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For the last few months my parents have been cleaning out and painting their home in Columbia SC. While they have been somewhat cryptic in their motivations I expect that at the least they are motivated to have me re-claim some of my childhood toys (if you want to see a stellar snoopy collection just stop by my office!).

Like many of us, my family has a connection or two to WFU. A distant family friend named Sam Brinson was in the class of 1891 and somewhat more recently, my mother was a student for a short period in the education department in the 1960s. As she was clearing out some box or drawer a few weeks ago she unearthed two academic artifacts from her time – an examination booklet & a typed list of books added to the library in 1960.

The exam book is unmarked – ready for whatever exam she ultimately did not need it for. She attended WFU to get her teaching credentials and as soon as she was employable she headed to the marketplace for a job (as she told me this weekend “back in those days you just didn’t need a graduate degree”). And while she could not place the circumstances of her receipt of the ‘books added’ list she expected that it surrounded a term paper she needed to write.

Lets get a few things straight here, 1) the list is typewritten (all 12 pages), 2) it has ~468 books/journals on it, 3) is arranged by main entry (author, then title), 4) includes publication date and Dewey call numbers and 5) where appropriate include superscript, subscript and yes – appropriate diacritic marks.

It has some intriguing works such as White house fever a book which claims to be about “an innocent’s guide to principles and practices, respectable and otherwise, behind the election of American presidents.” There is also the collection of short stories Kiss Kiss and a perhaps ready to be weeded Audio-visual materials and techniques, 2nd edition (1950) – we actually have 2 copies. That month we also added the relatively new work Catcher in the rye.

Seeing as how my job is somewhat concerned with the ongoing management of the 2010 version of book lists, I thought it might be interesting to see how our September ‘resources added’ report has looked for the last decade. It turns out that over the last 10 years this snapshot shows a steady increase in materials acquired. As the chart below shows, we have had a pretty steady decade, adding on average 3350 resources in September every year. Mind you, these are all resources, not just books!

When we filter out everything but our Main Circulating Stacks, we get a very different view, averaging just around 1400 books per month but declining over the course of the decade:

Perhaps this says something about how libraries have changed in the last 50 years, perhaps not :). In any case, I hope you enjoy the rest of the day creating, using, or disposing of library resources for April, 2010.