Blur

This is me.  Doing everything all at once, it feels like.  Two months in the life of a Preservation Librarian?  Blur.

Right after hosting the Angels project we wrote an NEH Challenge Grant. One week, 25 page narrative, and a giant team effort to create a budget and a fund-raising plan. I think we did a pretty good job, but it is NOT the recommended method for writing one of these things – generally one prepares a year or two ahead of time, consults with NEH, submits a draft six weeks or more beforehand.  However, I DO recommend it as a way to marshal the troupes.  Everybody pushed hard to get all the needed elements, and now we have a very clear vision for preservation and access.  We have all the boilerplate for new grants.  We have fund-raising goals and specific actions for meeting those goals.  We now have an understanding of what things will cost, and what can be considered cost-share.  We have donor and pledge letter templates.  We’ve got the tools in the toolbox and the administrative support to use them.  It was an educational experience, for sure.

That picture up there?  Taken by the Library Director, Gary Landeck, during my talk on publisher’s bindings. It was a “get ’em up fast” endeavor.  You can see them HERE. I’ve got ’em up on Flickr – although I’m still tweaking them and adding descriptions and links to Google Books. I’d like to link them to our OPAC but it’s too old for that function.  We’re looking for a new one – anyone have any suggestions?

On to the next thing: digitization of everything we’ve got.