During a routine shelf check on the lower level of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, library staff revealed a treasure trove hidden amid the oversized government documents. Too big for standard shelving and unwieldy to transport, these volumes had long evaded digital cataloging, but as staff carefully perused their pages, they were transported into the nation’s geographic, scientific, and political history.
Highlights included Ice Atlas of the Northern Hemisphere, illustrating seasonal and permanent ice packs over the Arctic in the 1940s, and The Growth of Industrial Art, published in the 1880s, illustrating historical technology in subjects ranging from timber and stone bridges, to agricultural implements like reapers, from the handheld sickle to horse-drawn machines, complete with details on their inventors and the decades they were most commonly in use. Ice Atlas of the Northern Hemisphere is also held in Special Collections & Archives, where it can be viewed on-site. The Growth of Industrial Art can be found in its entirety on the Internet Archive.
Library staff assessed the condition, format, and classification of each item. Brittle volumes were routed to the bindery, where Conservation Technician Shawn Gerwig and her student employee, Ailee Jones ’28, constructed custom enclosures for the most delicate pieces.
Meanwhile, Cataloging and Metadata Librarian Ryan Wheeler began the painstaking work of creating bibliographic records, so that researchers could finally find and access what had been hiding in plain sight.
The work is still ongoing. Once cataloging is complete, the entire collection will be transported to the Annex, the climate-controlled off-campus storage facility where over 90,500 other requestable items are held. There, they can be better preserved, but can still be requested at any time or digitized by section through digital delivery.
Months of quiet, meticulous work have transformed this forgotten collection into an accessible resource. Thanks to Collections Management staff, these documents now have a permanent place in the library’s catalog, and in its story.
This past Thursday, Meagan Doyle, Digital Archivist of Special Collections & Archives at Bowdoin Library, joined Maine Calling on Maine Public Radio to discuss oral histories. Firsthand accounts grant historians and archivists a deeper and more nuanced understanding of historical events and their effect on the people who lived through them. She and other panelists discussed some of the challenges in collecting and preserving them, as well as how oral history changes with new technology.
Whether it was food or knowledge you were craving, Friends of the Southport Historical Society served up a satisfying dish. Southport Town Hall was packed Aug. 4 for the group’s latest installment of the Donald and Joyce Duncan Lecture Series, “Cookbooks as Historical Evidence,” led by Marieke Van Der Steenhoven, Bowdoin College’s Special Collections Education and Engagement librarian.
Linnea Minich, Research and Instruction Librarian at Bowdoin Library, delivered an interactive workshop titled “Citation Needed: Weaving Together Citation and Information Sharing with WikiEdu”, at 