May 2025 – Out of the Box

May 30, 2025June 12, 2025 by Stephen Cameron

The End of the Semester

Welcome back everyone for the last update I’ll be doing this semester!

Over the course of the past number of weeks I’ve learned a lot about the inner workings of the cataloging system and how libraries work a bit more behind the scenes. At times it felt like a bit of a firehose when it came to the amount of information I had to learn about in a relatively short amount of time, but in the end I got into a good groove and was able to get, what I feel, was a good amount of work done. While I did have the general system down, I always felt like there were these farly quirky or niche things that I needed a little more guidance on (for example, in some call numbers there would be a lowercase letter here or there which signaled an incorrect call number, in other cases however, there could be. It all depended on the letter and where it was found).

In light of all that, this past week I finished up the rest of the Gomez Mexican-Mormon History collection, including all of those surprise boxes I mentioned earlier. In the lsat of the boxes, there were more copies of the Book of Mormon in a few other languages, a number of books published by the Museum of Mexican Mormon History, and minutes from a variety of conferences from the early 20th century.

After completing those, I was asked to start entering some information into ArchiveSpace regarding some unofficial newspapers from BYU called the Student Review. Among those were a couple of issues from the Student Enquirer which included this gem that I felt like I needed to include in this blog post:

All of this with the library and Special Collections has been a wonderful opportunity for me to learn and to grow in new, and definitely unfamiliar, ways. I hope you all have learned, at least a little, along with me this semester!

All the best,

Stephen Cameron

May 23, 2025May 27, 2025 by Stephen Cameron

The New Boxes

Welcome back everyone! I apologize for no post last week, but I’m back now and have a few updates for you regarding that batch of surprise boxes that we found a couple of weeks ago.

Regarding the A/V box that we had, after I had completed the inventory for it and made a list for the materials missing to properly store the contents inside, someone else in the department took the box so the proper items could be ordered. Afterwards, the box was then taken and entered into our ArchivesSpace folder that we have for the Gomez collection, so from what I understand here is that that box is now complete!

With that box done, I have continued working on the last of the boxes that we have in the collection. There have been a number of books written by Fernando Gomez and published by the Museum of Mexican-Mormon History, a number of autobiographies (such as a copy of The Life and Times of Harvey Hyrum Taylor), as well as some other histories of the Mormon history in Mexico.

Today I started working on a box with a set of the History of the Church by B.H. Roberts, and the autobiography of Junius S. Romney. While I won’t finish that today, I will be able to complete that box, as well as the last two boxes, next week.

That’s all for me this week! Until next time.

Stephen Cameron

May 10, 2025May 27, 2025 by Stephen Cameron

A/V Materials and Some Surprise Boxes

Hello again everyone!

I know in my last post I mentioned that I had finished up all the Liahona periodicals in the boxes that I had been working on, however there were a couple of other extra Liahona copies that I had to go find in the WorldCat records and enter them into the system if they were there. Alongside those two or three copies, were a couple of other miscellaneous monographs,

I thought I had finished up most of the Gomez collection which would open me up to work on the last box of A/V materials. At least, that’s what I thought would be the case. Lo and behold though, I was directed to another five boxes of materials that had been stowed under the the table of the room that I do my work in! That being the case, I have a few more items that will keep me occupied for the next few weeks. Although, we don’t know what, exactly, is in these surprise boxes, so next week I’ll have to take some time to go through the boxes and separate out what will be staying with the cataloging side of things or will be heading over to the archivists in Special Collections.

That being said, today I was able to go through the A?V box, which seems to contain a number of older VHS tapes and oral histories that had been passed along to CGU with the collection. The first step with it was just to sift through the materials and see what was in there and whether or not they have any sort of protective covering. Now that that’s done though, Next week I’ll most likely be spending time adding the A/V material into the archival finding aide, but that will have to wait until then.

As for this week, that’s all I’ve got for you. Until next time!

Stephen Cameron

May 2, 2025May 8, 2025 by Stephen Cameron

Making Sense of the Liahonas

This week, I started working through the two boxes that contained a number of Liahona periodicals. The majority of the twenty-two bound texts ranged between 1945 and 1955, so, when it came time to start cataloging them, I had to get a refresher on how to create Local Holding Records for serials. However, before I could get to cataloging, I had to separate the Liahonas into different groupings to make the different LHR copies, and putting similar copies into the same copy groupings, To my surprise, this took a little longer to do than I had initially anticipated. Once I separated them out, it was a relatively easy, if not long, process to enter their information into the OCLC records.

Sorry it’s a shorter post this week, but I’m glad I was able to eventually finish this up! Next week, I’ll be finishing up some miscellaneous monographs that were left over before moving onto the box of A/V materials.

Until next time!

Stephen Cameron