Calling All Nerds! Eat Your Heart Out with This!
Alright, instead of being a poor New Year's sport and complain about how much my night/morning sucked, I'll instead treat you to a few photos of where I work every Thursdays and other days of the week (depending on coverage). I welcome you to the Library Research Annex (LRA)!
For starters, the LRA is another building the University bought around twenty years ago to house the older sections of its continually growing collection. All of the books are closed from public access but anyone may either go to the Annex building themselves and look at a book or request it to be sent to either of the two main libraries. Where I work is downstairs, filling orders for the patrons who want their books delivered, and, for the most part, I'm completely alone in a space that rivals the size of most public libraries (I don't know the exact size unfortunately).
Now, us worker bees at the Annex (there are four of us that split afternoon coverage), divide the downstairs part into two sections: the book room and the journal room.
That's the book room for the Annex and I'm standing at the very end so you get to see most of the moving shelves in the picture (although I'm pretty sure that the Quartos, the books over 28cm high, aren't seen here). Each row can be moving by using the cranks you can see on each side. However these shelves do have a mind of their own and you need to be careful when you open each one as they will certainly move on you! Not to mention the surprise you get when the books from on the top shelf start falling as you move the shelves or when someone else is down there with you and you worry about crushing them (or you!).
If I were actually at the Annex now, I could precisely tell you the number of shelves on each side per row, but, as I'm not working today, I would guess that it takes me about five seconds to walk down one row, making it roughly about twenty shelves per row and each row being approximately six shelves high. Basically I've got a at least a good 500,000 books in here and, considering the total library system I work for has around 1,500,000 books, I'd say that's a small estimate.
Most of these books were published between the years of 1900 to 1970, although a bunch of 2000s books made it over in the last move from the main library. However, I'm seen books that are from around at least 1880 and one from 1832. Those are rather awesome and are typically still shelved using the Dewey system (we converted to Library of Congress a while ago).
This next picture is of the journal room (about half-way down) and, every time I enter this sealed area, I get a big hit of mold and other unsavory items that are rotting away down here. There are also a bunch of lead pipes with an old, red, turn-style pump that sits in a corner and creeps everyone out who dares to go near there. I hate that area. *shivers*
Anyway, we have a bunch of journals, and microfilm/microfiche in the background and out of sight, including some of the famous ones like the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, Proceedings of the Chemical Society of London, British Medical Journal, and even Life, Good Housekeeping, and American Engineering. Some of these journals start from around 1860 or so, especially the first three, although Life and Good Housekeeping came towards the start of 1940/50. Whenever I get a request for those two I like to look through and see what they were teaching as our "family values" back then. Good for a laugh.
The oldest item I've ever come across is a journal from some time around 1790. Can't for the life of me remember what it was for but I'll find it again, someday.
Upstairs there's another section, devoted to "Special Collections", and they house the even rarer books, like our "Marsh" Collection and the "Rush Hawkins Civil War" collection, and the theses written by every student that went to the university.
It's my favorite part of the job, not to mention that most of my work is done within an hour or arriving, but that I get to blast the music (which can be quickly drowned out by the pipes working to keep the place at a very steady temperature and humidity) and cruise through some old, dusty, molding books.
And have I mentioned the freezer with all of the damaged books yet? No? Well, we've got one of those too.
And thank you for joining me on a slight tour of the Annex. I hope you enjoyed your stay. :D
P.S. - Sorry for the quality in the pictures. I had to use my phone and then upload them to facebook before downloading them to my hard drive and uploading them here. Ouch, that must really hurt the compression rate.
For starters, the LRA is another building the University bought around twenty years ago to house the older sections of its continually growing collection. All of the books are closed from public access but anyone may either go to the Annex building themselves and look at a book or request it to be sent to either of the two main libraries. Where I work is downstairs, filling orders for the patrons who want their books delivered, and, for the most part, I'm completely alone in a space that rivals the size of most public libraries (I don't know the exact size unfortunately).
Now, us worker bees at the Annex (there are four of us that split afternoon coverage), divide the downstairs part into two sections: the book room and the journal room.
That's the book room for the Annex and I'm standing at the very end so you get to see most of the moving shelves in the picture (although I'm pretty sure that the Quartos, the books over 28cm high, aren't seen here). Each row can be moving by using the cranks you can see on each side. However these shelves do have a mind of their own and you need to be careful when you open each one as they will certainly move on you! Not to mention the surprise you get when the books from on the top shelf start falling as you move the shelves or when someone else is down there with you and you worry about crushing them (or you!).
If I were actually at the Annex now, I could precisely tell you the number of shelves on each side per row, but, as I'm not working today, I would guess that it takes me about five seconds to walk down one row, making it roughly about twenty shelves per row and each row being approximately six shelves high. Basically I've got a at least a good 500,000 books in here and, considering the total library system I work for has around 1,500,000 books, I'd say that's a small estimate.
Most of these books were published between the years of 1900 to 1970, although a bunch of 2000s books made it over in the last move from the main library. However, I'm seen books that are from around at least 1880 and one from 1832. Those are rather awesome and are typically still shelved using the Dewey system (we converted to Library of Congress a while ago).
This next picture is of the journal room (about half-way down) and, every time I enter this sealed area, I get a big hit of mold and other unsavory items that are rotting away down here. There are also a bunch of lead pipes with an old, red, turn-style pump that sits in a corner and creeps everyone out who dares to go near there. I hate that area. *shivers*
Anyway, we have a bunch of journals, and microfilm/microfiche in the background and out of sight, including some of the famous ones like the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, Proceedings of the Chemical Society of London, British Medical Journal, and even Life, Good Housekeeping, and American Engineering. Some of these journals start from around 1860 or so, especially the first three, although Life and Good Housekeeping came towards the start of 1940/50. Whenever I get a request for those two I like to look through and see what they were teaching as our "family values" back then. Good for a laugh.
The oldest item I've ever come across is a journal from some time around 1790. Can't for the life of me remember what it was for but I'll find it again, someday.
Upstairs there's another section, devoted to "Special Collections", and they house the even rarer books, like our "Marsh" Collection and the "Rush Hawkins Civil War" collection, and the theses written by every student that went to the university.
It's my favorite part of the job, not to mention that most of my work is done within an hour or arriving, but that I get to blast the music (which can be quickly drowned out by the pipes working to keep the place at a very steady temperature and humidity) and cruise through some old, dusty, molding books.
And have I mentioned the freezer with all of the damaged books yet? No? Well, we've got one of those too.
And thank you for joining me on a slight tour of the Annex. I hope you enjoyed your stay. :D
P.S. - Sorry for the quality in the pictures. I had to use my phone and then upload them to facebook before downloading them to my hard drive and uploading them here. Ouch, that must really hurt the compression rate.