board of Trustees meetings from when Ferrum was a training school and junior college, College Council meetings, Ferrum College Faculty Handbooks, and many, many more. Plenty of individual documents, or sets of documents were not already organized into binders or folders, so they needed to be put with the materials they belonged with.
Alongside organizing and cataloging the records, I was also tasked with shelving the material so that it is possible to find them, as well as make it possible for them to be transferred to a more ideal location within the archive at a later date. This was only pushed off due to there being more shelves erected upstairs on the third floor for more books to be accessible to students. This has hindered the shelving of the cataloged records until all the other books have been moved and there is a space as well as the time to reshelve them.
While most people would have likely had negative feelings towards having to sift through, organize, catalog, give call numbers to, and shelve a large volume of paperwork spanning back a little over a hundred years to the college’s founding, I have previously had some experience in this kind of work, and the type of work allowed me to move at my own pace. I have thoroughly enjoyed gaining more experience in this sector that applies to both library and museum work.
