Advice for Resurrecting an Orchid Society Library From Cold storage

[PeteM]

Hi All,

I have decided to try and dust off our local Orchid Society's library from cold storage and resurrect it for our members to use. I feel like many societies may be in the same position, with a waning membership there are less hands to go around to manage hard copy orchid books and this perk has fallen by the waist side as more important society tasks are addressed. Resurrecting our library is a Fall/Winter goal of mine and I am just now starting to research different approaches before I even touch the boxes of books in the storage unit. In my option this is one of the most treasured resources for new and experienced growers, as I recall thumbing through our hard copy library when I fist joined the society years ago.

Are there others out there in the same boat? Or have recently tried to harness the latest technology (library apps, databases, online spreadsheets) to more efficiently bring some of these treasures back into circulation for their membership?

If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear your experience. My initial thought is to be able to take a picture of the book with my phone, scan it's ISBN number, have it crawl online and populate the basics of the book .. then populate the entry with summaries and status if the book is 'On Loan' or 'checked in'. I feel like the technology is there for this now. There look to be a number of apps or web based options to use but wanted to see if anyone has had experience specifically with a library app that is best for sharing with other members. I'm open to all suggestions, even down to methods used with a basic spreadsheet. Maybe google sheets is the way to go.

So far I am looking into Tiny Cat. As well as other phone based App options.

Thanks for your input.

Pete

 

[big923cattleya]

I belong to two societies here in Michigan and within the last 2 years, they have sold off their orchid libraries. Why?
They take up storage space. Sometimes loads of space.
Some societies have a Librairian who volunteers to bring them back and forth to a meeting. That has become a pain in the butt. Plus usage by members is pretty small.
Why are libraries a thing of the past? The internet is the answer.
Hardly anyone read books, magazines or newspapers.

We at MOS Michigan Orchid Society sold off the last 20 or so volumes at our last orchid show in March. Most brought pennies on the dollar.
And let’s face it, prior to the internet, books gave us information quickly. Now, so many of the old, classic orchid books are, 25, 30 or 40 years old. Information changes, new growing methods are in use.
It was the same thing in SW Florida and 16 years ago on Long Island.

 

[PeteM]

I belong to two societies here in Michigan and within the last 2 years, they have sold off their orchid libraries. Why?
They take up storage space. Sometimes loads of space.
Some societies have a Librairian who volunteers to bring them back and forth to a meeting. That has become a pain in the butt. Plus usage by members is pretty small.
Why are libraries a thing of the past? The internet is the answer.
Hardly anyone read books, magazines or newspapers.

We at MOS Michigan Orchid Society sold off the last 20 or so volumes at our last orchid show in March. Most brought pennies on the dollar.
And let’s face it, prior to the internet, books gave us information quickly. Now, so many of the old, classic orchid books are, 25, 30 or 40 years old. Information changes, new growing methods are in use.
It was the same thing in SW Florida and 16 years ago on Long Island.

Thank you for the input. The sale of the collection came up at our last board meeting. I agree to some extent. Especially for the orchid magazines, which have been largely digitized and beyond my scope.

However, the genus specific books I feel are priceless and worth one more shot at preserving before we dissolve the collection.

Plans are to have the collection reside
In my personal home, with the catalog available online to members. Check books in and out .. checked out books carted as needed to the meetings.

I would like to hear input from others that have had success and failures using technology as leverage for this task.

Thanks!

 

[big923cattleya]

Sure thing!

 

[NYEric]

I'm working on the library at my model railroad club; going through boxes and entering the book/magazine info into an EXCEL spreadsheet. First thing, check for damage from pests...

 

[Sky7Bear]

Speaking as a retired librarian, I have to wonder if anyone will use such books.

One option might be to see if your local public library would add the materials to their collection and manage it.

If you want to see the cataloging record librarians use, check out Worldcat.

Simple spreadsheet might work, and shelve by author?

Harvey

 

[richgarrison]

Sepos liquidated our library 10 or so years ago when we left the last venue with a permanent closet where it was setup like a library (ya, it was a big closet).

I understand the perceived value, but if you are offering it as a product to your membership, consider who will both value it AND use it.

I was in that category of someone that valued it and used it…. And now have a very nice personal library, care of Sepos selling off theirs. ;-).

No one yet has asked to borrow anything I purchased.

 

[southernbelle]

Pete: it might just be you, me and a couple of outside growers, Patrick, Dave Off, Keith Davis who have an interest in the historic orchid stuff. But until it’s catalogued you don’t know what you’ve got.

 

[orchidsinabq]

The New Mexico Orchid Guild lost most of its library to an unscrupulous librarian some years ago.
The remaining volumes remain in storage as few members took advantage of them.
I will come into possession of an extensive orchid library in the near future. However the current owner was
a heavy smoker and..................any way to fumigate hardbound books?

 

[hkunberger]

Try putting the books in an enclosed space (plastic box or bag) with a bowl of white or cider vinegar. Vinegar will remove smoke smells from a room in about 24 hours. I assume it will help remove them from the books

 

[mormodes]

Look to see if any of your books are already uploaded to the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/ Most of it is available to read online (or with an account) but some catalogs or books are downloadable. I have no idea whether this breaks copyright or not.

A book binders website mentions a few ways to get the cigarette smell out of books - all of which seem to take time. But here's the link so you can decide whether it's an appropriate use of your time or not. (I like the 'fan out the book in a closed box with baking soda' idea the best) https://www.ibookbinding.com/book-repair-and-restoration/5-ways-remove-cigarette-smell-books/

 

[Ozpaph]

TAPS disposed of all its library -
1. no where to store the books
2. nobody had the time to keep track of the books
3. People use online resources much more
4. Became 'old'/out of date - thus irrelevant
5. Quality books are too expensive to purchase from the societies perspective

 

[PeteM]

Wanted to follow up on this post for those interested in preserving their library and putting books back into circulation for their societies. I've been working on a dry run and planning to get our board approval to keep moving forward. After doing a bit of research, I decided on TinyCat. This is a very easy to use interface, which allows a nonprofit / organization to manage a modest size circulation, all with a cell phone. The back end database that manages all the details is LibraryThing. LibraryThing is free, but TinyCat costs $3 a month for a collection of 500 books, $4 for 1,000 books. So far I've uploaded 4 books, probably took me a half hour once I got the system down.

From the management side, it's easy to upload a CSV file (exported from an excel, or google spreadsheet) with a 'patrons' list of society members and allow them to place holds on books. The librarian then can bring only these books to meetings and can be 'checked out' on the phone at the meeting to start the check out period. The software allows a librarian to upload a photo of the cover, and add detailed information about the book in a comments section.. such as the authors foreword, or a few sentences about the books importance for patrons to review. All of this detail for adding a new book to the collection can be done on ones phone. Although, you will probably need a computer to manage / edit and format the text from a copy/paste. As you can now copy and paste raw text directly from ones iPhone's picture (I love technology, this has been a game changer).

I'm including a few snapshots of how this looks and feels incase others are interested. I believe this is going to work. Might take a while to get all the books uploaded.. winter is coming, hope to get a good chunk of it done, box by box. Yes, I have to store the books, but I am lucky to have the space. I agree that some of the info is outdated, but this is mainly taxonomical.. maybe some of the science has evolved past the publication date of these books. However, the gold nuggets in these books come from authors descriptions.. examples of culture, tips on how to grow certain species, where they are found in situ or discussions on the building blocks of hybridization. Only place to find this info are in these books, the Internet will never have this level of first hand detail. I think the tech is there to support the resurrection of these libraries.

Pete



TinyCat Homepage for our society:

TinyCat Catalog:

TinyCat book details, how a Patron will see this listing:





TinyCat is linked to LibraryThing, this is what LibraryThing Catalog looks like:


This is a detailed listing in LibraryThing, which allows the librarian to edit / add a wealth of info or harvest from existing entries if other LibraryThing users have already added this book to their collection:

 

[southernbelle]

Thank you, Pete, this looks wonderful.