---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Terry Belanger &lt;tb3e(a)virginia.edu&gt; Date: Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:00 PM On Thursday and Friday, 15 and 16 October, <http://www.arl.org/>The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the <http://www.cni.org/>Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) co-hosted a two-day forum at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington DC. The conference's title was "< http://www.arl.org/events/fallforum/forum09/forum09schedule.shtml>An Age of Discovery: Distinctive Collections in the Digital Age," and its goal was to build on the work of ARL's <http://www.arl.org/rtl/speccoll/spcollwg/>Special Collections Working Group, focusing attention on opportunities available in the digital environment for leveraging the strengths of special collections (SC), making them more widely accessible, and identifying strategies for advancing this goal. The forum was held immediately after the fall ARL meeting, and a good many university librarians attended, some of them accompanied by their head of special collections. If there's any interest, In a day or so I'll post a more detailed (and more evaluative) conference report on ExLibris. Meanwhile, here follows a summary of some of the themes that emerged from the forum's presentations and discussions: Justification by Use <> The use of the term "archives" is loosening to include what have traditionally been thought of as rare books or printed ephemera. <> SC are justified primarily by use: as Vonnegut put it in "The Sirens of Titan," "The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody." Use is the end of all archival effort. <> The cost of digitization is rapidly decreasing. <> Users are not particularly interested in which institution owns the original on which a digital surrogate relies; they are far more concerned with getting unfettered access to the surrogates. <> Digital surrogates make scholars and students more productive. Faculty members (especially younger ones) are open to new ideas about course content and in using original materials in conjunction with digital surrogates. The digitization of materials increases their use, not only via online surrogates but also of the originals in reading rooms: the digital surrogate dignifies and legitimizes the physical object behind it. <> Making hidden collections more visible requires not only a subject knowledge of these SC but also an understanding of the professions of those potentially interested in using them. We need to find efficient and productive ways to bring scholars and students into the development of SC, for example by bringing them into the cataloging process. Silos vs Mainstreaming <> An insistence on the distinctiveness of individual SC (and the usage restrictions that accompany them) will, if taken to an extreme, hedge and silo these SC and discourage cross-institution cooperation. It is competition that drives us, not cooperation (cf. our football teams). Why are we all developing our own, individual websites? Why not use Wikipedia? <> We need new and more reliable ways of linking SC across institutional boundaries. Delivering special collections to the world is very different from bringing resources to local audience; it's the difference between a tunnel and a megaphone. We need stronger collaborative networks: durable associations of autonomous entities collaborating to achieve common or compatible goals while maintaining flexibility, building common solutions to common problems. <> Online we can put the past back together again, though we shouldn't try to recreate in the new environment the same institutions we have in the physical world. Roadblocks to Progress <> Roadblocks to increased use include a stubborn adherence to object-oriented rather than to user-oriented attitudes, a disinclination to decrease cataloging backlogs if the price is minimum cataloging, and a fear of the born-digital. <> Until recently, SC have for the most part been protected from budgeting decisions based on frequency of use, but this policy is changing. The conventional wisdom that SC will enhance the reputation of institutions has come into question. <> Deaccession continues to be an attractive proposition to resource providers controlling the destiny of SC. If SC are underfunded these days, it's our own fault, for insufficiently promoting the value of our collections and the services we provide. The Good News <> A new SC profession has emerged over the past couple of decade, in relation both to institutions and to users. Progress in the field has been rapid. This would have been a different conference even five years ago. Terry Belanger . 310 East Market St (Apt A) . Charlottesville, VA 22902 email belanger(a)virginia.edu . phone 434-296-9917