Baltimore Hebrew University Collection Arrives at Cook Library
Just this week, the long anticipated Baltimore Hebrew University (now known as the Baltimore Hebrew Institute at TU) collection has arrived at Cook Library. The bulk of the collection will be housed on the second floor of the library, formerly the home of the bound journal collection. Over 80,000 items will be available, ranging from books to newspapers to media materials. Topics covered include fine arts, geneaology, children’s books, and comparative religions. Specialized materials such as the Holocaust Survivor Testamonies Video Archive and Memorial (Yizkor) books will document historical events and places, as will the rare book collection which includes materials dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries.
The collection includes materials in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German, Spanish, and French, and will have periodicals/newspapers as well as reference material. Special databases such as the Index to Jewish Periodicals will be available at selected computer work stations on the second floor of the library. Items in the collection will not appear in the library catalog until October, and the integration of catalog records may take some time, so ask for help at the Reference Desk if you need help in locating a particular item within the collection. The bulk of the books (with the exception of reference material) will be available for borrowing. The second floor of the library will remain closed until Wednesday, August 26th, when users are welcome to visit the collection.
M Stack Area in Cook Library Gets New Home
If you have not ventured over to Cook Library this summer and head to the 4th floor to grab a copy of a needed score, you may feel you have landed in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Due to some massive shifting of collections required by the acquisition of the Baltimore Hebrew University collection, the M area of Stacks has a new home. All M print materials, with the exception of current paper journal subscriptions, are now housed on the 5th floor of Cook Library. The location of materials on the floor is almost identical to where they were formerly housed on the fourth floor, but now you must climb one floor higher to see them. 
As part of this shift, all bound journal titles in music have received call numbers and are shelved under their respective numbers in the M, ML, or MT sections. The latest paper copies are still housed in the Periodicals Reading Room. Quarto M scores are still at the beginning of the M stack section, and the M folios have been moved to the folio section of shelves at the front of the fifth floor. End of aisle stack signs are being printed as this post is being typed, but may take a while to be visible. Please bear with us as we put the final touches on the new home for the M stacks materials.
