[DCRM-L] Attend the RBMS BSC Cool Things We Cataloged Webinar

[Benjamin Eskin Shapson]

The Bibliographic Standards Committee of the ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section invites you to the webinar, Cool Things We Cataloged.


Date: Thursday, October 30, 2025


Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Eastern / 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Central / 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Mountain / 11:00 am - 12:00 pm Pacific


Register here: https://umd.zoom.us/meeting/register/E3lE4eUcSlqukoPRthbrpw This presentation will be recorded and registrants will receive the recording.


Five presenters will explain the workflow, challenges, and information gained while cataloging interesting items found in their collections.


Blank book with recipes and clippings

Presenter: Ruth Ann Jones, Michigan State University

Michigan State University’s recently-acquired Sheila and Marilynn Brass Culinary Collection includes 118 manuscript cookbooks, most from the 19th and early 20th century. These are handwritten volumes or recipe scrapbooks, often passed down from mother to daughter. The most frequent hurdle for the cataloger is determining when and where the manuscript may have been produced. The manuscripts are often full of laid-in materials, which have their own handling requirements, and usually need a cataloger-devised title – a particular challenge when most works are anonymous and from the same genre.


Giant puppets from Theâtre Sans Fil

Presenter: Robert G. Bilodeau, Université du Québec à Montréal

The Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) Library received a donation of twenty giant puppets from the world-renowned Montréal-based puppet theater company Théâtre Sans Fil. This cataloging project stood at the intersection of museology and library science. Although classified as toys under the MARC coding system, these puppets are more appropriately understood as cultural artifacts. Their description therefore required in-depth contextualization, achieved through the extensive use of notes to situate them within their original cultural ecosystem.


Hyakumantō darani (One Million Pagodas and Dharani Prayers)

Presenter: Brett Barrie, Syracuse University

The Hyakumantō darani, or “One Million Pagodas and Dharani Prayers,” represent the oldest surviving examples of wood-block printing in Japan. Each lathe-turned wooden stupa houses one of eight distinct Buddhist prayer scrolls. Empress Shōtoku, formerly known as Empress Kōken, commissioned their production in 764 CE. These pagodas were distributed to several Buddhist temples as a public act of atonement for her suppression of the Fujiwara no Nakamaro (Emi) Rebellion. At the same time, they served as a significant demonstration of industrial capabilities.


Puerto Rican War Collection: Artist’s Book/Mixed Materials Collection

Presenter: Camila Walls Castillo, University of Toronto

Camila Walls Castillo will discuss her approach to cataloguing a large artist’s book collection related to The Puerto Rican War — a woodblock-printed graphic novel that recounts the 1950 Puerto Rican Nationalist uprising against U.S. colonial rule. The collection consists of 147 mixed material items, including 43 woodblocks, 80 wax rubbings, 15 giclée prints, 6 posters, 3 papier-mâché objects, and some ephemera. In this presentation, Camila will reflect on how this project both challenged and advanced the breadth of her metadata practice as a student cataloguer, the resources she employed to enhance the description and discoverability of these materials, and the process of expressing diverse artistic formats as a collection-level record.


“Washing Machine Book”: Two 17th century publications of European history intermixed and “bound together”

Presenter: Vance Woods, Oregon State University
Earlier this year, I was given an item that had been sitting in our collection awaiting cataloging for quite some time, and which has come to be known here affectionately as the "Washing Machine Book," since all we know of its provenance is that it was discovered being used as a prop for a washing machine. Instead of being one book, as previously assumed, it turned out to be two, with their pages completely intermixed and out of order, requiring jigsaw work just to determine what went with which title, and where they began and ended. A great deal of online research, due to the greatly deteriorated state of the items, revealed two histories, in French, one of the Roman and Holy Roman emperors, dated 1620, the other of the kings of France from the legendary Faramond up to Louis XIII, dated 1618. Because we wanted to keep them together as we received them (the provenance story is too good to let go), they now exist in our catalogue as a "host bib," as two volumes "bound" together (although "binding" is a somewhat generous term given the condition it is in).
We look forward to seeing you then!Benjamin Eskin Shapson, Processing Archivist, ETAMU
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