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Not long ago one of our reference librarians fielded a request for this item: Memorie dell' Accademia delle scienze di Torino, Turin. Classe di scienze fische, matematiche e naturali. Series 1, 7 (1): 317-386. 1804.

She found what looked like a match in our catalogue, but on closer inspection the volume numbering made no sense and she could not track down the issue given in the citation. Not to be deterred, she referred the problem to our serials cataloguing team. Fang Gao and the bookstacks team's Holly Mansfield vanished into the stacks, and for weeks nothing more was heard of them. But they eventually reemerged, blinking in the sunlight, having found that this set of volumes encompassed not just the one title but nine others as well:

1. Miscellanea philosophico-mathematica Societatis Privatae Taurinensis.
2. Mélanges de philosophie et de mathématique de la Société royale de Turin.
3. Mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences (Turin, Italy)
4. Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences, littérature et beaux-arts de Turin.
5. Mémoires de l’Académie impériale des sciences, littérature et beaux-arts de Turin.
6. Mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences de Turin.
7. Memorie della Reale accademia delle scienze di Torino
8. Memorie della Accademia delle scienze di Torino. 2, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche.
9. Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences, littérature et beaux-arts de Turin. Sciences physiques et mathématiques.

It's not glamorous work, but the joint efforts of Bookstacks and Cataloging staff like Fang and Holly and many others, toiling away in the dim and musty reaches of the stacks and our cataloguing backlogs, are revealing a great deal about what makes the UIUC collection noteworthy.

Naun.