On April 16, 2016, Profs. Alan Lovegreen and Jason Ellis continued moving the Science Fiction Collection into the Ursula C. Schwerin Library’s archives. Prof. Mary Nilles checked in and offered help, too. The move began at 9:00am and completed at 4:30pm. After the day’s work, all but 40 boxes remain of the 145 boxes to be moved, which might be completed next week.

Fridays, it turns out, are good days for moving Science Fiction Collections at City Tech, because there are fewer classes, fewer students, and fewer riders on the elevators. For those of you unfamiliar with City Tech, we have over 17,000 students plus faculty squeezed into a few large buildings in downtown Brooklyn, NY. The density of people on our campus is incredible, and it makes any attempt at squeezing into an elevator during peak pre- and post-class times a challenging task and a nearly impossible task with a cart loaded with six to eight boxes of Science Fiction magazines and books.

Of the materials that we have shelved, we will need to spend some time consolidating between magazines now that most of those have been put out. Some long running magazines might need to be double-shelved after the photographed finding aid is completed in order to conserve space while the collection is properly cataloged.

The idea that we are playing a great big, physical version of Tetris has some up during our work more than once. The idea of Tetris and the work of organization are important ones to this initial stage of archiving this significant collection. As we do the physical work of placing and replacing, that organization and the titles and covers of these works of Science Fiction are doing work on us, on our brains.

Below are images of the day’s shelving and snapshots of some finds inside the collection.