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Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 11:29:40 -0400
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: voracious archies
Sender: [log in to unmask]



Dear fellow map librarians and curators,

At NYPL we have been having a serious problem recently with visiting "out
of town" college and university architecture classes from [I will just name
large political entities to maintain privacy and not embarrass the subjects
involved] various states and nations: Germany, Southern Florida, Kentucky,
Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, UK, and others. And we also have some
high school classes now appearing, doing almost the same level of projects
as the undergrads. We suspect their teachers were once in the map room on
similar assignments when they were in college...and had memories of such
sterling service...sigh, now they are sending their students.

The baby architects swoop down on the map collection, and in a period of
say a week, go through the collections like termites. Copying everything in
sight, over and over and over, for educational use, of course.

As a public library we cleave to the idea of public access, but...this is
beginning to cause preservation and access issues. When 20 students from an
out of state university swarm in, almost universally without the professor,
without an appointment, or the courtesy of prior arrangements from a
professor, the ill-will it causes among reference staff results in less
than good public service on the part of staff who feel abused and put upon
by demanding undergrads who have been told less than the truth about how an
adult behaves in a library. It also shuts out, or causes regular NYC
taxpaying researchers to leave, or give up, due to the noise, lack of
space, etc.

Do you feel my pain? Anyway, my query, after this diatribe, is...how do
other map collections handle large groups arriving sans appointment, and
almost always, sans professor [!]? As a public library we cannot exclude
them because they are not matriculated. We cannot exclude anyone without a
library card, because such cards are not required here, as our maps do not
circulate [nothing in the Humanities Center circulates, as part of the
Research Libraries. Branch Library materials do circulate.] And, we do not
want to exclude anyone anyway.

We try to ferret out the syllabus, and make a copy, as soon as we smell a
class project. We try not to help the first student any more than the last
student who arrives. Once we see the syllabus, and understand a project, we
may well set aside a folder of the maps required for each student to use,
so we are not pulling and filing these over and over, causing even more
wear and tear on maps and staffers.

So gang, please let me know if you have some ideas on assisting these
students, which WE DO WANT TO DO, without sacrificing the heart of our New
York City map collections.

Digitizing is a fine answer, but somebody's gotta pay for that. Hanging the
unprofessional and discourteous professors out to dry is probably illegal.
Nice thought though...

The NYPIRG OASIS map site has been helpful, and I suspect we will refer
more and more students to that if we can convince them to use it, as it has
"Sandborne" [sic] quality maps on the site, along with aerial photography,
ownership, assessed value, and other info on each building.  May I
recommend it to you also? Just type the words in all caps in any search
engine and it will come up.

Many thanks for your input on handling disruptive groups...we are just
running out of ideas on this here.


Alice

Alice C. Hudson
Chief, Map Division
The Humanities and Social Sciences Library
The New York Public Library
5th Avenue & 42nd Street, Room 117
New York, NY 10018-2788

[log in to unmask]; 212-930-0589; fax 212-930-0027

http://nypl.org/research/chss/map/map.html


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