Forging the Future of Special Collections

The wealth of unique content that libraries hold in their special collections, combined with the explosive development of digitization, has enabled special collections over the past twenty years to move out of the shadows of libraries and to become highly visible major institutional assets. What libraries must now contemplate is how to continue this momentum and exploit these invaluable assets. To do so, library administrators will need to articulate how best to build 21st century collections, how to make those collections accessible globally, and how to provide the expertise and services necessary to support collection use. These issues are of vital importance not only to special collections librarians, but also to library administrators, and to the donors and rare booksellers who have been the mainstay of library special collection development in the past.Expanding upon a very successful national colloquium, this book explores the factors that governed the growth and use of special collections in the past, current challenges facing special collections, and emerging opportunities for the future. By tapping the very diverse expertise of a world-class array of authors, including librarians, university faculty, book dealers, collectors and donors, the chapters of this book present a variety of issues to identify how libraries and their college or university faculty can best collaborate to ensure students become aware of resources available to them, and for faculty in their own research to mine these scholarly treasures to advance knowledge. Forging the Future of Special Collections is organized thematically rather than as a strict past/present/future chronology. Some authors will take a theoretical approach to the questions, while others will employ a practical approach that may include case studies. This volume promises to be a seminal work in the canon of the literature about library special collections. While acknowledging the historic strengths of special collections, the authors will move beyond that to understand the emerging requirements of the 21st century knowledge ecosystem, and chart a course for the next decade and beyond.

About the Author :
Arnold Hirshon has been the Associate Provost and University Librarian at Case Western Reserve University since August 2010. He has an extensive scholarly record that includes many monographs, among them the Library Strategic Planning Toolkit (with Stephen Spohn), and Outsourcing Library Technical Services (with Barbara Winters). He is also the author of numerous articles about strategic management, organizational design, technology, leadership, information service integration, assessment and optimization of operations, and nonprofit management. A frequent lecturer nationally and internationally, he has given lectures in nearly 40 countries on six continents on a wide range of topics, including organizational management, trend spotting and analysis, technology planning, and operations assessment and optimization.