Archive for the ‘Illinois’ Category

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Flash-mob Cataloging Party: UIllinois prof’s folktale collection

Once upon a time, this hearty group of library students from the University of Illinois (my alma mater) came together to finish up flash-mob cataloging the folktales collection of storytelling professor Dan Keding. They had started in the spring by cataloging 600 books, which was less than half the collection.

The final count was 1,413 books, which you can see in Dan’s LibraryThing catalog here. Dan is also a LibraryThing author, with several folktale books of his own.

In addition to cataloging the collection, the mobbers added Mylar covers to the dust jackets. The books in the collection are available to students taking the storytelling course. See more photos of the flash mob here.

While getting my library science degree I took this class, and used books like these for finding stories to perform, as well as information about the history of various stories and storytelling. I’m happy students will have an even larger collection – as it turns out, finding stories you want to tell isn’t as easy as you’d think.

Dan’s guitar case now boasts a LibraryThing sticker. LibraryThing now boasts a new member with a large folktale collection. Students can now see the collection online. We all lived happily ever after.

Labels: flash mob, flash-mob cataloging, folktales, Illinois, storytelling

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Flash news: flash-mob cataloging in Chicago this weekend!

Completely ganked from the Talk thread:

This Sunday, April 19, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago will host a flash-mob to catalog the 1-2,000 books left in their library! The flash-mob will start at 11 am and go until 3 – or until the books are cataloged, whichever happens first.

Puerto Rican Cultural Center Website

The PRCC is located at 2700 W Haddon in the Paseo Boricua neighborhood. Take the Division exit off 90/94, go about 2 miles West on Division, then turn left on Washtenaw. The PRCC is on the NW corner of Haddon and Washtenaw. There’s plenty of free street parking.

Feel free to just show up on the day, or send a message ahead of time to let us know you’re coming so we’ll know how many to expect! Sarah Jackman (sbjackman@gmail.com) is the contact person for this flash-mob. Feel free to call her at (608) 330-0865 or send her an email.

We hope lots of Chicago-area LibraryThingers will come out to help – can’t wait to see you all there!

Labels: cataloging, Chicago, cultural library, flash mob, flash-mob cataloging, Illinois