CUL retrospective conversion ("recon") is now officially complete
Dear Colleagues:
It is my pleasure to announce that CUL retrospective conversion ("recon") is now officially complete. This initiative, in which we converted catalog card information to online data, has resulted in the addition of nearly 2M records to the online catalog and has spanned more that 32 years (yes, Richard Nixon had only recently resigned when we began to put CUL serials online in January 1975). For a complete summary of the discrete projects that made up this initiative, see the list at http://www.library.cornell.edu/recon/summary.htm.
Staff involved in recon over the years are too numerous to mention (there have been hundreds), so I'm not even going to try. However, I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the work of Hana Dedina, who has served as LTS's Retrospective Conversion Coordinator since 1997, and has overseen the conversion of the final 750K or so titles. Thanks a lot, Hana -- you are the Recon Queen.
Of course, nothing is ever really complete. The Harris Collection inventory and cataloging project is still in progress (though we finished card conversion in 2006). And even as we hustled down the home stretch earlier this calendar year, new pockets of unconverted titles began to surface, though we are confident we will be able to address these unfortunate discoveries on an ad hoc basis with regular LTS staff. The card catalog in the Olin Library basement can be dismantled. Recon, as we know it, is history.-- Jim LeBlanc