Although the inventory mostly reveals that generations of UVA librarians have kept extremely good records – no rare volumes of lost Shakespearean works were discovered – there are some interesting takeaways.
Here are three takeaways from the inventory project:
1. Barcodes? What Barcodes?
“To prepare for the upcoming renovation, when Alderman’s collections will be removed from the building, every item has to have a barcode,” Vermillion said.
Alas, many books were not yet barcoded. This doesn’t mean that these items were incorrectly processed; they simply hadn’t been checked out since barcodes were added to the collection in 1988.
“If these items sat on the shelf and never got used, they’re not going to pass our eyes at a circulation desk,” Vermillion said. “Items that we purchased 75 years ago have possibly been sitting on the shelf for a long time, and we have many materials that were purchased before we went electronic.”