These themes point to next steps the research library community must take to strategically address the needs of 21st-century researchers—students, faculty, and life-long learners—and connect them to our most unique collections. Use Drives Special Collections Activity Use as the driving force in the value proposition of collecting, maintaining, and providing access to special collections surfaced early in the forum and was reinforced repeatedly throughout. From that positioning, speakers articulated the impact that unique, rare, and primary resources are having on learners of every scholarly level by sharing innovative projects and examples from collections. Using engrossing examples as diverse as brilliant illuminated manuscripts, heart-wrenching human rights Web sites, fragmented Buddhist scrolls, and newly revealed Archimedes drawings, presenters addressed the critical matter of getting materials into the hands of users more quickly and in ways that promote dynamic and meaningful advancement of knowledge. Speakers advocated rethinking strategies for resource allocation, processing and digitization workflows, and promoting special collections in the context of use. Mark Greene urged against “protective thinking” that leads to inefficient processing, highly selective digitization, and delays in expeditious discoverability by the widest audience, including K–12 and undergraduate students alongside “qualified” researchers. G. Wayne Clough shared the Smithsonian’s work to support a learning journey that starts before a visit to a collection, creates tangible memories during, and continues long after, suggesting that collections want to be “petted.” Don Waters promoted framing the investment in special collections and archives in the context of scholarly objectives and improving the efficiency of research. Several speakers provided evidence of how use is changing with the advancement of digital technologies. Now that digital delivery is an expectation, metadata must facilitate deep discovery and user contribution should be harnessed to enrich future research. In a Web 2.0 environment, special collections need to be findable at the surface of the Web, open for creative reuse and placed well within users’ fluid virtual work spaces. Clough encouraged libraries to expose collections for the challenging, organic aggregations of knowledge that they are. Increasingly, use can be leveraged to increase future research. Jacqueline Goldsby discussed her success with graduate student scholars working on the RLI 267 11 Moving Special Collections Forward in an Age of Discovery: Themes from the ARL-CNI Forum ( C O N T I N U E D ) DECEMBER 2009 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC
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