Medicine and Metadata: Building an Open-Source Catalog for the Dell Medical School Library

In recent years the Dell Medical School Library has acquired a collection of historical textbooks which are often referenced by researchers and historians in the medical community. This collection was never formally cataloged because the library does not share access to the University of Texas Libraries resources. I first assessed the library’s specific needs and availability of funding to select an appropriate open-source ILS, then imported MARC records from the National Library of Medicine and created local metadata for 106 books. The final deliverable for this project is a user-friendly online catalog of the library’s textbook collection with the potential for circulation services in the future. I additionally created a workflow so that the library can continue to add new records and keep their collections updated and accessible for library patrons and students.