From the press release:

"Washington DC-The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Processing Decisions for Manuscripts & Archives, SPEC Kit 314, which examines the current policies and practices for processing manuscript and archival collections in Special Collections. This SPEC Kit is organized around four general areas: personnel, job responsibilities, and training; processing policies, procedures, and priorities; impacts on processing decisions; and management tools.

...

The survey responses speak to the classic issues of the management of processing: how to process collections efficiently but yet adequately so that collections are usable with minimal meditation; how to balance demands for more description and item-level cataloging (digitization) with initiatives to make more collections available ("more product, less processing"); and how to manage staff effectively and to assess processing progress."

 

Abstract
Adapting the method used by many libraries in the acquisitions workflow to export OCLC WorldCat bibliographic records into the local online catalog, the Special Collections Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries developed a process employing a graduate student to provide access to two previously hidden special collections until the materials can be fully cataloged. The completion of the project undertaken by the student assistant resulted in the simultaneous benefits of increased efficiency among the catalogers and greater provision of access to enable users to identify important resources for their research and study. By initiating similar procedures to represent not-yet-cataloged materials with online in-process records, other libraries can move their hidden collections into the view of their users.

Audio and presentation files from the 50th Annual RBMS/ACRL Preconference, "Seas of Change: Navigating the Cultural and Institutional Contexts of Special Collections"

"We are pleased to announce the publication of electronic files from the 2009 Preconference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. This year RBMS--with generous assistance from OCLC Research--initiated an experiment in providing digital audio files of programs at the Preconference in Charlottesville, VA. Audio files of presentations include: the entire short papers program, New and Emerging Voices; one of the seminars; most of the plenary speakers; and a couple of speakers who gave special welcoming and historical remarks. Also available are presentation files of some of the seminars, and PDF files of the print Preconference program and the special 50th anniversary print publication on the history of the Preconference."

 

Blog posting about a tour of RBML, includes an image of the Lea Library

 

The Penn Libraries recently made important discoveries of rare, previously uncataloged research materials within their collections. Working on a Hidden Collections project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, catalogers at Penn's Rare Book and Manuscript Library have found two incunables (works printed prior to 1501) in the library of Henry Charles Lea, a noted 19th-century scholar of the Inquisition. In a separate project, two pamphlets, both written and signed by Martin Luther, have also been discovered in Penn's Rare Book and Manuscript collections.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) are co-hosting a Forum, "An Age of Discovery: Distinctive Collections in the Digital Age." It will be held October 15-16, 2009, in Washington, DC.

The Forum builds on the work of the ARL Special Collections Working Group [PDF]. The goal is to focus attention on opportunities available in the digital environment for leveraging the strengths of special collections, making them more widely accessible. The co-hosts seek to bring together librarians, archivists, and others with responsibilities for stewarding special and distinctive resources, and to identify strategies for advancing this goal

 

Washington DC--The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Special Collections Working Group has launched a blog on "Transformative Issues in Special Collections" to accompany the Web conference scheduled for tomorrow, July 7, 1:00-2:00 p.m. EDT.

The blog is an opportunity for the special collections community to continue the conversation after the event on Tuesday. The discussion will be moderated by ARL Visiting Program Officer Lisa Carter, Head of the Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries. Members of the community who have read the recent ARL Special Collections Working Group report or who attend the Web conference and have feedback about transformative issues for special collections are encouraged to participate in the blog.

 

2010 RBMS Preconference in Philadelphia

"PACSCL welcomes the Rare Books and Manuscript Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, to Philadelphia! In June 2010, PACSCL will host the RBMS annual preconference from the 22nd to 25th. Collaboration is the conference theme, and PACSCL's 25 years of cooperation will be one of the models examined. Events will take place at the Doubletree Hotel, in the heart of Center City, as well as at the Chemical Heritage Foundation and the American Philosophical Society in Old City. Attendees will have many opportunities to get to know the city and PACSCL's member institutions. Further information on the conference will be made available as it develops, and can be found at the RBMS website."

 

Problem statement: Special collections materials are of increasing interest and importance. As materials from the general stacks become more ubiquitous (through "mass" digitization projects and as institutions move towards joint ownership of books and journals), special collections may become what defines a library collection. With the shift in importance, it's a good time for an examination of the end-to-end process that results in archival and special collections materials being delivered to interested users. The overarching goal is to achieve economies and efficiencies that permit these materials to be effectively described, properly disclosed, successfully discovered and appropriately delivered.

Nice piece about the Gotham Book Mart collection

Describes Rutgers project to shrinkwrap their Special Collections prior to a construction project

Summary:
The WorldCat Special Collections and Archives Task Force final report includes an executive summary with four major recommendations. Specific issues identified by the task force are prioritized as high, medium, and lower significance. A separate group of problems with data was
also identified.

This response to the report begins with background on the task force and then treats each major and specific recommendation. OCLC provides a timeline for development or other activity for all the major recommendations and nine of the fourteen specific recommendations (numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 12). The timelines range from April 2009 into the future. Two recommendations (numbers 6 and 9) have been assigned problem reports to be investigated and resolved as part of monthly maintenance. Two recommendations (numbers 11 and 14) have no OCLC action, as the system is working as designed. Recommendation 13 has been fixed.

 

"The WorldCat Local (WCL) Special Collections Task Force was convened by OCLC to make recommendations to improve discovery of special collections and archival materials in local implementations of WCL."

Washington DC--The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Working Group on Special Collections, formed in 2007, has released a discussion report that identifies key issues in the management and exposure of special collections material in the 21st century.

The report uses a broad definition of "special collections," which encompasses distinctive material in all media and attendant library services. The group's main focus was on 19th- and 20th-century materials, including emerging digital materials and media, but most of the report applies with equal force to collecting and caring for materials from previous centuries. While the report focuses on special collections in North American research libraries, it has potential application more broadly.

...

The report includes overviews of and recommendations in three areas:

1. Collecting Carefully, with Regard to Costs, and Ethical and Legal Concerns
2. Ensuring Discovery and Access
3. The Challenge of Born-Digital Collections

 

Feature Article on Penn's Rare Books and Manuscript Library.   The Lea Library collection is mentioned.

"New Project: Missing Materials Beta Procedure

The loss of materials held in libraries and archives worldwide is a concern not only for owning institutions, but also for the international antiquarian book trade and global law enforcement. Centralized, highly visible exposure of "missing materials" is needed to help identify stolen materials and to deter future crimes.

OCLC Research, the RLG Partnership and the RBMS Security Committee and members of the cultural heritage collecting community are developing 'proof-of-concept' policies and procedures to experiment using network effects of WorldCat.org to broadcast centralized information about missing and stolen unique and rare materials."

Discusses the use of rare and primary source materials in undergraduate education, with quotes from John Pollock at Penn

New Report: The Impact of Digitizing Special Collections on Teaching and Scholarship, by Merrilee Proffitt and Jennifer Schaffner

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 18 July 2008-Subtitled, "Reflections on a Symposium about Digitization and the Humanities," the report consists of an overview and interpretation of perspecives provided at the RLG Programs symposium that was held in Philadelphia at the Chemical Heritage Foundation on 4 June 2008.

 

This is the famous Greene-Meissner article:

A call to archivists to stop being perfectionists in processing collections, and just get more done.

From p. 2 "How, then, do we break these chains of unhelpful practice that holds us to inadequate productivity? We need to articulate a new set of arrangement, preservation and description guidelines the (1) expedites getting collection materials into the hands of users, (2) that assures arrangement of materials /adequate/ to user needs, (3) that takes the /minimal/ steps necessary to physically preserve the collection materials, and (4) that describes materials /sufficient/ to promote use. In other words, it is time that we focused on what we absolutely need to do instead of on all the things that we might do in a world of unbounded resources."

RLG Programs releases "Seeking Sustainability," a casual report on RLG's exploration of ways to make access to digitized special collections self-supporting

Images of Fore-Edge Paintings from Boston Public Library

Providing Access to Uncataloged Special Collections with In - Process Records, by Lundy, M. W .

"With generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources is creating a national program to identify and catalog hidden special collections and archives. The records and descriptions obtained through this effort will be accessible through the Internet and the Web, enabling the federation of disparate, local cataloging entries with tools to aggregate this information by topic and theme."

This opinion piece urges moving forward more quickly on digitization of special collections. The authors suggest that we move to an access (rather than preservation ) model; that we incorporate digization as part of processing a collection; that we scan the 'tip of the iceberg' and follow-up with further scanning when usage patterns develop; that we focus on quantity over quality; and that we expose our collections in the common search tools.

"Mission

The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) encourages diverse audiences to explore and engage with member libraries' uniquely rich holdings and, through collaboration, strengthens these collections and the institutions that preserve them.

Vision

PACSCL is the most extensive and diverse collaboration among a region's libraries and archives in the United States. Its collections, in their depth and variety, comprise an internationally important body of unique and rare materials for students, scholars, and life-long learners of every background."

"ARL Publishes Celebrating Research: Rare and Special Collections from the Membership of the Association of Research Libraries

ARL has published a book and Web site profiling selected rare and special collections in major research libraries of North America, Celebrating Research: Rare and Special Collections from the Membership of the Association of Research Libraries.Celebrating Research book cover

The compendium is a sampling of the abundance and variety of collections available for use. Special collections have been broadly construed to encompass distinctive, rare and unique, emerging media, born-digital, digitized, uncommon, non-standard, primary, and heritage materials.

Celebrating Research includes 118 collection profiles, each from a different ARL member library."

Special Collections in ARL Libraries: Results of the 1998 Survey Sponsored by the ARL Research Collections Committee
by Judith M. Panitch, 2001

The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) Consortial Survey Initiative is a 30-month project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to assess backlogged archival collections at 22 Philadelphia area libraries, archives, and museums.

"Adopted by the ARL Board of Directors in February 2003. This document underscores the individual and collective responsibility of ARL institutions to collect, preserve, and provide access to primary source materials."