For over a hundred years, endless rows of oak drawers filled with index cards served as the primary guide for collection information for countless Library staff. The Library’s card catalog is actually a combination of many catalogs and served as the public’s main bibliographic information access point for books and periodicals until 1980, and despite our current online catalog, staff continue to use the wealth of information found on these index cards. Recently the Library decided to move these catalog cards from the oak cabinets found across the Capitol Hill campus to offsite storage and the Collections Management Division was tasked with inventorying and transporting the cards while simultaneously ensuring their accessibility.
Geanie Jackson is the new administrative officer within the Collections Management Division (CMD), but she is not new to the Library of Congress. While Geanie has been a go-to for all sorts of topics over the years, in her current role she is the beating heart of CMD. In this interview, Geanie shares insights into her career journey, daily responsibilities, and wide-ranging personal interests that make her a much-loved part of the Library's team.
In 2022, a software company operating a library inventory management system went out of business, leaving several large libraries in the lurch. Over the last couple years, the Library of Congress, along with other libraries in the ReCAP Consortium got together to create FETCH, a new inventory management system.
On Friday, March 8th, staff from each division of the Preservation Directorate were invited onstage at Washington, D.C.’s comic convention, Awesome Con, to speak about their work at the Library as part of the convention’s Science Fair. This is their story.
Learn about the Library of Congress’ book detectives. This team of Collection Specialists works within the Collections Management Division (CMD) to find the requested items that have gone missing from their shelf location.
Preservation administration is much like other types of management and administration, except that our bottom line isn’t financial profit. Instead, the goal comes in two parts: maximize the usability of collections in the present tense, and do that in ways that improve their odds of usability in the future. Read on to see how see how the Preservation Directorate is changing approaches to functional organization and budget planning to achieve these goals at the Library of Congress.
