Huron Public Library – South Dakota Collection Project

From Angela Bailey, Cataloger Librarian, Huron Public Library

Angela Bailey, Cataloger Librarian, Huron Public Library

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Huron Public Library building was closed to the public from March 19, 2020 thru September 8, 2020. It was during this time that the South Dakota Collection at the library was relabeled, reorganized, and metadata was added to item records for ease of access and usability.

It was a project that had been discussed, started, and stopped multiple times. Since it would take a large number of staff hours, it was always put at the end of my "to do" list.

South Dakota Collection

The South Dakota Collection is located in a separate room that is home to approximately 4,200 books about the local history of Huron, South Dakota, and Beadle County. Resources include books written by South Dakota authors, South Dakota government publications, local phone and city directories, city maps, high school and college yearbooks, and state guidebooks. The collection has over one hundred volumes of poetry and more than two hundred biographies. The most valuable part of the collection is the original genealogy research compiled by members of the community such as Gladys Pyle and Mildred McEwen Jones. As a whole, it is a collection of great value to historians searching for information on genealogy and local history.

Many of the items in this collection had MARC records, but the majority were just a place holder in the library system containing title and author. I took each book and began by scanning a copy of the cover to add to the record. I discovered early on that scanning the cover was faster than searching for cover images online. Scanning also helped when I couldn't find a cover for items published locally or prior to 1920 in the edition I needed. Many records had no subject headings or summaries, while other records contained incorrect information. I found a number of items that listed "South Africa" as a subject heading instead of "South Dakota." I spent hours typing summaries and descriptions of books that could not be obtained through copy cataloging.

Bailey with the South Dakota Collection

Call numbers were updated for each item as well. Many items in the collection were acquired before online library systems and computers. The format and procedure for labelling items has changed multiple times and the collection contained a number of different formats depending on when items were added.

At one time the South Dakota room had a portion of the collection that circulated. As a result, duplicate items were not shelved together making it hard for patrons to find items. Approximately 300 duplicate items were moved into the library's general circulating collection to make room for future acquisitions. Items that were deteriorating due to age and use were put into archive preservation boxes. After all the items were relabeled, the physical layout of the collection was changed to make the collection easier to use by patrons and staff.

The COVID-19 pandemic may have closed the doors to the Huron Public Library for a period of time in history. But I spent the summer of 2020 learning about the foundations of the community and the amazing history of South Dakota.

41 Volumes of South Dakota Historical Collections are now online

As the South Dakota State Historical Society celebrates its 120^th year, the South Dakota State Library has digitized all 41 volumes of the South Dakota Historical Collections. From 1902 to 1982, this series was published biennially by the Department of History (now the South Dakota State Historical Society) as part of its mission to collect, preserve, and make accessible the history of the state. All 41 volumes are now available in the Featured Collections of the South Dakota State Library’s Digital Collections.

These volumes cover a wide array of topics and are a valuable resource for students, teachers, and scholarly researchers. Six editors presided over the South Dakota Historical Collections during its run, including Doane Robinson, Will G. Robinson and Dayton Canaday. Their different editing styles and interests are evident throughout the volumes. Taken as a whole, the series represents an evolution in perspectives on the state’s history, heritage, and culture. In 1989 an index to the collections was compiled and published to aid researchers.

The South Dakota State Library serves as the state's depository for current and historical state agency publications, some of which go back to territorial days.

The South Dakota State Library's Digital Collections reflect the history and culture of South Dakota. Primarily of interest to librarians, researchers, and genealogists, the digital collections include newspaper articles, South Dakota library photographs, state government annual reports and research reports, South Dakota Codified Laws, Session Laws, House and Senate Journals, and more. Access the collections here: http://sdsdl-montage.auto-graphics.com/.

2021 SD Legislative Session kicks off January 12

State Capitol Building in Pierre. Photo by Quynn Verhelst, 2020.

South Dakota will usher in the 2021 96th Legislative Session on Tuesday, January 12th. The first week will include the traditional State of the State, State of the Judiciary, and State of the Tribes messages.

Visit the SD State Library digital collections page to view historical State of the State and Inaugural Messages, plus the Judiciary and Tribes messages.

The SD Legislature website, sdlegislature.gov, has all of the information you need to know about current and historical legislators, House and Senate bills, session calendar, and a current list of SD Laws and Administrative Rules. Historical SD Codified Laws and Session Laws can be found at the SD State Library in paper and online at sdsdl-montage.auto-graphics.com. Look for the Featured Collections.

Live audio broadcasts of morning committee meetings and afternoon House and Senate sessions are provided by SD Public Broadcasting. Links are available at www.sd.net.

Electronic Resources Updates

There have been several developments to the electronic resources page and their LibGuides:

A Language Resources LibGuide can now be found under the Electronic Resources/Databases LibGuide.

This page contains a list of resources for those wanting to learn a language. Click on a link to be taken to a website. Please note: These are not SDSL database subscriptions. For technical/training assistance, please see each site's help/contact page.

ProQuest's new open source database, Black Freedom Struggle in the United States, has been added to the SDSL database page and a LibGuide created. These reliable, easily discoverable materials may be used for homework assignments, personal inquiry, research papers and National History Day type-projects focused on African American history in the U.S. Educators may use this material to teach a specific topic or person, such as Frederick Douglass or the Abolitionist Movement, to introduce students to using primary sources and to help novice researchers develop essential critical thinking and information literary skills. The content is curated around six time periods:

• Resistance to Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
• The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877)
• Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932)
• The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945)
• The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975)
• The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)

If you have any questions, please contact SDSL Digital Resources Coordinator, Kim Bonen at 605-295-3174, email: kim.bonen@state.sd.us

Historical Newspaper Images Now Discoverable Online with New Tool from the Library of Congress

From the desk of Dustin Larmore via the Library of Congress…

The public can now explore more than 1.5 million historical newspaper images online and free of charge. The latest machine learning experience from Library of Congress Labs, Newspaper Navigator allows users to search visual content in American newspapers dating 1789-1963.

The user begins by entering a keyword that returns a selection of photos. The user can then choose photos to search against, allowing the discovery of related images that were previously undetectable by search engines.

For decades, partners across the United States have collaborated to digitize newspapers through the Library's Chronicling America website, a database of historical U.S. newspapers. The text of the newspapers is made searchable by character recognition technology, but users looking for specific images were required to page through the individual issues. Through the creative ingenuity of Innovator in Residence Benjamin Lee and advances in machine learning, Newspaper Navigator now makes images in the newspapers searchable by enabling users to search by visual similarity.

To create Newspaper Navigator, Lee trained computer algorithms to sort through 16 million Chronicling America newspaper pages in search of photographs, illustrations, maps, cartoons, comics, headlines and advertisements. The idea for Lee's groundbreaking project began with a Library crowdsourcing experiment by 2017 Innovator in Residence Tong Wang called Beyond Words, which invited members of the public to help identify cartoons, illustrations, photographs and advertisements in World War I-era newspapers. Users could draw boxes around visual content on a page, transcribe captions or review other users' transcriptions.

For more information, see the Library of Congress's full press release.

New databases now available

Applied Science & Technology Source

This database offers a diverse array of full-text and indexed content covering the full spectrum of the applied sciences and computing disciplines — from acoustics to aeronautics, neural networks to nuclear engineering. Applied Science & Technology Source was developed through a merger of high-quality databases from EBSCO and H.W. Wilson and includes many unique full-text journals not previously available in any other database.

EBSCO Open Dissertations

EBSCO Open Dissertations is a free database with records for more than 1.2 million electronic theses and dissertations from around the world. It is a collaboration between EBSCO and BiblioLabs to increase traffic and discoverability of ETD research. You can join the movement and add your theses and dissertations to the database, making them freely available to researchers everywhere while increasing traffic to your institutional repository.

European views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750

European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 is a free archive of indexed publications related to the Americas and written in Europe before 1750. It includes thousands of valuable primary source records covering the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of Native American peoples. It represents a wide range of topics, from the British/French/Dutch in America to natural disasters, religious orders, slavery and more.

Newspaper Source

Newspaper Source provides cover-to-cover full text for hundreds of national (U.S.), international and regional newspapers. In addition, it offers television and radio news transcripts from major networks. Newspaper Source can be accessed via EBSCOhost or Explora, EBSCO's dedicated interface for schools and public libraries.

World Politics Review

This unique database provides uncompromising analysis of critical global trends to give academics, policymakers and businesspeople the context they need to have the confidence they want. The content is much more current than that found in leading international affairs academic journals, without compromising quality.

Database Update: Sources in U.S. History

Database vendor Gale will release an enhanced user experience for their Sources in U.S. History Online series this summer. As part of these enhancements, your archives will now be available as part of Archives Unbound along with all the rich contextual materials currently included in the archives. This will affect the following resources: 

• Sources in US History Online: The American Revolution 
• Sources in US History Online: The Civil War 
• Sources in US History Online: Slavery in America 

Benefits of the new user experience include: 

• Enhanced product platform— A modern look and feel, in line with user expectations of modern websites. 
• Improved Accessibility— Maintained for Web Accessibility standards to ensure access by users of all abilities. 
• Smarter search results—New interface will retain legal search fields and Advanced Search limiters. It will also include new features, such as new filtering options in search results and Name and Subject Expansion, which looks for pseudonyms and synonyms of your search term. 
• Streamlined user interface—The new UI will be consistent with other Gale products and will deliver an engaging experience that allows quick access to search tools, relevant content, and collaborative features like Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. 
• Secure product access—Guarantees the use of HTTPS protocol to ensure that data between a patron’s browser and Gale products is encrypted, and the right to privacy for library users is protected. 

These enhancements for Sources in U.S. History Online are scheduled to release on July 31, 2020. 

Questions? Contact Kim.Bonen@state.sd.us