The U.S. Cavalry Memorial Research Library (USCMRL) has been with LibraryThing since 2018 so I’m very glad to feature them as our first 2024 Library of the Month. USCMRL’s Volunteer Reference/Research Librarian and Cavalry Journal Editor Samuel Young was kind enough to answer my questions this month. Here’s what he had to say:
Who are you, and what is your mission—your “raison d’être”?
The U.S. Cavalry Memorial Research Library (USCMRL) is a key part of the U.S. Cavalry Association (USCA) (a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization). It serves as the repository of U.S. Cavalry archives, biographies, books, flags, histories, interviews, journals, manuals, manuscripts, microfilm, papers, periodicals, pictures, and other spoken, digital, and written materials. The USCMRL is totally a research and reference library.
Tell us some other interesting things about how your library supports the community.
The USCMRL is located on the north side of old Fort Reno, which is on the western edge of El Reno, OK. The old fort is also the home of the Grazinglands Research Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribal lands include the area around El Reno. Thus, we have expanded the library’s collection of books on those tribes, to include Indian culture and language—spoken, written, and sign language.
Because Fort Reno was a cavalry & infantry post for thirty years, then, for forty years, a U.S. Army remount depot, the library’s archives have material on those seventy years and of some of the local civilians who worked there.
The cavalry community resides all over the world. Thus, the USCMRL is designed to be accessed digitally with digital responses. If it is a book we have, they should be able to get it through their local library or purchase it from their local bookstore or online.
The library section of the USCA website offers access to many of the items in the USCMRL repository as well as other cavalry resource sites.
What are some of your favorite items in your collection?
- The USCMRL’s extensive cavalry picture collection, the approximately 4,000 books—over 3,400 cataloged on LibraryThing/TinyCat*—covering over 247 years of the U.S. Cavalry history, and the archival collections.
- The ongoing digital conversion of historical paper documents and veteran oral histories.
- The digitized cavalry journals.
*Sample items from the online catalog pictured above. Full LibraryThing catalog can be found here.
What’s a particular challenge your library experiences?
Like most small libraries, space for the library’s collections. But we are managing it very well with our two volunteer staff: an archivist and a reference/research librarian.
What’s your favorite thing about LibraryThing and TinyCat, and what’s something you’d love to see implemented/developed?
LibraryThing is AWESOME! The cataloged books can be accessed via our website which makes it available to any and all researchers, especially since it links the books to Amazon for the additional and very helpful information found there! We have no recommended changes for TinyCat.
Want to learn more about the USCMRL?
Visit their website at https://uscavalryassociation.org/library/, explore their full TinyCat collection here, and their LibraryThing catalog here.
To read up on TinyCat’s previous Libraries of the Month, visit the TinyCat Post archive here.
Want to be considered for TinyCat’s Library of the Month? Send us a Tweet @TinyCat_lib or email Kristi at kristi@librarything.com.
