Our most visible students are the ones who work at circulation desks checking materials in and out, reshelving and retrieving items, and answering phones. Less visible to library users but no less important to library operations are the student assistants who work behind the scenes in Reference, Interlibrary Loan, Acquisitions, Cataloging, Serials, Government Documents, Administration, Special Collections and the Bindery. These students assist library staff with the many tasks involved in making and, just as importantly, keeping library materials available to library patrons. One of the least glamorous but most important library activities is inventory, the process in which what is actually on the shelf or on loan is checked against our holdings list. The library computer system, Tripod, compares these bar-codes to library records of our holdings in that section and points out problems such as missing or misshelved books, incomplete Tripod records, and incorrect call numbers.
Inventory is time-consuming and tedious.
However, with library collections shelved in six different locations on campus and circulated among three college communities, it is the only truly effective way for the libraries to keep records current and identify missing items for replacement. In contrast to the routine of inventory-taking, bindery work provides students an opportunity to learn the specialized skills involved in bookbinding and conservation. A recent project involved the conservation of a three-volume first edition of Charles Dickens' novel, Great Expectations, which arrived in the bindery with worn and detached covers, a broken binding, and deteriorating paper. Emily Clark '98, working with Bruce Bumbarger, the Library Bookbinder, disbound the books, washed and deacidified the pages, mended tears, and resewed the binding. She reconstructed the covers using a special Japanese paper to reinforce and fill in missing sections of the cover cloth.