Former ARLIS/Texas-Mexico Chapter Member and Officer Polly McCord announces that she recently accepted a position as a Librarian at the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer. She submitted the following library profile:

The OSE Library collects materials related to the history, science, law, use and management of water resources in New Mexico and the surrounding region. For the architecture librarians, we are in the basement of the Bataan Memorial Building, which was the State Capitol from 1900-1966. Look at http://www.generalservices.state.nm.us/bsd/buildings/bataan.html. The building is in downtown Santa Fe across the street from the Roundhouse (the current capitol) and about 4 blocks south of the Plaza. Because it was the State Capitol, the basement has a number of vaults where Finance used to keep the money, so I have a real turn-of-the-last-century bank vault for my archives.

The collection includes a variety of maps, USGS and other Federal publications, reports and other documents issued by the New Mexico State Engineer going back to Territorial times, consultant reports, hydrographic surveys, technical reports and master's theses from New Mexico Tech, University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University students, landmark legal opinions and some related materials, and, I'm sure, lots I've yet to uncover. I'm the first professional librarian they've ever had and they hadn't had anyone in the library on a full-time basis in over a year before a started. I estimate that about 40% of the collection is cataloged in some way: some LC, some Dewey, some SUDOC, and some in that arcane static system I'd only heard about before where a title is assigned a specific location on a shelf. The rest? No cataloging whatsoever. My predecessor had contract catalogers coming in but for some reason he didn't want them to actually label the items so even if it was cataloged, the item isn't connected to the number. We are part of a State agency consortium called SALSA and the items that have been cataloged in Dewey are available through an online catalog at http://salsa.stlib.state.nm.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=ose&menu=search#focus.

Whenever my old ARLIS/NA friends are in Santa Fe, I encourage you to stop by to say hello!

Polly
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Polly McCord, MLS
Librarian
New Mexico Office of the State Engineer
407 Galisteo Street
Bataan Memorial Building, Room BE02
PO Box 25102
Santa Fe, NM 87504
505/827-6158 (voice)
505/827-6682 (fax)
http://www.ose.state.nm.us/publications_library.html