Mobilizing Unique Materials
Archives, Manuscripts, Rare Books, and Digital Special Collections
The objective of this theme is to help institutions improve stewardship, raise visibility, and increase the use of rare books, manuscripts, archives and special collections.
Special collections and archives elevate the excellence and prestige of their institutions by providing scholars access to unique and rare materials of high research value. But new environmental factors—such as constrained resources, shifts in research methods, the proliferation of digital journals and reference sources, and evolving demands of researchers—make the care of rare books and special collections difficult.
Current practices are expensive and don't scale effectively, and efficient management and improved discovery of special collections are urgent priorities.
Institutions need a way to move forward, but workflow problems—such as substantial backlogs—are a common bottleneck.
Improved stewardship will contribute to the creation of new knowledge and enhance an institution's reputation. Developing new perspectives and modeling reasonable solutions will increase the use of rare books, manuscripts, archives and special collections, and ensure that resources are put to their best use.
How we advance thinking
We take a fresh look at community practice and consider alternatives for special collections and archives.
We focus on:
Identifying key issues—Our surveys and analyses provide evidence of challenges in special collections.
Protoyping—We experiment, using new ideas to make archives easier to discover.
Modeling—We surface strategies for sharing innovation and expertise.
Convening—We assemble librarians and archivists at events that catalyze radical changes in community practice.
Mining data and text—We explore social metadata, data mining, and text mining to demonstrate improvements in description of both digital and non-digital special collections.
Publishing—We "clear the air" and document changing priorities.
We work on:
Improving discovery of and access to archives
- Example activities:
Scaling up digitization of special collections
- Example activity: Rapid Capture: Mass Digitization of Special Collections
- Key output:
- Key outputs from related activities:
- Key output:
Increasing use of special collections
- Example activities:
Collecting and analyzing a shared evidence base for special collections decision-makers
- Example activity: Survey of Special Collections and Archives in the US and Canada
Enriching metadata for special collections
- Example activity: Europeana Innovation Pilots
Simplifying management of born-digital special collections
- Example activity: Demystifying Born Digital
Providing a venue for community engagement and stakeholder consultation, where organizational leaders and decision makers can collaborate with peers
- Example events:
- Libraries Rebound: Embracing Mission, Maximizing Impact
- Past Forward! Meeting Stakeholder Needs in 21st Century Special Collections
- Digitization matters: Breaking through the barriers—scaling up digitization of special collections
- Putting “Special” in the “Collective Collection” Forum
- Digitization and the Humanities: Impact on Libraries and Special Collections Symposium
OCLC Research on YouTube
Watch OCLC Research YouTube Channel videos that feature some of our current work or recent findings