The field museum library began making its collection of books in 1894. It's first books were a result of the columbian expedition of 1893. Over the years this collection grew to 275,000 books. The interesting thing about this library is that while it mainly supports the research staff of the museum, it is a library open to the public. Also the library is actually split up between 9 different departments throughout the museum. Some other things to note about the library is that they still use a card catalog as the primary organization method.
This is really due to lack of funding that most libraries seem to suffer from. There are also some other issues the library suffers from. For example, it is a old building. Therefore they have leaky cielings. On the other hand, old buildings are built strong and therefore they have no weight problems.
2 comments:
I thought it was really cool that they still used the card cataloging system. I understand it was convienent for them because of all the materials they have, but I just think its great when people stick with tradition.
By taking the different problems that the library is enduring into consideration, we can see that another challenge for libraries today is the ability to stand the test of time so that the same library may not only be available to our generation, but to generations that may come hundreds of years after us. In this case, meeting such a challenge is very crucial.
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