Week 2

One of the classes I am taking this semester is a seminar in technical services, and this week I had an excellent opportunity to see some of what takes place in technical services at Millersville University.  D'Ann Ressler, the library business coordinator and former acquisitions technician, invited me to sit in on a training session with William Marshall, the new acquisitions technician, in which she went over the purchasing and receiving process in Gobi and Voyager.  By the end of the training session, I had a better understanding of how materials move through the acquisitions process, from selection to ordering, receiving and invoicing, to cataloging and physical preparation of the item, before the item finally arrives on the shelf where it is ready for people to use.  I was also able to talk briefly with Dr. Majorie Warmkessel, the special projects librarian, about the role of the selector in the acquisitions process, and I hope to talk to her again in the near future about the broader role that librarians play in collection development.

Later in the week, Dr. Marilyn Parrish, the university archivist and special collections librarian, invited me to attend a meeting with Christopher Raab, the archives and special collections librarian at Franklin and Marshall College, to hear how F&M used the digital service DSpace to create their digital repository, Scholars Square.  The digital repository is used to house and expose scholarly work created by the F&M community.  Christopher discussed the pros and cons of using DSpace, which he has found to be a great tool for creating F&M's digital repository.  DSpace gives librarians the ability to create different "communities", or collections, which can be searched and browsed, and to easily create metadata for each item.  The software is flexible, allowing librarians to craft a digital repository that will meet the needs of their specific community.  Christopher also discussed the advantages of having a digital space where faculty and students can easily share their work with the world.

After the meeting with Christopher, I spent some time with Marilyn Parrish and Janet Dotterer, the library technician who works in special collections, at Franklin House to learn more about Millersville University's special collections and archives.  Janet pointed out several interesting collections of work produced or collected by Lancaster County writers and artists.  Marilyn explained how the special collections are used to support the curriculum at the university, particularly with respect to the history of education and the field of history in general.  Several faculty members build the use of primary sources into their coursework, so the special collections are routinely used by students.  I was particularly intrigued by how Marilyn uses materials from the special collections to help students develop their critical thinking skills.  For example, there are two late-19th century books in the collection on the subject of whether women should receive a college education, one in favor of women attending college and one arguing against it.  By having students examine the arguments in these books, they begin to think more critically about the underlying assumptions and attitudes of these texts, which in turn leads students to think more critically about the messages that surround them in the present world.  This discussion with Marilyn lead me to see new possibilities for how special collections can be used to educate undergraduate students, and not just to support the research of graduate students and professional scholars.