This week isn’t terribly exciting regarding any form of entering new cataloging records into the library’s system, so there won’t be any updates on that end. However, on Monday I was asked if I would be able to fix a slight issue that we had regarding the Aeon links we were using on the Special Collections website. These are the links that people could use to request the books that have been uploaded into the system, so, In light of that, I spent most of this week going in an fixing up the records of the books I had input over the past few weeks.
That’s all I’ve got for today, I’ll be here for another update next week!
After learning the general catalogining process for the items that I would be cataloging, I was able to finish up the Community of Christ collection that we had and moved onto the Gomez Mexican-Mormon Collection. This collection is what I’ll be working on for the foreseeable future since there are a lot of boxes to work through with a lot of exciting items to look at and log into the system!
Here are a few pictures from one of the books I came across as I was cataloging. It is from a self-published book by Eran A. Call that he titled LaHistoria de la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias (Los Mormones).
La Historia de la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias (Los Mormones).
This book is a brief summary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from its origin up to, assumed to be roughly, the date of publication. What particularly struck me in this book were many beautiful illustrations throughout the book that depict various events throughout this church’s history. Here are a couple of them:
I’ll apologize here for some of the image quality, the pages in the book are glossy and the lighting in the room made it somewhat difficult to get a picture lith less light glare in it. However, that being said the quality of the illustrations and pictures captures that Eran Call is attempting to portray in this book.
While I am cataloging part of tje Gomez Mexican-Mormon Collection, a large portion of it pertains to Eran Call, who was an LDS mission president in Mexico, and his writings as well as many of his possessions that he had that were eventually passed on to the owner of this collection. With that in mind, I think books like this are great additions for the collection as a whole and I can’t wait to see what else is in here.
This week was about learning the cataloging process and starting to work through the Community of Christ collection that Special Collections had recently acquired. This is done through the creation of both local bibliographic data (LBDs) and local holdings records (LHRs). The creation of these two records allows for people to then search through Special Collections on the libraries website to see what we may, or may not, have, and from which one could request the item to view in the Reading Room.
As of right now, I only search through WorldCat to see if there are any bibliographic records at any other libraries worldwide, and create LBDs and LHRs accordingly, any records not found (as in, original books or otherwise) will be handed over to Cataloging and they will create a new record from there.
For me, it has all been a new process for me to learn as I have never had to play around with this side of the library or this part of the archival process. That being side, it has been a positive, enlightening experience that I believe will help me later on down the line in whatever career path I end up in.
After learning about the fundamentals of cataloging, I started working through the Community of Christ collection and creating LBDs and LHRs for the books I had prepped last week.
That will be it from me this week, I’ll be back next week to give an update on what I’ve been working on!
Hello everyone, I’m looking forward to working as a CCEPS Fellow this semester! This first post seems to be the appropriate place to give you all a brief introduction of myself before I get into the materials I’ll be working with. My name is Stephen Cameron, I graduated with a B.A. in History from Brigham Young University-Idaho in 2018 and more recently I received my M.A. in Religious Studies from Claremont Graduate University in 2022. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student in the Religion Department at Claremont Graduate University with an emphasis in Mormon Studies and New Religious Movements.
I’ll be contributing my efforts towards some collections that Special Collections has procured over the past few years. The main collection I’ll be working on is the Fernando R. and Enriqueta Gomez Collection in Mormon Mexican History, I will also be working with a number of Community of Christ monographs. There may be other items I’ll end up working with, but until then it will be a journey!
This is as good a place as any to admit that, while I am relatively familiar with both of these collections and their subject matter, this is a wholly new process for me to learn! I learned research and writing skills during my academic studies, but now I’ll be grappling with some of the technical aspects of archiving and processing. I hope you’ll tune into my updates as I make our way throughout the semester!
