On June 26, three librarians from the University of Virginia gave a presentation on Book Traces @ UVA to a keenly interested audience at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida. The presentation, which was sponsored by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, was written up the next day on the American Libraries Magazine website. The article by George M. Eberhart quoted Arts and Humanities Director Christine Ruotolo, Director of Preservation Services Kara McClurken, and Director of Acquisitions and Discovery Jennifer Roper on the importance of discovering marginalia “hidden in plain sight” among our collections and some of the practicalities of how we are running the project.

Perhaps the most important paragraph in the article is the last one:

“Other institutions have signaled an interest in conducting similar projects. Libraries at Columbia University and the University of Miami have hosted Book Traces days, inviting students to search their stacks for uniquely modified volumes. Roper said that one of the next steps is to see whether it is possible to set up a scalable initiative so other libraries can do the same thing without a CLIR grant. . . .  McClurken said, ‘Just because two books have the same OCLC record does not mean they have the same value.'”