North Carolina Libraries

Complete Issue - Vol 81, No 1 (2023)

Michael Reece — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Reading Well

Vanessa Irvin — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper is a conceptual overview of the twentieth-century American book club movement and its influence on twenty-first-century reading practices for librarians. The article makes the case that librarians embracing book clubs as a means of professional development is reaching back to those original literary societies that gathered for intellectual and civic empowerment and emancipation. Professional development outcomes from librarian book clubs are a response to how librarians read what the patrons read and how librarians read and interpret the work they do in the world.

Internet Book Clubs

Allison Kaefring — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

With over 252,000 subscribers as of July 2023, “Dracula Daily” has made newsletter-based internet book clubs a growing trend. Starting in 2021, artist Matt Kirkland decided to take advantage of the epistolatory nature of the beloved public domain novel Dracula to create an email newsletter that read the story in real time. On each day that Bram Stocker’s Dracula had a letter or diary entry dated, that section of the novel would be sent straight to subscribers’ emails, as if they were getting correspondence from Jonathan Harker himself (DraculaDaily 2023). While the first year had mild success, the 2022 read through became a viral internet sensation that inspired a wide variety of art, memes, and spinoffs (Connors 2022). Now in 2023, “Dracula Daily” is running its third year of reading Dracula in chronological order and has inspired a variety of different internet book clubs using the affordances of public domain to collectively read classical literature via email.

Remediation by Degrees

Savannah Lake, Joseph Nicholson — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In 2022, staff at J. Murrey Atkins Library initiated a metadata remediation project project that inserted FAST controlled vocabulary terms for subjects into legacy ETD records in its Niner Commons repository through an automated process and normalized data in other elements, all with a view to improving discoverability and the user experience. This case study describes the stages of the remediation process, the difficulties that were encountered in the course of the work, the results and findings of the project, and the challenges of ETD metadata remediation work in the contemporary institutional repository environment.

Memorial Exhibit for Ralph Scott Showcases Ship Plan

Ronnie Woodward, Joe Barricella — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Scott, 80, who joined the ECU library faculty in 1971 and was rare books curator in October 2022 at the time of his death, had a love for North Carolina history and ships. Some of Scott’s research culminated in his 2017 book, The Wilmington Shipyard: Welding a Fleet for Victory in World War II. He started the now-completed exhibit, which focuses on 1800s shipbuilder William Webb and the 380-foot vessel Dunderberg, commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1862. After Scott’s death, Barricella, the library’s head of digital collections, emerged as project leader and worked with maritime studies graduate students Katelyn Rollins and Kendra Ellis from the Department of History.

UNC-CH Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

William Joseph Thomas — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

From the Pages of North Carolina Libraries

William Joseph Thomas — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For the 50^th anniversary of our journal, editor Frances Bryant Bradburn provided a brief history of North Carolina Libraries, including its challenges and successes during its first half century. At a pivotal moment in Association history, the question of whether North Carolina Libraries has justified its existence was raised. The answers appears in the fact that the journal has continued more than 50 years after the question was raised. As we enter the 81^st year of publication, I wonder what the hundred year history of North Carolina Libraries will make of our time. It is my hope that we continue to make meaningful contributions to librarianship in our home state. Below find “On the Way to Becoming: The First 50 Years of North Carolina Libraries” by Frances Bryant Bradburn, first published in Volume 50, No. 1 (Spring 1992) DOI:10.3776/ncl.v50i1.2506

From the President

Libby Stone — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Our association is strong because of our members. The work that each of us puts in, our collaboration, our networking, our ideas, our enthusiasm, our passion, results in the success and strength of NCLA. It takes the talents of each person to make an organization great. So whatever your role within NCLA, whether you are a new member, or already a member of a committee or section, each person plays an important part. Some of you have taken on leadership roles such as director-at-large, secretary, vice chair, and a few of you will even become president. Librarianship is about lifelong learning. By volunteering and being a part of associations like NCLA, we each are able to learn and grow and give back to our profession to continue the important work that our predecessors started.

From the Pen of the (Interim) Editor

William Joseph Thomas — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Lagniappe

Jennifer Daugherty — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article discusses what ChatGPT is and the pros and cons of its use.

North Carolina Books

Plummer Alston "Al" Jones — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Wired to the World

Kate Hill — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Having a great deal of electronic content, both created and managed internally by the library and externally by publishers and vendors, is nothing new to the library profession. Yet the art of troubleshooting is something that many librarians must learn on their own or from conversations in the halls of conferences. This short column seeks to share tips and techniques that librarians can use to get started on troubleshooting issues either as a solo endeavor or before escalating to a specialist or third party. It is based on the author’s own experience fixing links, search boxes, and authentication systems, both on the library side as an electronic resources' librarian and now as a library service engineer for EBSCO.