New recall service for books published 1861-1900
We are pleased to announce our new automated recall service for books in the ‘one stripe’ collection – monographs printed between 1861 and 1900 not in other named collections. Previously in SAULCAT, books in this collection displayed their location as Special Collections 1861-1900 and their status as CONSULT SPEC COLL STAFF, and to look at anything from this collection you had to email our Special Collections Division requesting the book(s).
These books now display their status to be AVAILABLE FOR RECALL FROM SPEC COLL. The recall service works in a similar way to Store recalls: click on the recall button and a message will be displayed telling you that you will be able to pick up the material at the Main Library or at the Special Collections Napier Reading Room in Martyrs Kirk when it is ready.
Staff in Special Collections pick up these recall messages once a day and the books which have been recalled are assessed for loan or retention in Special Collections. If the book is assessed as suitable for loan, you will be able to collect your item from the hold shelf in the Main Library’s Short Loan and Holds area. When you are finished with the book, it can be returned to the Main Library in the usual way. The catalogue record will show that this book is now part of the Store and can be recalled from the Store at any time.
If the book is not suitable for loan, we will email you to tell you that the book can’t be borrowed but offer you an appointment to consult the book in the in our Special Collections Napier Reading Room in Martyrs Kirk to look at the item.
The catalogue record will be amended to show the new prefix and that the book is a Special Collections item and not available for loan.
Some people have clearly already discovered the recall button as there has been a steady trickle of recalled items in the three weeks the service has been available.
Examples of recalled items which are definitely staying in Special Collections include the fifth, revised edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1869), in which Darwin used the term ‘the survival of the fittest’ for the first time; and a copy of the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, rebound in an unremarkable Library binding, but which turned out to contain the original buff paper wrappers, printed in blue and red, and with the date of publication carefully corrected by hand from 1885 to 1886.
This tiny detail reveals that this copy is the first English edition, originally intended for publication in December 1885, but held back until 9 January 1886, and which was consequently preceded by the publication of the first American edition on 5 January.
As well as uncovering these wonderful gems, we are sure that there are many items in this collection that can be returned to general circulation and made more widely available.
If you have an questions about the service or would like to get in touch, please email: [email protected].
Elizabeth Henderson
Rare Books Librarian