Association of Research Libraries (ARL®)

October 15–16, 2009
Washington DC

Sponsored by ARL & CNI

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

Program Overview

Program sessions addressed:

• Why Are Special Collections Important? Exploring the Value Proposition
• Collaborative Strategies to Build Cross-Institutional Collections
• Special Collections as Laboratories for Researchers and Students
• Integrating Special Collections into the Enterprise
• What Changes with Digital Content?

See the proceedings for details and selected presentations.

Contributors to the Forum

ARL and CNI are grateful to the following organizations for their contributions to the forum:

• Library of Congress for making the Montpelier room available for the Thursday evening reception.

• Preservation Technologies and Alexander Street Press for sponsoring the Friday lunch.

• Council on Library and Information Resources, OCLC, EBSCO, and Atlas Systems Inc. for sponsoring Fellowship Awards for selected participants.