Happy Friday all. With the onset of the new Millennium a few weeks away, my
thoughts have turned to the technology of the 20th (yes, I said 20th, not
21st) Century.
As of this date, our collection is not cataloged. I know, I know, HOW in
the name of all that is holy have I managed to call myself a librarian
without creating a working catalog for my constituents? Well, my only
defense is that I'm a member of a very conservative, old-fashioned,
tight-pursed firm of about 110 attorneys, that until three years ago, ran
our computer system from a mainframe VAX. It's quite a difficult task to
have major purchases and/or projects approved. The mantra often seems to be
"if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Well, it's the dawn of a new age, so I'm biting the bullet and putting
together a proposal to submit to our management committe requesting
permission to spend approximately $15,000 to catalog our collection of about
1000 titles (using an outside consulting company and InMagic).
What I would like to know from this list of distinguished disciples of Dewey
is what kind of ammunition I can incorporate into my memo to convince the
powers that be that this is a necessary component of any ligitimate library.
Any and all advice from those of you who may have had to make this argument
will be more than greatly appreciated. And any monetary correlations that I
can make (i.e., if we manage the collection better, we'll spend less $$ in
duplicate copies) will be especially helpful.
The system of organization in place at the moment is two sets of Kardex -
one by publisher and one by title. Not very sophisticated, and even less
efficient.
I'm not planning to submit my "plea" until well after the first of the year,
so I have plenty of time to justify my raison d'etre.
TIA,
Victoria Lynch
Librarian
Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel LLP
1617 JFK Blvd., 19th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103
victoria.lynch@obermayer.com
(215) 665-3181
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