Archive for the ‘NCSU’ Category

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Simultaneous flash-mob cataloging

On the weekend of October 3-4, we had two simultaneous, two-day, flash-mob cataloging events. Here’s the wrap-up:

Central Park School for Children – a small public charter elementary school in Durham, NC
(centralparkschoolforchildren.org, centralparkschool on LT, blog post announcing event)

1,391 books cataloged, barcoded, assigned Dewey numbers, physically labeled the volumes for shelving, uploaded cover images, and shelved. All this was done by 22 catalogers on Saturday and 10 on Sunday.

It’s easy to underestimate how many books are in a library, and children’s books are particularly notorious (skinny little volumes that they can be), so this flash-mob is heading back to finish up the collection. They don’t have a date set (they’re thinking early November), so if you live in the area and you’d like to help, you can email erin_stalberg@ncsu.edu for details.


Erin and Laura Abraham presented “Cataloging: Who Knew it was a Community Service?” at the North Carolina Library Association conference this past week. You can download the PowerPoint here.

The Canton Museum of Art in Ohio
(CantonArt.org, CantonArt on LT, blog post announcing event)

Over two days, catalogers managed to add 1,090 books in a total of about 7.5 hours. They had seven catalogers on Saturday, four on Sunday, and a dedicated book lugger (also the father of the flash-mob organizer) for both days.

See more photos here.

Labels: canton, Durham, flash-mob cataloging, nc, NCSU, oh