Association of Research Libraries (ARL®)

Suzanne Thorin, Dean of University Libraries
Indiana University
Alice Schreyer, Curator, Special Collections
University of Chicago

I. The Cultures of Special Collections

MS. SCHREYER: It is both a privilege and a responsibility to participate in this meeting. Along with Joe and others, I hope that it will stimulate lively dialogue between library directors and special collections librarians.

In planning discussions for this session, one provocative theme emerged. It involved whether there is a separate special collections culture, a different way of viewing the world and of behaving. If so, are these differences useful or harmful in terms of the overall goals of the library? Should we seek to "mainstream" special collections or to cultivate diversity? In good "Chicago school" style, I'll describe the cultures of two very different special collections as a context for our remarks. The charts on your handout provide a graphical presentation of some key comparisons. Suzanne follows with her perspective on the cost and value of special collections, and I'll respond with a staff viewpoint. Suzanne concludes our presentation.

There is, of course, no one culture of special collections. Far from being homogeneous or monolithic, there is a great range of ideas and practices among and within ARL special collections, just as there is in ARL itself. Some of the differences in operations, services, and attitudes are determined by tangible and obvious factors—facilities, organizational structure, and, perhaps above all, funding. Is the special collections located in a separate building? Are its technical services performed within special collections or by a central library department? To whom does the director report and how involved is the director in library-wide management and decision making? On what standing library committees do special collections staff serve? What are the sources of funding for acquisitions, compensation, and operations, and how much control does special collections have in allocating these funds?

Some organizational factors tend toward separateness, while others incorporate special collections into the rest of the library. Neither model is intrinsically better, but they are very different. As it happens, Suzanne and I represent a public and a private institution with special collections that are at nearly opposite ends of the continuum, from decentralized to centralized. They serve as useful examples of the diverse cultures of special collections and the extent to which the differences reflect institutional history.

The Lilly Library at Indiana University exemplifies the tradition of a private collection presented to a public institution. Lilly's core collection was donated by Josiah K. Lilly, Jr. between 1954 and 1957. The first librarian, David Randall, a bookseller from whom Lilly purchased many items for his collection, substantially expanded the holdings, as did his longtime successor Bill Cagle. A separate building, modeled after Harvard's Houghton Library, was dedicated in 1960. This bibliophilic legacy, combined with a freestanding building, has had a lasting influence on Lilly's development.

At the University of Chicago, collectors have been very important to the development of the collections but not in the shaping of special collections as an organizational and physical entity. The Special Collections Department was organized in 1953 to bring together separately maintained and staffed rare and valuable collections. Robert Rosenthal, a trained librarian and grand collection-builder, was the department's curator for over 35 years, from its founding until his death in 1989.

Special Collections is located on the first floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library, which opened in 1970 and is undergoing a major reconfiguration. The collections are now being moved (and I do mean, now!) into compact shelving designed to keep the entire library's collections on site for 10-12 years (Special Collections will not make it). In developing the Master Plan, we considered locating the department outside the building's entrance control, in order to provide a more distinct identity and provide easy access by visitors. We decided to stay inside the envelope of the building to facilitate interaction between special collections and Regenstein researchers, staff, and materials, reflecting our integrated approach.

In terms of size and funding, Lilly and Chicago are worlds apart. Lilly's book collections now number over 450,000, Chicago's 250,000. The Lilly endowment generates nearly $900,000 in annual acquisitions funds, close to seven times my budget. Lilly's staff is 23 (9 professionals) plus hourly workers; the staff at Chicago includes 14 FTE (5 librarians) plus hourly. Our use figures, however, are comparable, though the mix of affiliated and visiting researchers is very different. In 1996­97, Lilly had 3,754 onsite users, of whom 1,552 were affiliated with Indiana University. At Chicago we had a total of 4,094 onsite users, 3,076 of whom were Chicago students and faculty.

The differences between Lilly and Special Collections at the University of Chicago are less profound than you might imagine from this comparison. Lisa Browar, Director of the Lilly Library, and I both inherited fabulous collections that we are committed to developing (though we pursue this in very different ways because of our budgets) and delivering to researchers. In pursuing these goals we view ourselves as fully supporting the mission of our parent institutions.

I see great benefits to the highly centralized environment at Chicago; but this may be making a virtue of the necessity to live within modest means. Lilly staff need to work harder to collaborate with their library colleagues, they need their own support services and reference collections, and they need to break down the barriers that physical separation creates for users. On the other hand, they have far more autonomy in setting standards for cataloging and other procedures. The distinctive culture of each special collections determines how it fulfills its mission far more than how it defines it. This is true as well of special collections and the rest of the library, where some differences are fundamental to meeting shared goals.

II. Funding—Cost & Value

MS. THORIN: Most of the special collections we are discussing today are part of a university library system located in an institution of higher education beginning to undergo radical change. The astounding growth of university libraries that took place in North America after World War II occurred in tandem with the growth of the universities themselves. Just as the university's programs grew in size and complexity, the library's growth reflected the university in that the size and comprehensiveness of a library's collections determined its quality. Today we hear a different view, one that stresses having access to information instead of owning it. This change is being fueled both by shrinking university budgets and the rapid growth of electronic resources. Within this context, university administrators are questioning the need for libraries to continue expanding their print collections. Presidents and provosts are hoping that the purchase of print materials will lessen as electronic communication increases. I wonder if they ever ask themselves, "How many more rare books does this university need?" And do they have any idea at all of the costs that such materials entail and the lack of their use by faculty and students? For a variety of reasons, library directors have continued to expand their rare book collections even while having to limit book purchases in other significant areas, such as history, philosophy, and area studies, and to cancel journal subscriptions in the sciences. For rare book collections without significant endowments, purchasing either a rare book or a subscription to a science journal becomes an impossible choice, even though it is clear that the use of rare books is low—for a variety of reasons—when compared to other library materials. I wonder if we have been so captured by the status of having such collections that we have accepted their low use and high cost without question, and perhaps even that we have passively accepted the practices that have helped to create both these conditions.

The support needed for rare books and special collections goes far beyond simply having an adequate budget for acquisitions. In addition to appropriated support, special collections budgets are augmented by endowments. Finding a donor to underwrite the purchase of rare books is usually not as difficult as finding a donor to fund, say, books for the undergraduate collection. Rare materials are usually beautiful and have the aura of high culture. Special collections are often unique and unusual. Giving a library funds to purchase rare materials can bring the donor stature and give the university a lasting legacy—as well as an important showcase for dignitaries and positive publicity. But, obtaining private or university support to purchase rare books is only the beginning. The level of staff support needed to care for and to present rare books and special collections to users under current practices is much higher than it is for other library collections. And, the level of support the university library gives for cataloging, preservation, and access is sometimes to the detriment of other library units much more directly connected to academic programs. In addition, for libraries with endowed acquisitions funds, the regular and continuing expansion of the collection means that there will be a need for more space, either in a new building or in an addition to or renovation of an existing building, as well as space in an off-site collections facility. (I have recently become painfully aware that IU's rare book collection has grown from 80,000 in 1958 to 400,000 in 1999. If current growth is maintained, the thought of having nearly a million rare books in 2040 is astonishing.)

It may be possible for rare book and special collections staff to help defray or even to meet some costs by selling products based on their collections or by selling access to their collections via the Web. Prints, greeting cards, reproductions, and objects can be licensed for sale to the public. But can such products be profitable? No less than the Library of Congress found that it was difficult for potential dealers to find compelling products in the collections and that most products that were sold did not turn a profit. Access to rare books and special collections on the Web could in some cases be achieved via paid subscriptions or for cost per view or for a reproduction of an image. The notion of licensing collections for profit, however, is a complex idea that needs more thought and development.

Rare book curators probably do have a special advantage in building private endowments and possibly in obtaining grants and donations for digitizing their collections. The Library of Congress' American Memory program set the pace for digitizing rare books and special collections. Although the materials are available to anyone with web access, LC has concentrated on delivering to teachers and students in the K-12 world. Within the context of the university world, we need to question the expense of digitizing historical materials outside the context of teaching and learning. Targeting K-12 students with local or national historical materials may please the state legislature, but these students are not usually primary within the mission of a university. The idea of digitizing a collection just because one owns it is a provider-driven model, one that needs to be balanced by the needs of users. A different approach might be to ensure that historical materials are woven into the fabric of new courses being offered in a distributed environment or to work in concert with education faculty in their outreach to primary and secondary schools.

But how can we do this without a radical change in the rare book environment that exists today? After all, will not many of those who use digitized collections want to see and touch the real books? To look at and study the originals?

We appear to have accepted the notion that such materials must be preserved and protected first and only then made available to faculty and students. In spite of an annual acquisitions budget of nearly $1 million and annual staff support of nearly $650,000, the researchers who use rare materials and special collections in the Lilly Library at Indiana University in any given five-day week amount to an average of 15 per day. I do not believe these statistics are unusual. But, as a library director, it is my job to ask why.

Daniel Traister, who has written about the practices in rare book and special collections libraries, finds that American special collections are a "troublesome concept in theory, but also, generally speaking, worse in practice." Rare book libraries are as restrictive in access as most European libraries and are an anomaly within the American university and public library world. The adoption of restrictive practices by rare book librarians—and their acceptance by users and library directors—could be a major factor in the eventual demise of this genre in an era of computers.

As for the cost of rare books, Traister, an imminent rare books librarian at the University of Pennsylvania, questions the high monetary value placed on some rare books and notes that the cost of many general library materials is higher and their replacement is as difficult or as impossible. So, why have we accepted what Dr. Traister calls the "set of restrictive practices and self-aggrandizing differentiations which make special collections 'special.'"

Perhaps a better question is, what can we do to begin a conversation about how to integrate the rare books culture into the broader library, which in turn is struggling to strengthen itself within the academy? I suggest that the following questions in the areas of collection development and ideas for better access are a few that need to be discussed as libraries plan strategically for the next decade:

In collection development, should and can rare books and special collections be included in the model of libraries moving toward providing access to scholarly information rather than owning the information? Should the concept of having large duplicate collections, one which large research libraries are struggling to leave behind, extend to rare books and special collections? Should some institutions decide that collecting rare books is no longer part of their mission, given other needs and given the number of large rare book collections that continue to be supported? Conversely, is the centralization of special collections in a few ARL libraries a negative factor inevitably? Is the competition for acquisitions that exists among rare book librarians and curators at different institutions helpful or harmful toward building collections? Should curators continue to acquire collections that do not support university programs? And, finally, should special collections develop more circumscribed collections policies?

In the area of access, since rare books and special collections are deemed by many to be underused, can we find ways to place a higher value on the role of rare materials and special collections within the full context of the academy? Can we communicate better to university administrators and the faculty at large the need to use the collections we buy and care for to study the past? Is it even possible for rare books and special collections to have much broader use in teaching? At the risk of being placed in an outer ring of hell, one of Traister's fears, I suggest that we might begin with a few of his suggestions to foster more use: Why not remove any restrictive procedures, such as a separate registration process? Let us reevaluate the necessity of long reference interviews that place the burden of justifying the use of a rare book on the reader. Let us look at having restrictions geared to the type of material, not to every item in the collection. And finally, horror of horrors, let us discuss letting faculty—and even graduate students—browse in the stacks.

Traister says, "We need to be more like, not more unlike, other American libraries if we are to justify our survival. No more than our colleagues elsewhere have we got the patent, the final word, on what is culture, who can or should have access to it, and what its preservation requires. The stuff is organic; like us, it's going to die sooner or later, or—unlike us—require some sort of reformatting if its text must be preserved for subsequent generations. While it is alive, why should it not get used, felt, touched, admired, smelled, by real live people with real live interests and varied competencies of which we might not approve but which we also have no right or ability to judge?" These words are music to my ears, Alice. What are your thoughts?

III. The Costs and Value of Special Collections: A Staff Perspective

MS. SCHREYER: I am reminded by your remarks that, despite vast changes over the last generation in special collections, the image of our profession as isolationist and exclusive endures, even among some of my colleagues. Though my own perspective reflects Chicago's centralized organizational structure, modest funding and institutional commitment to research; I can assure you that this stereotype is woefully outdated, if it was ever deserved. It seems we have not successfully communicated the extraordinary advances we have made and our view that use, not ownership, brings institutional prestige.

Over the last 15-20 years, improved bibliographic control and access have been among our highest priorities. The bibliographic databases enriched by online cataloging projects made shared cataloging a reality for a very high percentage of rare books. Most of the factors that contribute to the cost of rare book cataloging apply also to general research materials. In a centralized cataloging unit, such as ours at Chicago, the standards reflect mainstream procedures for accepting available records. As always, there are tradeoffs between quality and economy. This is also true of retrospective conversion projects. At Chicago, special collections records were converted along with the rest of the library's, an approach Indiana is likely to pursue. As a result, we have online records lacking descriptive detail present in the card catalog and with misinformation that does not apply to our copy. Now that recon is nearly complete, we are assessing how to upgrade these records.

It may seem as if detailed descriptions and specialized access fields are luxuries that satisfy catalogers' bibliographic interests rather than scholars' needs. In fact, full records make reference and collection development more efficient, eliminate unnecessary retrievals from remote storage and provide copy-specific information that can constitute evidence of ownership in the case of theft. Not every institution will choose to pay for these benefits, but we need to understand what we are giving up.

Improvements in access effected by the MARC format for archives and manuscripts, AMC, are quite extraordinary. Where entirely local practices once prevailed, archives and manuscripts staff became pioneers in the development of electronic access tools and metadata for unique materials. The Encoded Archival Description (EAD/DTD) continued this leadership role. These new procedures do not reduce costs, since AMC cataloging and the creation of an EAD finding aid are the last steps in a sequence of appraisal, arrangement, and description that can take many months. But electronic access tools make it possible for researchers to mine existing holdings for traditional and emerging areas of scholarly inquiry.

We are only beginning to see the effects of improved bibliographic access. We get more reference queries, certainly. Websites, online records and electronic finding aids eliminate routine questions about hours, holdings, access policies, and copying services. But special collections will never be self-service, especially because most repositories provide some access to unprocessed or partially processed collections.

We are teachers, not gatekeepers, in our reference interviews. At Chicago, all users fill out a registration card on their first visit, but we use the process as an orientation, not as a way to "vet" users or their projects.

Despite all our best efforts to expand use, the cost of special collections on a per-use basis will always be high when compared with other library units. But is this the right benchmark to use, especially with university administrators? What is the cost per student or faculty member to equip a sophisticated lab? How much does it cost to establish a specialized disciplinary center? How do the costs of maintaining and servicing special collections compare to the university museum's? Special collections offers comparable benefits in terms of academic support, recruitment and institutional identity. Our holdings are, after all, specialized; it's ironic that the name special collections, which was intended to convey greater inclusiveness than rare books and manuscripts, has come to haunt us with its taint of preciosity and snobbery.

The "value" of special collections, as of ARL libraries, comes from great collections that are assets to promote, indeed market, in teaching and research. Our departments are the natural resource for activities generated by vibrant academic interest in book history, and in visual and material culture studies. Critics dismiss special collections as destined to become a "museum of the book." In this time of explosive popularity and growth in museum attendance, I am not so sure this is at all a bad thing. And we should remember that the Museum of Alexandria was a center for scholars who gathered to study and advance knowledge. In this sense, special collections indeed serves a museum function.

And, like our museum colleagues, we are custodians as well as curators. Once we add something to our collections we have accepted responsibility for its safekeeping. We could decide that physical preservation is no longer part of our mission, but that might be difficult to explain to donors and university administrators. This obligation to preserve and protect the collections accounts for many of our so-called restrictive practices and higher maintenance costs.

IIf extraordinary physical collections constitute who and what we are in special collections, will electronic access alter attitudes toward ownership of originals? This will partly depend on how digital texts change scholarship; and since we serve local needs, we need to work closely with faculty in this analysis. I see several factors that should encourage coordinated collection building. Even those with well-endowed budgets feel the impact of a strong market on purchasing power. Documenting the twentieth century, and deciding what artifacts of the nineteenth century must be preserved in original form, are daunting tasks that require collaboration. And digital projects may pave the way for building complementary physical collections that are linked to closely related digital surrogates. This year's third and final round of LC/Ameritech award winners, of which Chicago is one, was notable for the fact that four of six awards went to cooperative projects.

Will we risk marginalizing special collections instead of integrating it further into from the library's research agenda by seeking to commodify it? Electronic products that appeal to commercial markets and external funders, usually "high spots," are not the ones that support research. Reliance on special collections for content to meet institutional goals of distance education and projects to improve K-12 education can also divert staff resources from creating electronic access tools and digitizing collections with research value.

The issue of staffing—ultimately, of course, a matter of funding—is indeed troubling. We have added exciting new activities but need to sustain traditional ones. For example, online exhibitions do not fill physical cases. Some new users, including undergraduates, film and video producers and picture researchers, are more demanding because they are unfamiliar with primary sources. Staff education, training, and development are also of concern.

I would like to turn Suzanne's—or Dan Traister's—question on end and ask, why can't the rest of the library become more like us? I think it will, at least with respect to managing print collections. According to Peter Graham, the importance of special collections will continue as "the part of the library that maintains and provides important artifacts of the human record."[1] Collections that bring users to our buildings and home pages will all be, in one sense, special. They will require curatorial and interpretive skills well established in special collections. Thank you for beginning a dialogue about the role of these extraordinary research resources.

IV. Conclusion

MS. THORIN: At the risk of doing a poor imitation of Jane Curtin and Bill Murray on the old Saturday Night Live show long ago, Alice and I agreed at the onset to take strong and opposite positions in our remarks in order to illustrate vividly the complexities inherent in the issues that we have described today. Alice and I have mentioned most of the same issues from two different yet valid viewpoints. In fact, the practices in rare book collections and libraries that were used by curators from the book collecting world and librarians who were great collection builders have helped to establish collections of enormous intellectual and monetary value. Making preservation and security a higher priority than their use has helped to protect the collections and ensure their availability in the future. Today the possibility of making a significant number of rare books and special collections available to anyone who has access to the web has energized rare book librarians. These digitized collections may help change the way instructors teach and students learn. Digitizing heavily-used rare materials will also help to save the materials from further deterioration; and, libraries and departments will be able to advertise more effectively their holdings to a much wider audience in a manner so much more interesting than, forgive me, a bibliographic record.

But, with change occurring both in our society and in higher education, it is time to assess current practices within rare books and special collections. Areas where change could revitalize operations, include broader staff interaction, new strategies for collection development, and, most of all, new approaches that would enable more people to use rare books and special collections. Without such an assessment, the materials in these rich collections might in time be limited to serving as museums illuminating the past, instead of research collections critical to understanding the present and the future as well.

Summary: Cultures, Context, Cost, and Value of Rare Books & Special Collections

The Cultures of Special Collections

MS. SCHREYER: Is there a distinctive special collections culture? The perception exists that special collections staff cultivate separateness. If this is true, what are the reasons for different practices? Factors such as facilities, organizational structure, funding, and institutional history determine how each special collections fulfills its mission. What are the costs and benefits of each model? Providing a context for our remarks: the examples of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, and the Department of Special Collections, University of Chicago.

Cost and Value: A Director's View

MS. THORIN: For a variety of reasons, library directors have continued to expand their rare book collections even while having to limit book purchases and to cancel journal subscriptions in the sciences. The level of staff support needed to care for and to present rare books and special collections to users under current practices is much higher than it is for other library collections. And the level of support the university library gives is sometimes to the detriment of library units much more directly connected to academic programs. Rare book curators probably have a special advantage in building private endowments and in obtaining grants and donations for digitizing their collections. But digitizing research collections without a context within university programs may not be the most effective way to support teaching and learning. How can digitized collections be used within the context of the university? What can we do to begin a dialog about how to integrate better the rare books culture into the broader library? Are current models for collection development still effective? Do the traditional policies governing the use of the collections actually ensure that only a small user group will be maintained?

Cost and Value: A Staff Perspective

MS. SCHREYER: Special collections has made enormous advances over the past 10-15 years in managing collections and promoting use. Have we successfully communicated these changes to colleagues? The costs of special collections cataloging and access services are directly related to fulfilling curatorial, interpretive and stewardship responsibilities. Electronic access is making some activities far more efficient, but tension still exists between quality and economy. The value of special collections to university teaching and research, and to institutional identity, is being enhanced by academic interest in book history, material and visual culture; and by the transformation of libraries in the digital age. Instead of comparing cost per use of special collections with other library units, we need to look at other specialized university programs. New uses, new readers and the need for new skills are straining limited special collections staff resources; and competing with traditional activities. It is too soon to tell how digital texts will change scholars' dependence on original sources; but market forces and the demands of preserving the 19th and documenting the 20th century make it necessary to coordinate collection development.

Conclusion: What the Future Holds

MS. THORIN: The practices in rare book collections and libraries that were used by curators from the book collecting world and librarians who were great collection builders have helped to establish collections of enormous intellectual and monetary value. But, with change occurring both in society and in higher education, it is time to assess current practices within rare books and special collections. Areas where change could revitalize operations include broader staff interaction, new strategies for collection development, and new approaches that would enable more people to use rare books and special collections. Without such an assessment, the materials in these rich collections might in time be limited to serving as museums illuminating the past, instead of research materials critical to understanding the present and the future as well.

Endnote

1. "New Roles for Special Collections on the Network," College & Research Libraries 59.3 (May 1998): 235.

References

Graham, Peter S. "New Roles for Special Collections on the Network." College & Research Libraries 59.3 (May 1998): 232-39.

Traister, Daniel. "Is There a Future for Special Collections? And Should There Be?—A Polemical Essay." 2 Feb. 1999 http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~traister/future.html

Handout

Copyright © 1999 by Suzanne Thorin and Alice Shreyer