Special Collections at the NMSU Library holds over 80,000 cataloged items that document the history, culture, and natural environment of New Mexico. One can find on our shelves an ever-expanding array of books, serials, reference works, government documents, ephemera, maps and architectural drawings, scientific and technical data, and audiovisual recordings. Recently, when special collections’ dedicated space on the second-floor of Branson Library approached its storage capacity, a multi-step plan to remedy the problem took shape. Phase one commenced in the fall of 2021 and eventually saw all the bound journals stored in Branson East Storage on the first-floor shifted to fill in gaps on the shelves. This effort freed up multiple large shelving units which were disassembled and moved to new locations, awaiting materials from special collections. A big shout out to library colleagues Selena Valdez and Frank Martinez for seeing this first phase to completion.
Beginning in September of last year, the second phase of the plan commenced, requiring nearly all of the collection to either be moved to the new location on the library’s first-floor or shifted to new shelving locations within the second-floor footprint. Our department was lucky to hire a great crew of new student employees at the start of the academic year, who kicked off this phase by moving all the bound theses and dissertations to shelves downstairs in the newly created special collections area. This step allowed us to integrate multiple book trucks serving as temporary storage for those works bound between 2017-2019 that could no longer be filed in call number order due to completely full shelves (starting in 2020, all completed graduate works are now submitted to the library digitally). A small amount of U.S. federal documents, still in SuDoc (superintendent of documents) order and awaiting transition to Library of Congress classification, was also moved to the first-floor.
The effort kicks off with the theses and dissertations.
Within special collections are large runs of printed newspapers. While most are from southern New Mexico, particularly the Mesilla Valley, there are numerous Spanish-language publications from throughout the American Southwest and northern Mexico published at the turn of the 20th century. Bound or stored in archival boxes, these usually very heavy newspapers found a new home on the first floor save for two exceptions. The Las Cruces Sun-News and the Las Cruces Citizen were organized in chronological order by date of publication and placed horizontally on shelving that better supported the bound volumes and helped make retrieval easier. Preparing the additional shelving required the students to reassemble the metal shelves in a new pattern and fill in the gaps with new shelves removed from another space saving project in the Rio Grande Historical Collections. Needless to say, this required great physicality on the part of my student assistants as they moved the newspapers and wrangled with shelving.
The Las Cruces Sun-News newly arranged in chronological order.
With the students focused on the newspapers, I turned my attention to several odds and ends. Viewing the special collections shelving as if it were a large sliding puzzle, I next moved to temporary locations the catalogued audiovisual materials and the uncatalogued donated items awaiting my review (yup, a backlog!) This project required a lot of material repositioning, some multiple times, before the final configuration came into view. I quickly decided some of the uncataloged backlog no longer fit within our collecting scope and routed it to surplus, freeing up more space. Additionally, as the students made progress on the newspaper shifting, particularly when all the Sun-News issues were brought together, a key section of shelving became available for new book tenants, and the U-Z range of publications were moved to this new location. All these materials had to be moved in order to have a large enough grouping of empty, contiguous shelving units to begin the next step of the great shift.
Newly emptied shelving ready for the material from Room 211.
Previously, the materials in special collections were split by Library of Congress call number between two rooms on the second-floor of Branson Library – the A-G range in the smaller Room 211, while the H-Z range lived in Room 216. With the shift of the newspapers to the first-floor, the entire contents of Room 211 could now be moved into Room 216, reuniting the main body of books into one location and freeing up the former to become the new home to the department’s photo collections. The students made numerous trips between the two rooms with a fleet of book trucks as they transitioned the publications in order. For the effort to succeed they had to first dust the shelves and then follow a few guidelines. Small bookends were to be swapped out for larger ones; at least a width of an extended hand from the bookend to the end of the unused portion of the shelf needed to be left open to allow for future growth of the collection; and for the dozen or so journals and serial publications, at least a shelf-and-a-half should be left open for future growth of the monthly/quarterly. Utmost care was taken when handling the books, some fragile and leatherbound, others supported in phase boxes and pamphlet binders. With Room 211 emptied and a row and a half of shelving still open in Room 216, we next worked to close that gap – one of physical and classification separation – by shifting the rest of the publications, relieving some crowded sections of the collection, particularly in the J87 and PS3500-3600 ranges. During this entire effort I constantly recalculated measurements to make sure everything would fit, and in the end, thankfully, everything fell into place perfectly.
Angel, an ASC student assistant, reshelving the transfered books.
The last of the publications to leave Room 211.
The last step saw me tackle a job that I had been wanting to work on since arriving at NMSU in 2019. In the corner of Room 216 are the shelves holding the oversized material. These large folios are separated from the rest of the collection so as to not damage the much smaller books they would potentially be shelved with. Unfortunately, even when storing these larger sizes together, their varying height, width, and length can prove challenging to best storage practices when considering each item’s unique needs in relation to the neighboring publication. As they were forced to fit on shelves too small to fully support them, decisions had been made to store them on their edges, spines, or in a large and heavy horizontal pile, making for both an improper and visually unruly arrangement throughout the oversized shelving area. This woeful reality created difficulty in retrieving items for patrons and gravely put at risk the longevity of these improperly stored materials. Over a week’s time, I reworked the three rows of shelving to provide the vertical and horizontal support needed, slotting in numerous additional shelves and segregating material that needed a shelf of its own. Simultaneously, I weeded the massively crowded fine arts N range. The final results were very satisfying as I felt I was now properly addressing my charge to be caretaker of these robust yet often fragile items.
The oversized shelving sections before the reogranization.
The oversized shelving sections after the reorganization.
This project gave me an unmatched opportunity to really see the collection, including subject strengths and weaknesses, preservation needs, and sections in desperate need of a weeding. This nine-month effort has been rewarding in numerous ways beyond just better space allocation and physical control. I feel a greater intellectual connection to the collection, which informs me as I continue purchasing materials to expand the holdings and subject build, as well triage the preservation issues uncovered by the great shift. In turn, my ability to provide timely patron access to a robust special collection has improved.
Months ahead of the schedule I had projected, the project wrapped. A big thank you to all the students who assisted me in this project: Josh Cdebaca, Angel Martinez, Michael Pick, Luis Sotomayor, Jack Webb, Shayla Whitaker, Tyler Whitaker, and Mikaela Ziegler. Without their cheerful help, this project would have taken far, far longer.
Angel and Shayla
Michael and Josh
Luis and Mikaela