For those of you who purchased Nomenclature 4.0 you’ll be receiving a surprise in the mail in the near future, or perhaps you’ve already received it and have it 
sitting on your desk. As the Nomenclature Task Force continues to work on, expand, and improve future revisions for Nomenclature, we thought it an opportune moment to look at our current publication and develop an easy index system to make quick access to the various categories within. The tabs, sent to you directly by the publisher, are completely optional, but once installed make for faster searching and opening to the correct category. While you will have to buy the tabs to put onto the pages, the instructions sent by Rowman & Littlefield are a great help in purchasing the self-adhesive tabs. I purchased a set of Avery Index Tabs, 25/package and they worked wonderfully. One word of caution: before adhering the tab to the page, make sure you have it in the right spot! I slipped on my very first tab and realized it as soon as I started putting my next tab down–so one tab is jutting out farther than the rest. I tried to fix it, but didn’t want to rip the page so I let it be and will know better for next time!
What I have personally found to be helpful with these tabs is the ability to have my work study students help research terms as they help catalog objects, in this case our Found in Collections objects. Admit it, we all have them to some extent and they are often (though perhaps shouldn’t be) the last thing on our ‘To Do’ list. I currently have, I kid you not, upwards of 200 objects in my office awaiting cataloging and entry into our database and those are my regular, Deed of Gift in-hand, accessions. My work studies are handling the bottom of list and are doing spectacularly, but I leave it up to them to figure out the names of objects (with some input from me of course) for inclusion in the records. I love to show and explain to them Nomenclature 4.0, but I don’t always have time to get too in-depth, but handing my workers the book, with the tabs installed, greatly helps their learning and identification of objects.
As our academic year winds down, many of the students have commented as to how much they’ve enjoyed flipping through Nomenclature 4.0 to see all of the “old stuff” and I’ve caught a few perusing objects in specific categories, which usually is in relation to their major somehow. As for me, the book sits in or on my desk all the time so that I have easy reference to it as well; the tabs are certainly making it easier for me to find things quickly and I definitely appreciate the added benefit these tabs provide.
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You can purchase Nomenclature 4.0 through the Rowman & Littlefield Publishers’ website. Remember, AASLH members get 20% off orders from Rowman & Littlefield.
