Have come into the Conservation section as there appears to be no other category that fits on UK Caving at present for Libraries/ Archives/ Collections...

As my club's librarian I am meant to be conserving/rationalising/sorting/sifting/ logging/ but perhaps, could also be wrecking an aspect of caving history in the process. ( I do promise I will try not to but until told otherwise..)

Therefore I am suggesting/requesting a caving/potholers discussion forum on UK Caving for Libraries and Archives at least to highlight a presence of the holders of collections in the forums discussions.(?)

Would be interested to compare notes with other such bods at Hidden Earth in September (I am happy to chair/host the gathering  at HE if you would like, but do require current IAG /moral support/ something longways before before then.

The club holds a collection of significance (as do many others), harping back into many years of caving history..  but currently it is held in shelves with years of accumulation plus boxes, piles, heaps, rolls, drawers,. many many journals with duplication accessible just to members..

- We do not currently hold a web based/ open access electronic archive as yet. But I could ask my Club Committee whether we could make that happen..

It would be very useful to hear more of the others experience with their clubs collections/libraries before that moment).

In my last posting I did have mutterings of replies of potential Hidden Earth gatherings and the Librarians Group? I was told that was Alan Jeffries initiative, and then there was loads of fairly different suggestions towards presentation of collection electronically and software formats.  Any collective guidance will be useful.

Can we make a bit more sense of the situation?

Otherwise I could spend many hours gloriously building something I want that no one else can access ... (hee hee)

Regards
Speleotel  x

Split and moved from the 'Smashed formations' thread.

I think there is a valid reason for having a caving literature sub forum - which could encompass all aspects of errr.... cave literature.

We do not currently hold a web based/ open access electronic archive as yet

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One option, would be LibraryThing which is about as good online catalog host as you'll find. Entry is not restricted to just books (although optimised for them) ranging from automatic importing of ISBNs to full manual description over a variety of fields. Easily brousable by vistors as an added bonus.
It is free for the first 200 items and a 1 off charge of $25 for lifetime thereafter, to add as many more as you like. The BCRA library is partly on BCRA library

Just a thought.

We (Brendan and I) are SUSS librarians and would be up for some sort of meeting at Hidden Earth.
We have a lot of stuff to organise - it's taking over a whole room at the moment...

The Eldon Library is a vast array of stuff spanning 50 years. For a long time it was split up - put in boxes/bags, stored in various peoples lofts/spare rooms etc.

Last year - JB bit the bullet and gathered it all in one place - a Set of Shelves at someones offices. He spent ages sorting it all out. Its nowhere near fully sorted but at least its all together - in one place.
He started cataloging it - and spent nearly a full week - 9 to 5 working on it with his girlfriend. The reckon they did about 6000 individual items - about a third of the library.
Then his laptop got stolen in a break in.

If your gonna do something similar - take regular backups, then take backups of your backups. then back them up and hide them somewhere safe... you get the picture.

LibraryThing looks interesting... could be ideal for something like this.

pisshead said:

We (Brendan and I) are SUSS librarians and would be up for some sort of meeting at Hidden Earth.
We have a lot of stuff to organise - it's taking over a whole room at the moment...

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If you think this will fly, make a request to the lecture secretary and we should be able to find you a meeting room and a slot in the schedule. Contact details on www.hidden-earth.org.uk

Cookie said:

If you think this will fly, make a request to the lecture secretary and we should be able to find you a meeting room and a slot in the schedule. Contact details on www.hidden-earth.org.uk

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It's perhaps worth adding that although the website is still the 2008 ones, the 2009 Lecture Secretary is still Emma.

Hi all,
I used librarything to do an initial stockcheck of the BCRA Library as a quick fix when I first started in post.  It's used by a good few voluntary agencies. I also like the way you can share your information with others as well as discover who else has your taste in books.  It's used a lot for social networking too and I subscribe to the librarians group.

We chose  Koha for the British Caving Library catalogue, it's open source and not really ideal, there has been a lot of tweaking to do by a good soul who burns the midnight oil!  It's probably overkill for smaller libraries.  However, if you have money to spend, there are some good Software as a Service (SaaS) systems out there. There are of course some more expensive web-enabled commercial systems available too such as Heritage, OCLC, Soutron etc.  A straightforward list in word or something is often perfectly adequate and some libraries use reference management software such as Endnote or Reference Manager.

More important than the package or system, is to have in place procedures for updating.  Whatever it's written in, if you don't keep an eye on it and regularly update there's really no point.  There are lots of small libraries which have put their library catalogues online with great enthusiasm but without someone taking responsibility for updating they quickly become useless for your members/customers/users.

There is a move towards a European 'virtual' Caving Library which will link us all up, this would be great.  Funding is presently being sought.

Janet Nash

Hi Janet

Very useful post, thanks. Couple of years back we started trying to index the UBSS library using Endnote & made some progress, though an ever changing student population and a few computer "issues" meant that progress stalled after a while.

The problem with reference management software like that was that it was fine for listing books, but it was less useful for journals as its basic entry unit would be the "paper" rather than the "bound volume".

You are quite right, of course, about the need to keep such things updated, especially "living" collections where journals are being received all the time and where loose journals are bound up at regular intervals.

Would librarything or any of these other programsalso handle archive items, maps, photographs etc.?

Have you taken a look at DSPACE an opensource digital libraries project?

http://www.dspace.org/

graham said:

Would librarything or any of these other programs also handle archive items, maps, photographs etc.?

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The 'paid for' specialist library systems can handle all of those formats - and more.  You could customise fields in Librarything to include whatever you want.  However brilliant I think it is, it isn't really intended to be an academic library system and probably wouldn't be ideal for what you want, - but have a play, it's free.  There's a real dearth of web-enabled library management systems for small libraries in voluntary organisations, I've spoken to masses of small libraries who all moan about it as well as reps from the big companies who recognise the gap but can't do anything about filling it.  There are nice freebies to use in-house, or people write their own.  But making them available on the net sends the price rocketing.  

A gap for some techie entrepreneur to fill perhaps?

dave_the_cave said:

Have you taken a look at DSPACE an opensource digital libraries project?

http://www.dspace.org/

Click to expand...

Thanks, but that seems to be purely for digital collections, not for books & stuff.

Edit: Why does this bloody board leave so much space in between quote tags such that the closing tag vanishes off the bottom of the screen & you end up writing within the post that you are quoting? I have never come across this elsewhere.

Oh, and I need it to run on Linux as well.

damian said:

It's perhaps worth adding that although the website is still the 2008 ones, the 2009 Lecture Secretary is still Emma.

Click to expand...

Yes, website will be updated soon.

Emma is still the Lecture Secretary for the time being.

Would librarything or any of these other programsalso handle archive items, maps, photographs etc.?

Click to expand...

No problem adding maps to LibraryThing. Essentially LT uses two key fields "title" and "author" to list works, (and ISBN but that's probably not so applicable) so for a photogragh you'd have to invent a title - Picture of X, there's a discriminating  limit of the first 20 characters so don'y start all of them with a long identical prefix, and then as author you'd probably list whoever took the photo.

After that there are lots of other fields available for you to include more detailed descriptions etc.

An ideal event Cave literature event at Hidden Earth for me would be;

a short (one hour) gathering of library custodians with beer, post lectures + pre dinner on the Saturday, could happen in the bar. I would like to meet other caving club library bods to make contact and exchange views, journals and email addresses. 

? is there a current Caving Club Librarian Contact List or do I pick that up through osmosis?

By September I intend to have identified a range of duplications for exchange plus will have identified some gaps as well. Currently the library list is in Word but I am logging the journal heaps/piles/boxes in Excel in order to use filtering for listing duplications and missing bits. Not sure I am ready for anything more in depth than that, would like to find the time to index the clubs stuff as well.

'Speleotel' is Martell; email martell at talk21 dot com and its the BPC library that I have been trusted with.

Best wishes , 'tell

mate, do something about your email address or you'll have more spam than you ever want.

speleotel - informal meeting sounds good - I also don't want to miss out on lectures.
Maybe we could all bring spares with us...??

Re Hidden Earth meeting,there is a slight problem with the time after lectures and before the dinner as it is taken up by the BCRA AGM, which you all attend of course  :chair:

Re; Maybe we could all bring spares with us...??

The Club library has a substantial number of duplicate BPC Bulletins that I can bring along to HE to exchange. I am considering filling a table within the BPC stand.

The duplications of club bulletins and Descent back issues are taking up a substantial amount of shelf space which is very limited; sorting in the library is like playing with a Rubiks cube - you shift one thing and everything else has to be moved so interested in thinning out the collection. I can now make available to you what duplication I have in BPC Bulletins and Descent if anyone is interested in a exchange moment? But still have many hours of sifting and ordering to do before I find out what is in the other heaps ( seem to have shedloads of Belfry Bulletins and Wessex stuff that I have not ventured into yet)

If any club librarians are planning to be up at the dump in the near future do say when you are booking and I can meet you there and you can see what there is of your club stuff we have in the collection. If we have something you are wanting I could get it photocopied/scanned if its not too much in quantity.

Thats why I think a  caving librarians forum/group would be useful to resurrect again.......

Cheers Speleotel