CMC on the Road 

Part of the mission of the Cataloging Maintenance Center (CMC) is to catalog special collections items, such as archival documents or realia. In most cases, these special collections items are sent through the IHLS delivery service to the Champaign or Edwardsville hub, where Cataloging Maintenance Center staff are located. However, sometimes the items are either too fragile or too large to send to one of the hubs, and the libraries send photographs and descriptions of the items instead. Even more infrequently, the collection cannot be easily understood from pictures and descriptions alone, and the cataloger needs to make a visit to the library. This was the case with some library repository documents at the Sallie Logan Public Library in Murphysboro.

The collection consists of 21 sets of repository documents that are either spiral-bound, in a three-ring binder, or in loose sheets. While the pictures and a list of the document titles that the library sent were helpful, it was necessary to go to the library and look through the documents to determine if there were charts, graphs, illustrations, etc., and just get a feel for what the collection was as a whole. The staff at the Sallie Logan Public Library were very friendly and helpful, and it took about two hours to take pictures, make notes, and get a general feel for the scope of the repository documents. Only then were our catalogers able to do the work of cataloging.