Falvey partners with Office of Health Promotion to create resource center

How do you catalog a piece of plastic pizza -- or goggles that simulate what people see when they’ve had too much to drink?

The plastic pizza and the goggles fall into the realm of realia, objects from everyday life, which are currently used as teaching aids for the Office of Health Promotion programs.

Taras Ortynsky, descriptive services librarian, cataloged almost 300 items for their resource center, which also includes books, DVDs, videotapes and CDs. Taras notes that when he catalogs realia he simply follows a format; for example, the goggles are cataloged under their product name, “Fatal Vision.”

The project, which took place over the summer, involved Stacy Andes, director of the Office of Health Promotion and the primary contact from that office. In addition to Taras, project coordinator, other participating Falvey Memorial Library staff members were Luisa Cywinski, co-team leader, Access & User Assistance, and Kathy O’Connor, co-leader, Technology team.

One of Falvey Library’s goals is to catalog off-site collections throughout the University that have value and could be more effectively discovered through library search tools. Previously cataloged collections which also appear in VUCat, the Falvey catalog, are from the Augustinian Historical Institute, the Nursing Learning Resource Center and the School of Business.

Contributed by Judy Olsen and Taras Ortynsky.