Rare Books and Special Collections, Northern Illinois University's Notes

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 2:00pm

This is the final post summarizing the RBMS Preconference.

Plenary V: Sarah E. Thomas, Bodleian Librarian. "Are You Getting Out The Good Stuff?"

Comparing institutions:
Old v. Young (Europe vs. America): collections, scholarship, outreach, expectations

Old: security, helath & safety, loose groupings are a problem. Traditions and formality. (No iPods or talking). But 17th & 18th c. books with fountain pens & inkwells ("not really rare"). Depth and breadth of collections: print centric.

New: comfy chairs, wireless, & lattes. Old & new, shorter history, newer models, more formats.

requests mostly of oldest materials (even when newer stuff is held)
Newer stuff will be digital: Mellon grant for electronic archiving
How we access is different. Oxford still paper-based catalog; Cornell has finished recon.

Buildings:

Bodleian still useing Lamson (pneumatic tubes) for paging
Automated conveyor belts
Stacks of doom: piping, overflow, space problems
Swindon high density storage
No spaces for TALKING.

Renovation of Bodleian (humanities library). 5-6 million volumes over the next 5 years will move. New design. Conveyors. Blog. "Bodcasts".

RBMS Summary: Plenary V

Monday, December 21, 2009 at 1:15pm

This is the final summary of the 2009 RBMS Preconference.

Plenary V: (Part 1)

Ellen Dunlap, President, American Antiquarian Society. The Place of Independent Libraries in Special Collections. ".orgs". "What's Past is Prologue".

In attendance at preconference: 55 people from 28 Independent Research Libraries, representing 13 of 18 IRLA Libraries. She mentioned Susan Allen's 2003 Library Trends article, "Special Collections Outside the Ivory Tower". Allen describes being an IRL as "wonderful freedom, and a risky venture. Tightrope walker: single goal, single path. But now, lots of goals, lots of paths.

Nowadays: IRLA's annual meetings: "confabs". Oral reports have turned into an annual questionnaire & written response for discussion. The three greatest challenges in the next year is always the last question. They've also gone "2.0" with a Google group list for between meetings. Three themes define and unify IRLA Libraries

Sustaining a robust acquisitions program
Ongoing vitality of the community of learning sustained by acquisitions (fellows, scholars, institutes, collections, staff)
Breadth of organizational detail to which we must attend (infrastructure, etc.).

In 1959:

Walter Muir Whitehill (Director, Boston Athenaeum, 1946-1973) issued a book on Independent Historical Societies. Asked : what shall be done?

cooperative projects w/national libraries & local area leading to local (voter) support
Network with each other, scholars, etc.
microfilm/microprint collections for accessibility
processing/description of manuscripts for NUCMC (foundation $?)
$ for editorial projects=compendia for cash
Discourage urge to create more historical societies/house museums.
Book indexes 250 organizations: high survival rate since then (some mergers); only 3 are gone now.
Strong despite cyclical declines

September 30, 1970: Peabody: Meeting of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences: to discuss the present condition of independent libraries, the future, money.

Tax reform act 1969
Ineligible for funding in Higher Ed.
Need to be included in new Museum Services Acts, study for National Library Plan
Who's who at the time
Trending towards academic work--> indispensible contribution to US learning
Place at the table re: taxes & support must be guaranteed
Formation of IRLA: Mellon gives $2.5 million in grants to encourage use
Testimony to Senate/House committe for NEH re-authorization
NCLIS board write ups led to LSCA (now LSTA) funding
Visibility: ALA yearbook, advocacy for scholarship/public program funding
Working Committee: LC/MARBI/Bib Standards to amend MARC for copy-specific print/publication info/terms

In 1973: "American Research Library system in Constraint." Journal for British American Studies, I.R. Willison.

Discussed implications for British Library from US situation (inflation, unions, down market)
Raising money, eyebrows in IRL collaboration

IRLA, RBMS, (Rare Books Group)= Big Schools, Big Standards. Infamous 1981 Deaccessionning conference @Brown University.

1980s-1990s IRLA:

Build, grow, collaborate on NEH cash: leads to dependence on federal funding. $12 million since 1999 & several million more. $26 million total distributed to IRLA Libraries (1/2 of that figure to 3 out of 15 institutions).

matching resources with ambitions
Mellon funding history analysis
leadership based success... and failure
no end to need for endowment resources
Challenge Grants from Mellon for endowments ($90 million since 1969 from Mellon).

Future of IRLA: Anthony Grafton "Apocalypse in the Stacks" Daedalus, Winter 2009.

What happens when all the digitizing is done?
Non-exclusive, non-perpetual contracts for digitization
Library was a craft workshop for humanists
privatization of humanist scholarship? (Google). Shared public space lost: and so is discourse. Universally accessible, but sterile.
Libraries must lead as craft ateliers for scholarship
Need to create sustained community.

RBMS Summary: Seminars: The Library And Its Friends

Monday, December 21, 2009 at 11:38am

This is yet another blog post in my attempt to finish documenting the 2009 RBMS Preconference from my notes before I attend the next one.

Seminar I: The Library and Its Friends: Negotiating Change for the 21st Century. Presenters: Marguerite Ragnow, University of Minnesota; Ed Vermue, Oberlin College.

Marguerite: Bell Library, University of Minnesota

Several Friends Groups: one is libraries-wide, others for specific collections
Stipulation in James Ford Bell's will to form Friends group.
501c3 Org (outside university)
Social and library support: generational differences in members, different interests
Important to JFBL's survival
50% of membership is no longer local; gone from 450 to 135 members
Strategic planning
Annual report now sent; print newsletter suspended; website up-to-date, print bulletins
Targeted events

Ed Vermue: Oberlin College

600-700 members: lots of local members, Oberlin retirement community
6-8 Speakers/receptions (local)
1-2 national speakers, annual dinner
Scholarships for Oberlin, library school scholarships
Student research prize, book collecting prize
library newsletter
$40-50,000 per year towards acquisitions: cultivate donors
35-40% of Special Collections budget comes from Friends
Curriculum development grants for building syllabi around special collections
-easy money, easy process integrates special collections with teaching
local symposium for print culture program

Links for 2009-12-18 [del.icio.us]

Saturday, December 19, 2009 at 12:00am

RBMS Summary: Short Papers: Special Collections At Risk

Friday, December 18, 2009 at 11:17am

This is yet another blog post in my attempt to finish documenting the 2009 RBMS Preconference from my notes before I attend the next one.

Short Papers:

I. Special Collections at Risk. Christine Noriko Paschild, Head of Special Collections/University Archivist, Portland State University.

"Attachment to collections -- risk for the future."

Paschild was speaking specifically about her experiences at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), the position prior to her current one.
JANM:

began as a community effort with a singular focus
Resurgence of interest in collecting
Distrust of mainstream organizations and anthropological models
Community trust (donor relations)
Desire for academic recognition: AAM accreditation
Collection of over 80, 000 items: the largest of its kind
Huge infrastructure that had cracks, which led to staff losses and the closure of the reading room. Staff went from 100 people to 25.
What happened? Not enough savings, too much debt, waning donor support, rising maintenance costs, changing community demographics and geography.
Adaptation: programming
Where does a deep research collection fit?

Is it time to think about transitioning that collection to an institution with the infrastructure to support it? Example: Oregon Historical Society, which closed its reasearch library and laid off staff. Is this institutional model sustainable anymore? Notion of "mother ship" collections: where would the collections like this GO?

II. Beyond Reformatting: Special Collections and Digital Humanities at the Crossroads. Gregory J. Prickman, Assistant Head, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Iowa.

Printing Map: A lot can happen in 50 years.

Reformatting to preserve content to save space
Cooperative acquisitions
Digitization Age (not digital age)
Next Gen research: Digital Humanities
Hightlights artifactuality
Instructional & research facets

Atlas of Early Printing:

Spread of printing through Europe
Generating projects and supporting scholars doing their own work
Coming of the Book (Febvre & Martin) 51 years ago
Atlas makes static maps dynamic
3D printing press model, aspects of 15c printing.
There's no digital humanities center on Iowa campus: grabbed campuswide help.

III. Special Collections Cataloging in the 21st Century Academic Library. Michelle Mascaro, Special Collections Cataloger, University of Akron.

Cataloging: "outdated" vs. special collections: "essential"

Special collections cataloging is not outsourceable
Closed stacks require access tools
New & revised rules: challenge to learn, set precedents
DACS & DCRM, RDA & FRBR
Need to integrate all special collections holdings into library catalogs to allow for cross-searching/federated search.