Part of the Iowa City Zine Librarian (un)Conference happened at this library, and it was neat to get a tour of their special collections. They have a pretty cool collection of collections, including a huge one of various cooking related books (including a section devoted to mystery novels about cooking), a big science fiction fanzine collection, and a bunch of catalogue cards that have been turned into art.
Now while there is lots of cool stuff in those collections, I did have a few issues with it. They seem to treat their collections of fanzines (and comics) as though they were manuscripts. This means that they're organized by collection and box and not really catalogued beyond title of fanzine. Personally I don't really care who the zines belonged to, I'd much rather know who contributed to the zines!
Additionally their storage methods for some of their comics (unbagged, sideways in boxes) are such that I'm positive they're going to end up with rolled spines. Plus none of this stuff is on display! You have to ask to see each box individually.
They also have the zine machine! About which I've already written on another of my blogs.
Plus, unlike certain other universities we'll soon be discussing, they gave me a guest account to use on all their computers, allowing me to log in and use the internet to my heart's content. Great!
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