Library Notes

Retrospective conversion of the Galter Library's pre-1950 medical collections has begun. Rare items in science, medicine and dentistry held by the Galter Library are now available to Northwestern University library users.

To see the items converted to date, search the online catalog, NUcat, for "galterrecon" as a keyword.

The Galter Library began to prepare for the retrospective conversion project of its pre-1950 medical collection and pre-1970 dental collection during the summer of 2000. Staff members from technical services and reference worked in the lower level stacks weeding duplicate copies, most non-English materials, and, with the assistance of printed discipline resource lists, non-seminal materials. Special attention was paid to retain Chicago imprints, Chicago and Northwestern authors and other titles of historical value. A manual conversion of the former Dental School Library's rare books and ephemera was begun by library staff in June 2001 and completed in December 2004.

An inventory of the medical rare books was completed in summer 2004. The first batch of shelf cards was shipped to the Online Computer Learning Center (OCLC) for cataloging in December 2004 and the data has been loaded into our cataloging database. The next shipment to OCLC will be sent in early Fall 2005.

Many rare items in medicine, science and dentistry held by the Galter Library will now be more readily available to Northwestern University library users. The complete project includes over 7,000 titles held in the Galter Special Collections and some 12,000 pre-1950 titles in the lower level stacks.

A newsletter for patrons of the Galter Health Sciences Library

Summer 2005 New Series #37

Retrospective Conversion Assures Future Access to Galter's Historical Treasures

Ronald Sims, MA, Special Collections Librarian, rnsms@northwestern.edu

Summer 2005

New Series #37