Resources of the Week: REALLY Special Libraries
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

In honor of the 2009 Special Libraries Association Annual Conference coming up June 14-17 in Washington, DC (at which you can see some of your friends from DocuTicker/ResourceShelf/FreePint), we offer for your online perusal the websites of a handful of X-tremely special libraries.

+ Federal Bureau of Prisons Library

The Federal Bureau of Prisons Library offers a wide variety of traditional and automated information services. There is a wealth of resources covering the field of corrections and related fields of study including, criminology, sociology, psychology, and business.
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The BOP Library has nearly 5,000 books, Government documents, statistical and organizational publications covering all areas of corrections and other criminal justice topics.

You can search the OPAC directly from the home page. While you’re there, hop on over to the Federal Bureau of Prisons home page, where you can find a link to the Inmate Locator. This is useful if you’re doing a background check on someone; it contains (very) basic information on anyone who has been incarcerated in a federal prison from 1982 on.

+ International Maritime Organization Maritime Knowledge Center

To support the day-to-day activities of the Organization, the Centre maintains selective collections in the following subjects: maritime safety and protection of the marine environment and more specifically ship design and equipment, stability and load lines, fishing vessels safety, containers and cargoes, bulk chemicals, fire protection, life-saving, search and rescue, standards of training and watchkeeping, carriage of dangerous goods, marine pollution, preparedness and response, navigation and communications, facilitation and technical co-operation. There is a small collection on the commercial aspects of shipping and an audio-visual collection.

The OPAC is called SeaLibrary Online. Don’t overlook the Information Resources link , which will take you to a large collection of interesting and potentially useful content, including papers, reports, bibliographies, periodicals and free IMO texts. From the IMO home page, you can get to all sorts of other stuff. The site uses frames, which makes for an awkward navigation scheme (IMHO), but here’s a direct link to the section a lot of folks might find interesting — Piracy and armed robbery against ships.

+ Macauley Library at the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology

The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is the world’s largest natural sound and video archive of animal behavior. Its mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species behavior and natural history and to make them available for research, education, conservation, zoos and aquaria, wildlife managers, publishers, the arts, and both public and commercial media. Since 1930, recordists of all backgrounds have contributed their recordings, which now number to several hundred thousand in total. A large percentage of the recordings can be searched and played online.

If you enjoy nature, this site is a serious time sink. There’s a search box on pretty much every page, or you can browse taxonomically or by common name. The library uses a free browser plugin called RavenViewer, which “enables you to see and visually analyze the sound as you play it.” Some sounds can be downloaded and used for personal or educational purposes.

+ The George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection, University of Buffalo Libraries

The George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection is comprised of over 25,000 pulp fiction books and magazines. Dr. George Kelley donated the collection to Lockwood Library in 1994. Currently the collection is housed in Special Collections at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

This special collection is an absolute must-see, even if you only browse the digitized lurid covers that are scrolling slowly across the home page. You can search the collection by author, title or keyword. Also available — the keyword searchable Gumshoes, Sleuths & Snoopers section, which provides “(a)n in-depth look at 185 detective and mystery novels.” (BTW, if you like looking at old paperbacks, be sure to check out one of my favorite Flickr groups — Old-Timey Paperback Book Covers.)

+ American Nudist Research Library

Welcome to the American Nudist Research Library® (ANRL). The Library was established in 1979 to preserve the history of the social nudist movement in North America and throughout the world. It is a repository of material rather than a circulating library. Visitors may read or view most of the collection as long as they are in the Library. The Library is enjoyed most by individuals and groups who treasure on-going nudist activities, and who wish to participate in a sincere effort to preserve the unique history of the movement.

Although there’s no OPAC here, you can read about the collection, which is apparently in the process of being converted to electronic archives. Note that the site does include photos of patrons using the library; you won’t see anything particularly shocking or “unsafe for work,” but we’re willing to bet that you don’t see folks like this in your library. You’ll also find a small listing of Links to Nudist Website of Interest. And, in case you were wondering, “The ANRL is located on the grounds of Cypress Cove Nudist Resort in Kissimmee, Florida, next to the the tropically landscaped pool area.”

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 and is filed under Libraries and Librarianship, Resource of the Week, Source File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.