Everyday this week for National Library Week, we’re introducing you to the different departments of the New Mexico State Library.
Not at all geeky and anti-social we in Technical Services love to talk about what we do! Please call, please visit, have some chocolate! We won’t make fun of you just because we know the rules better.
We catalog for the collections at the State Library: government documents (NM and US), reference and circulating (the “Dewey” collections), newspapers and more. We catalog all media formats and in all languages. We are up-to-date on all the standards, certainly RDA. We know all the classification schemes –we’ve got your number if you need it; just ask– we classify using Dewey, Library of Congress, SuDocs and our very own NM docs schedule. Over 20,000 items roll out of our bureau each year. Here’s our catalog 🙂
An especially busy line in our factory is the state publications shipping line. State law requires us to ship to NM libraries (plus the Library of Congress) copies of all the new NM docs that we can get our hands on. More agencies are publishing online and we store and distribute copies of digital docs, too: it’s all in our CONTENTdm system. Click here for recent shiplists. Here’s an old Hitchhiker post with the shipping story.
Bureau challenge: Making you all aware of the need to follow standards and to $$upport their implementation. The standards are changing more quickly, responding better to a world where searchers are simply banging on Google. For example, MARC is transitioning to BIBFRAME so that our users will discover library holdings info in their Bing or Google results.
Your turn: please contact us for any cataloging or digitization need. We’d love to give advice and to give you MARC records, too.
Staff trivia!! We are four librarians and one technician. Guess which cataloger went to Simmons, who went to Emporia, who went to Indiana, who went to Emory? Guess whose family has been in Northern New Mexico for generations? Who’s the Canadian, who’s from the Pacific Northwest, who’s that Hoosier, who’s that slow-talker from Tennessee?
Contact info:
- bradley.carrington@state.nm.us
- 505-476-9730
- our web page!
Don’t you love our candy dishes?