ULA Annual Conference 2025

A Beginner's Guide to Cataloging Postcards — Katie Yeo
For beginner catalogers, postcards present a special challenge. Although postcards are a growing collection area for many institutions, few postcard catalog records have been previously added to OCLC, requiring catalogers to create original records for the vast majority of the postcards their institutions collect. Additionally, due to a growing interest in postcards from hobbyists and individual collectors, cataloging postcards often requires applying specialized terminology to catalog records, in order to enhance the discoverability and descriptiveness of catalog records. This poster aims to make cataloging postcards feel more approachable for beginners by breaking down a sample postcard catalog record, pointing out unique features of postcard records that often confuse beginners, and highlighting best practices for applying RDA and LC vocabularies. It will briefly define and differentiate between the most commonly utilized postcard-related jargon (like the difference between chromographs and lithographs, or the significance of Real Photo Postcards). It will even include suggestions for how to notate handwritten messages, date/time stamps, or other copy-specific information in local records.

Get to Know the FamilySearch Library — Kori Robbins, Sandra Joseph, Cheri Bush
Come learn about the resources available at the FamilySearch Library, including those that you can access at your library to help patrons who have questions about their family history.

Matching Microforms: Comparing Collection Coverage and Quality to Digital Archives — Maggie Marchant, Rebekah Dizes
Libraries often face concerns about space management. What items should be kept in physical storage and which items might benefit from an online storage space depend on the usability of collections and patron needs. For this project, researchers looked at a business filings database, Mergent Archives, compared to a microfiche collection contained in the Harold B. Lee Library. The poster shows the process of comparing and evaluating a digital archive with a physical collection on microfiche. Mergent Archives is an online database that provides access to historical Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. SEC filings are used in business research for understanding company performance and potential, especially helpful for investors. The poster contains information about the availability and readability of digitized scans in Mergent Archives compared to a sample of the extensive physical collection, with the data broken down by specific years and filing types, highlighting the gaps in coverage. As more historical reference and document collections are digitized, this project provides an example for evaluating databases and collections across subjects by using data to help librarians determine database quality and usefulness compared to physical library collections.

AV and Digital Preservation: Home Edition — Michael Gates
In this poster I would like to present several ideas about how one might go about digitizing their own personal AV collections and how to manage those files in perpetuity. I would show simple ways to capture audio visual media and explain the file types associated with those media. I would compare the standards and practices of archives to what might be done at home speaking to common principles such as methods of digitization, file formats, LOCKSS, risk assessment of the media and the destination file format. I would address, likely in bullet form, good questions to ask if one wishes to outsource digitization of AV to a vendor. I would also like to address the future of personal digital archives as they are distributed within a family and handed down from one generation to another posing and answering the question, "How should children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren handle the potentially exponentially growing digital archives?"