For this assignment, I had to assess a special collection, looking at how it is managed, how items are appraised and acquired, reference, preservation, and technology.
Critical Assessment of a Special Collection
Special Collections and Archives, Z. Smith
Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University
For this assessment, I
chose the Special Collections and Archives at Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake
Forest University, as I did my summer practicum with them, and therefore have a
personal knowledge of their collection.
The special collections and
archives contain both the special collections (eg. the rare books and digital
collections) and the university archives or repository. The special collections
contains all sorts of materials, including manuscripts, rare books, confederate
broadsides, and reel-to-reels, while the archive contains mainly the institutional
repository of materials, papers, and manuscripts created by Wake Forest faculty
and departments. For example, the papers of Dr. Allen Mandelbaum were collected
by the university when he retired. Special Collections is currently in the
process of creating a digital finding aid for his work, all 100 bankers boxes
worth (Special Collections – Digital Collections, Allen Mandelbaum Papers).
How are the collections managed?
There is collection
development policy for special collections, which explains why Special
Collections collect what they collect. Special Collections has a collecting
focus in the North Carolina Baptist Historical Collection (which documents the
history of North Carolina Baptist churches), rare books (with a focus on
American, English, and Irish authors from the eighteenth century on), and
manuscripts (created by people with a connection to Wake Forest). They also
have a written collection management policy for their Digital Collection, which
explains what and why they digitize. The final emphasis of the Special
Collections and Archives is the Wake Forest University Archives, which are the
official institutional repository for Wake Forest. They have a section on
“web-based content” or “born-digital” items (Special Collections – Collections).
Special Collections and
Archives also has a deaccession policy, which details how something is to be
removed from the collection. In this policy, they explain the process for
removing an item, and what happens to the item after it has been deaccessioned
(Special Collections – Policies).
In conclusion, the
collections at Special Collections and Archives seem to be managed rather well
through the use of collection development policies.
Appraisal
Special Collections looks
for materials to acquire, and makes sure that they are in good condition and
fit the collection management policy. They look for materials to add to the
manuscript and rare book collection, as well as materials to add to the
university archives. When going through materials for the archives, the special
collections librarians must think about what is useful to future generations of
Wake Forest students. This is especially true when parts of the collection need
to be deaccessioned, for any reason (Practicum).
As for the rare books and
manuscripts, Special collections need to make sure that the items being added
to the collection fit the extant collecting policies of ZSR Library. ZSR
Library’s collections development/management policies (findable via their
website) are created to help ensure that the library collects what is needed by
the various departments, and therefore each department has a collection
development policy. When weeding the collection, the collection management team
looks at the wedding policy, and what is taught at the school. As there is no
doctoral program in psychology, they do not need to keep seven copies of an
outdated monograph, once used regularly by a professor who has long since
retired. However, the graduate program in divinity does need for ZSR Library to
keep texts and monographs on the history of religion and other tomes on
religious studies (ZSR Library – Policies, Psychology, Divinity, Deaccession).
Special Collections does
have a posted policy of how they turn down materials. As Wake Forest has a very
small department of German and Russian (and no graduate program), they do not
need to acquire the Schenker Collection - a collection of books, manuscripts,
monographs, and tomes on and in the language of Eastern Europe. Also, Dr.
Schenker never taught at Wake Forest, so there is no need to acquire his collection.
ZSR Library is currently attempting to shop the collection around to other,
larger, universities which may have a larger Russian or Eastern European
program (ZSR Library – Policies, German and Russian; Practicum). The University
Archives also have an online page with what they accept and what they do not
accept, as well as the policies for “WFU Record Retention and Destruction” and
for “Permanent Records for University Archives” (Special Collection – Records
Retention).
In conclusion, the
appraisal section of Special Collections and Archives seems well organized and
thought out.
Acquisition
ZSR Library and the Special
Collection have funds they can use to acquire materials. If someone were to
read their blog, they would learn how some of the rare books and manuscripts
were acquired – be it donations, from the library of a famous Wake Forester, or
through purchase. Most were purchased through funds specifically set aside for
the purchasing of rare materials. Some of the funds used to acquire the
materials were donations, and others come from the Library budget. Some
materials were donated to the collection, from people with a connection to Wake
Forest (Special Collections – Arthur Conan Doyle and Dante).
Special Collections is also
looking to add materials to the university archives, which can take many forms.
For example, the math department gave the Archives their materials, which
included minutes from staff meetings, death notices, and letter to and from
department members (Special Collections – Records Retention; Practicum).
Another example is the
university photograph collection, which is the collection I worked with the
most during my practicum. These photos date to the founding of Wake Forest in
1834, and continue on until the mid-nineteen-nineties. The photographs from
after the mid-nineteen-nineties have an extant organizational system, and
therefore need less processing (Practicum). This is because Special Collections
and Archives acquired these photographs from basically every department in the
university and at different times, which led to a more whimsical organization. A
large percentage had been filed under “miscellaneous” instead of what they
were. Photographs from the Wake Forest campus were filed under the Reynolda
Campus (and vise versa). My job during my practicum was to put the photographs
into the correct record group, based on what was in the picture (Practicum).
All and all, Special Collections and
Archives seem to have a handle on how they acquire what they collect.
Reference
If one has a reference
question, they can send an email to archives@wfu.edu, call the reference desk
in the reading room, or go to the reading room. The reference desk in the
reading room has a person on staff during the hours the reading room is open.
This person can answer reference questions, or help get a researcher settled
with their materials. Special Collections also takes note of how many people
use the reference room, be it for directions or for research (Special
Collection – ZSR Library Policy; Practicum). A call to the reference desk phone
may end in the leaving of a message, but the person on the desk will get back
to you once they have the answer to your question. Anyone can send an email,
and get a response with the answer. You can also email a person directly from
the staff directory, if you know who you need to email. For example, an email
to Carol Cramer (collection management) directly may get your question answered
more quickly than a general question to zsr@wfu.edu (Practicum).
How
Special Collections and Archives handles their reference questions seem to be
clearly stated on their website.
Preservation
In ZSR Library, it is
widely accepted that, if an item is in need of preservation, it is sent up to
Craig Fansler in preservation. While processing the photograph collection, I
found items that were cracked, broken, ripped, or in some other way damaged.
Mr. Fansler rebinds books that need to be rebound, and does general preservation
work on the materials. In two old blog entries, he helped dry out books which
had been exposed to a leaking pipe in the general library stacks, and repair
books which had met a carton of cookies and cream ice cream. He also removed
mold, mildew, and must from books which were growing them, saving the books
from having to be removed (Practicum; Special Collections – Mold, Ice Cream,
Water in the Stacks).
In
conclusion, the preservation aspect of Special Collections and Archives can be
found via their blog, where Mr. Fansler has written entries about what he does
and how he does it.
Technology
Special Collections has a
large digital collection, and materials are digitized via photography or large
scanners. Materials are digitized because an entire collection is being
digitized, or because a patron has requested that an item be digitized (Special
Collections – Collection Development Policy; Digital Collections).
In the back end of special
collections, staff use the Google Office suite so that multiple people can edit
a collection at once, which helps backstop mistakes. For example, I worked with
and edited a large Google spreadsheet while working with the photography
collection. There was a specific style used for adding record groups, titles, and
dates, so that the spreadsheet could be imported into Archivist Toolkit, and a
digital finding aid created for the collection (Practicum).
Special Collections does
not say which content management system they use for their digital collections,
though ZSR Library and Special Collections keeps a blog on WordPress, and they
have a lot of photographs uploaded into Flickr for the social media posts. They
have an active blog and a very active Facebook page (Practicum; ZSR Library
Blog; Special Collections blog).
As for technology in the
collection, Special collection had reel-to-reels in the collection. They also
have a lot of microfiche and several machines for viewing it. There are a lot
of electronic finding aids for the collection, for both the digital collection
and the rest of the special collections and archives. There are a lot of
libguides, both for subject guides, and as a place to store information for the
student assistants (Special Collections – Digital Collections; Blog).
All in all, the technology aspect of
Special Collections and Archives could be better, as there is not much mention
of what technology they have or how they use it. Special Collections and
Archives focuses more on the content of their collections than their
technology.
Conclusion
In
conclusion, Special Collections and Archives at ZSR Library seem to be well
balanced, especially with what they have available online. Most of the
information available about the collection and policies can be found on the ZSR
Library website. Overall, there is much less information available about
preservation and technology, which may indicate that those aspects are less
important. However, the amount of social media and similar existing for the
Special Collections shows this is not true, but that they don’t identify what
technology they use, be it for their blog or for content management. While
preservation may seem to be less important that acquisition based off of the
website, the fact that there is a preservation specialist at the library who
works to keep the entire library carefully preserved, from everything from
post-it notes to ice cream to broken photographs, shows that is also false. The
same goes for reference, but since most questions are posed via email, phone,
or visiting the library, there is little need to post their reference hours on
the website.
En
fin, Special Collection and Archives seems to be a well managed library, that
fits well within Z. Smith Reynolds Library and within Wake Forest University as
a whole.
Works Cited
Practicum. Summer 2016.
Special Collections and Archives – Z. Smith Reynolds Library.
Special Collections and
Archives – Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Allen Mandelbaum Papers. Retrieved
from: https://wakespace.lib.wfu.edu/handle/10339/37578
Special Collections and Archives – Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Collections. Retrieved from: http://zsr.wfu.edu/special/collections/
Special
Collections and Archives – Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Divinia Commedia by Dante
Alighieri,
Aldine Press. Retrieved from: http://zsr.wfu.edu/2012/divina-commedia-by-dante-alighieri-aldine-press-1502/
Special
Collections and Archives – Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Finding Aids. Retrieved
from: https://wakespace.lib.wfu.edu/handle/10339/26224
Special
Collections and Archives – Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Records Retention. Retrieved
from:
http://zsr.wfu.edu/special/archives/records-retention/.
Special Collections and
Archives – Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Special Collections and Archives Policies.
Retrieved from: https://zsr.wfu.edu/special/about/policies/
Special Collections and Archives – Z.
Smith Reynolds Library. Special Collections Deaccessation
Policy. Retrieved from: http://zsr.wfu.edu/special/about/policies/deaccessioning-policy/
Special
Collections and Archives – Z. Smith Reynolds Library. The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892. Retrieved from: http://zsr.wfu.edu/2012/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes-by-arthur-conan-doyle-1892/
Special
Collections and Archives – Z. Smith Reynolds Library. University Archives.
Retrievedfrom:
http://zsr.wfu.edu/special/archives/
Z. Smith Library. Z. Smith
Reynolds Library. Collection Development Policies. Retrieved from: https://zsr.wfu.edu/about/administration/policies/collection-development/
Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Divinity
Collection Development Policy. Retrieved from: https://zsr.wfu.edu/files/CDP-Divinity-2010.pdf
Z. Smith Reynolds Library. German and
Russian Collection Development Policy. Retrieved from:
https://zsr.wfu.edu/files/CDP-German-Russian.pdf
Z.
Smith Reynolds Library. Here @ ZSR. Retrieved from: http://zsr.wfu.edu/here/
Z.
Smith Reynolds Library. Ice Cream Incident. Retrieved from: https://zsr.wfu.edu/2009/ice-cream-incident/
Z.
Smith Reynolds Library. Moldy Books. Retrieved from: https://zsr.wfu.edu/2009/moldy-books/
Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Psychology
Collection Development Policy. Retrieved from: https://zsr.wfu.edu/files/CDP-Psychology.pdf
Z.
Smith Reynolds Library. Special Collections Blog. http://zsr.wfu.edu/blog/special/
Z.
Smith Reynolds Library. Water Disaster on April 10th in the Stacks. Retrieved
from: https://zsr.wfu.edu/2008/water-disaster-on-april-10th-in-the-stacks/
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