It’s #LibraryShelfie Day! The New York Public Library was the first to tag the fourth Wednesday of the January as a day to celebrate libraries and all they offer to their communities. NARIC is a little bit different from your local branch, but we’re still excited to share our collection with the world. Here are a few #LibraryShelfie selections from the NARIC Team to guide you through our collection.

NARIC’s collection is divided in three sections: Journal articles, original research, and reference volumes.

More than one-third of NARIC’s collection is made up of journal articles from the major publishers in disability and rehabilitation. Each one gets an accession number starting with a J (we’re recently added J90000) and is indexed in the REHABDATA database under that same number. When a patron requests an article, we photocopy it and send it off. We’re calling this a Library Shelfie, even if it’s in front of a file cabinet, because not all library collections live on bookshelves!

The original research collection includes reports, guides, factsheets, conference papers, curricula, and so much more, most of it generated by researchers and developers funded by NIDILRR and other granting institutions. Some of the items in the collection are only available from NARIC, like final reports. In this Library Shelfie, Jess is engrossed in reading about training peer specialists in vocational rehabilitation. Have you ever considered becoming a peer counselor? This book might be in your syllabus! Below, NARIC Director Mark Odum pulls a report from the original research collection for a patron researching programs to improve employment outcomes for job seekers with disabilities.

The reference collection is home to thousands of books from commercial publishers. They range from textbooks used in rehabilitation courses to conference proceedings. This collection also includes many books written by and for people with disabilities, their families, and caregivers. This Library Shelfie is a bit of a throwback, featuring Dan Wendling, who was Media Manager in the early 2000s (he created NARIC’s REHABDATA Connection literature awareness service).

Speaking of throwbacks – do you know what this is? It’s a microfiche reader! Back in the 70s and 80s, much of NARIC’s original research collection was put on microfiche – transparent cards with miniature images of pages. Each 4×5 card can hold dozens of tiny images of reports, articles, photos, and more. You place the card in the slider and the reader lights up and shows the enlarged image on the screen. There’s even a printer on top so a patron could print a copy if needed. A #LibraryShelfie with some #LibraryHistory.

NARIC staff also rely on reference volumes for our own research and to assist patrons in answering basic questions about disability and rehabilitation. Bilingual Information Specialist Marta Garcia stopped for a #LibraryShelfie while searching through the dictionaries, encyclopedia, and other reference volumes. As you can tell, they get a kick out of looking stuff up (a key qualification for librarians!)

We hope you enjoyed our #LibraryShelfie tour! We are very proud of our collection and how it represents the depth and breadth of disability and rehabilitation research. If you’d like explore the collection, visit our REHABDATA database to search for topics that interest you, or contact an information specialist to help you dive a little deeper.