A spellbindery tale revisited

This article originally appeared in the Nov. 6 issue of Wisconsin Week. Story and photos are by Michael Forster Rothbart, University Communications. The expanded version of this article, as it appears below, was revised by Erin J. Buege, Richard Reeb, Karl Debus-Lopez, Irene Zimmerman, Robin Rider, Tanner Wray and Dineen Grow.

Walk into Memorial Library. Find a call number on the chart inside the elevator and ride up to a floor. Go to the stacks and–voilà–there are books about the very subject you are seeking. It’s simple, really, and it’s what we expect of our libraries. But what it takes to get those books on those shelves is anything but simple.

The library, with its 3.4 million volumes, is the university’s largest, as well as the state’s. Its collection grows by, on average, more than 250 volumes and 700 journal issues per day. Eighty library staff order, process invoices, and organize this onslaught of books, journals, disks and digital files.

Acquiring new books for Memorial Library begins with one of more than a dozen bibliographers, each responsible for selecting titles in specific subject areas. Titles requested by these subject specialists are submitted to Acquisitions for ordering. Orders are placed with thousands of vendors
and publishers depending upon the subject or place of publication. When books arrive, they are unboxed in the mail room and delivered to Acquisitions to be inventoried and paid. Above, Nancy Schaefer, library services assistant, moves newly acquired books onto shelves in the Cataloging Department.

A team of catalogers with subject and language expertise creates catalog records which describe each item that is entered into the library's database. Catalogers compare each book to the library’s holdings, helping to decide exactly where a book should be shelved. At right, Florita Louis de Malavé, academic librarian and Spanish/Portuguese cataloger, inscribes in a book the call number she has just created for it.

At left, in the Marking Room, student Jessica Schroeder, right, prints labels for book spines while Donna Sievwright, library services assistant, operates a machine to add magnetic security strips. A collage of images cut from discarded dust jackets covers the walls.

David Kaufman of Access Services, below left, sorts new and returned books by call number into 20 bins in the central sorting room of Circulation–a task done with about 625,000 volumes each year before delivery to the proper floors. Below right, George Shepard, a library services assistant, completes the process by placing each book right where it belongs on the shelf.