Blog Archives

Librarian Spies

1/15/2023

By Carol Van Why, Library Co-Chair

I grabbed Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe by Kathy Peiss from my Arizona public library’s Recent Arrivals bookshelf. It dovetailed nicely with my current reading binge, revolving around WWII, bookshops, libraries, and spies.

My addiction began with finding Janet Skeslien Charles’ Paris Library and Madeline Martin’s Last Bookshop in London in the Coffman Library. Both titles share characteristics of good historical fiction—a mix of actual persons and places along with fictional ones.

I’ve since read Madeline Martin’s Librarian Spy, Elizabeth Knight’s Mayfair Bookshop and Michelle Gable’s Bookseller’s Secret. Now my binge reading has expanded to encompass Nancy Mitford and her eccentric family members, some of them, notorious. Read all of these books to see how they are intertwined.

From the Cataloguer’s Desk

1/2/2023

By Eileen Smith, Library Committee

A year ago, I wrote about beginning the project to create an online inventory and catalog of the Coffman Library collection using LibraryThing. This month is an update.

When I began the project, there were an estimated 4,000 titles in our collection. As of this writing, some 2,300 titles are entered into the database. Of the smaller collections, I have completed the cataloguing for the following: African American Issues, Aging, Anthropology and Sociology, Economics
and Business, Essays and Columns, Gender Issues, Literary Criticism, Medicine and Health, Native American Issues, Psychology, Short Stories (now incorporated into the Fiction section, as found in both academic and public libraries), Science/ Technology/Mathematics, World Politics and Government, and Writing and Reading.

For the medium-size collections, 1666 Authors, Biography Collections [multiple or group subject works], and Minnesota/Midwest are completed.

And of the large collections, Biography [single subject works] and Mystery/Spy novels are completed, and Fiction is over one-third catalogued. I plan to tackle the History sections next. Poetry et alia are also on the agenda for next year.

Are some of the small collections new to you? Most of them live in the upper level of the library, and are definitely worth exploring. There are conveniently placed chairs upstairs on either side to facilitate leisurely browsing. Enjoy!

Librarian Spies

From the Cataloguer’s Desk

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