Editorial

We are Core

I belonged to the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) (formerly Resources and Technical Services Division (RTSD)) for my entire professional career. It was my home in ALA, and where I forged relationships, learned valuable skills for my career, took advantage of continuing education offerings, and contributed to the profession through presentations, committee and task force work, and in editing ALCTS publications. And now, after considerable discussion and planning, ALCTS, along with the Library Leadership & Management Association (LLAMA) and the Library Information Technology Association (LITA), are now Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures. This new division will draw on the strengths of the three former divisions. The Oxford English Dictionary provides various meanings for the word “core,” including “The central or innermost part, the ‘heart’ of anything,” and “a central portion that is cut out, or that remains after using the surrounding parts.” These definitions are quite appropriate and fitting for Core.

Core became official on September 1, and a new website, www.ala.org/core, was launched. Two items of interest on the Core website (https://core.ala.org) are “6 Top Questions About Core” (https://core.ala.org/6-top-questions-about-core), which addresses member concerns about the division, and “Core Overlap” (https://core.ala.org/core-overlap). The new division launched while many of us are still working from home or are just returning to work on-site. Perhaps this is an ideal time to launch a new division when there are so many other transitions that affect our work, home lives, education, how we purchase food and goods, etc. occurring. It is a time of change, a time to re-examine, and a time to prioritize. After belonging to one division for many years, I am looking forward to the opportunities offered by Core, including the chance to work with new colleagues and to perhaps pursue new and different opportunities.

LRTS, featuring the new Core logo, will continue to be provided as a member benefit for your professional reading, along with the former LITA journal Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL) and the former LLAMA journal Library Leadership & Management (LL&M), all of which are available at www.ala.org/core/publications/journals. My term—as well as LRTS Book Review Editor Elyssa Gould’s—has been extended an additional year during the transition to Core. Our terms will end in December 2021, and there will be overlap between us and our successors. I urge you to consider applying for LRTS Editor or to nominate someone when an announcement is made. It is a rewarding experience and one I have truly enjoyed.

I now turn your attention to the contents of this issue, which I hope you find beneficial:

• In what is perhaps what has been one of the most fun papers to read and review, Catherine Oliver explores the genre of mystery fiction and discusses how the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT) provides new ways for catalogers to facilitate access to this genre. Determining subgenre terms is the crux of the issue, and “Cozies, Capers, and Other Criminal Endeavors: Utilizing Taxonomies of Mystery Fiction for Improved Genre Access” is a delightful and insightful examination of this issue.
• Censorship and trigger warnings have been recent topics of much discussion in our profession. There have been numerous conversations on library discussion lists about such warnings and how they may be handled. This topic is relevant to a particular publication, The Pernkopf Atlas of Anatomy. It is a given that a library’s collection will include books that represent different eras of history, schools of thoughts, and points of view, and there will undoubtedly be books in any library’s collection that are controversial. In the paper “A Reconsideration of Library Treatment of Ethically Questionable Medical Texts: The Case of the Pernkopf Atlas of Anatomy,” authors Laurel Scheinfeld, authors Laurel Scheinfeld, Jamie Saragossi, and Kathleen Kasten-Mutkus discuss this controversial atlas by sharing the results of a survey they conducted of libraries that hold it in their collections.
• Storing items in remote storage raises many questions, including the condition of materials, whether to retain or discard materials if they are also available digitally, and how these materials should be represented in one’s catalog (full level cataloging, brief record?). In her paper, “Moving a Unique Collection to Storage: Improving Access Now and Later,” Jennifer A. Maddox Abbott discusses how the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign collected college and university publications for several decades yet lacked the resources to catalog them, rendering them inaccessible except through browsing the shelves. This is a typical problem with unique collections or donated materials, and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign University Library initiated a project to catalog and transfer them to a high-density storage facility. In addition, part of the collection was also digitized. Abbott’s paper provides an overview of the process of this large-scale collection management project and an evaluation of the accessibility of these materials before and after the project commenced.
• Book reviews, which are a regular feature in each issue.