JIM KUHN
The topic of this essay is collection acquisition—notably via gift—and the sort of collection policies, evolving tools, and best practices that can help guide our relationships with donors and our assessments of gifts-in-kind as we work to build collections that have research and pedagogical value for our increasingly diverse communities. Acquisition through gift is an issue of perennial importance for archives, rare book, and special collections departments; no less so at the University of Rochester, whose relationship with donors goes back to our mid-nineteenth-century founding. Our oldest printed book—a 1472 Summa Theologiae printed in Esslingen by Konrad Fyner—was one of our earliest gifts, from John Whipple Dwinelle, in 1859.
Over the course of the last couple of years my collection development colleagues and I have had many grateful discussions with potential donors of gift-in-kind collections. Those that concluded with acquisitions included donor discussions about L. Frank Baum and H. G. Wells; about the corporate archive of an audiovisual consulting firm active from the 1960s through the early 1990s; about additional accruals to a collection of over 7,300 AIDS education posters; about an accrual of additional records from an independent nonprofit literary publisher, BOA Editions, Ltd., whose 178 boxes already with us have been fully processed and are on the cusp of public access, in time for the fortieth anniversary of the press in 2016.1 This is a fairly short list; a fuller accounting of primarily unsolicited recent important donations would include the papers of a deceased local Episcopal bishop active in social justice circles; the work produced by a Rochester documentary filmmaking firm for Kodak in support of nationwide amateur photography communities, multiple archival collections from prominent retired faculty members, and a remarkable continuing stream of chromolithographed horticultural catalogs and publications issued by the very active nineteenth-century Rochester seed and nursery trade and donated by a former manuscript librarian.2 Still not a complete list. Nor does this list include the many collections about which we have engaged in discussions, but respectfully—and gratefully—declined. I suspect this recent University of Rochester experience, that is, nearly constantly being in a position to acquire what one “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future” panelist described as collections that “come in over the transom unsolicited”—is not at all uncommon among special collections that actively acquire material through donation.3
Whether a collection on offer is acquired or not, these are all fascinating and important collections, and imbued with meanings different from those we might attribute as rare book and special collections librarians and archivists.4 We are grateful for these discussions; all of us—collectors, donors, archivists, librarians, booksellers, auction houses—take seriously our shared and diverse commitments to preserving and providing access to cultural heritage. In those instances where the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries is not the right home for collections being offered, we readily make suggestions about alternatives, about planning for disposition, about what we can do to help. We are hardly alone in this practice, and these experiences should never be uncommon among special collections librarians and archivists. The question this essay addresses relates to new tools and best practices that could be helpful in successful collection building, particularly around gifts-in-kind, and perhaps especially around unsolicited gifts or those that do not necessarily build on existing institutional strengths.
Questions about when to say “yes” or “thank you no,” arise in all offers of gifts-in-kind. What are the affinities between incoming and existing collections, the alliances that can be built between collectors and their collections with campus curricula, with faculty and graduate student research agendas, or among the campus library and local communities? A variety of tools and open practices can help in determining which answer—“yes” or “thank you no”—makes the most sense on a case-by-case basis. As our new collection development and management policy states, “we acknowledge and honor our crucial partnerships with friends and donors over the years; their interest and trust are one indication of the true worth of our endeavors.”5 Reaching a mutual understanding of collection development among archivists, curators, librarians, and donors can help strengthen these important relationships.
A publicly posted collection development policy for the River Campus Libraries Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation went online in 2014. As a collection that dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, these holdings are large and varied.6 This new policy therefore is a living document, tracking collection strengths we intend to build, the purpose of which is “not to document all collection strengths and areas of distinction, but to guide current selection criteria by designating certain areas of continued growth and indicating, where appropriate, collecting qualifiers and limited procedures for deaccessioning.”7
However, in addition to listing a number of collecting areas of importance in rare books, children’s books, literary, historical, university archives, and other manuscript and archival collections, the policy also notes both that
The unique history of Rochester has meant that our collections contain substantial materials relating to often under-collected communities and cultures; we actively build on those existing holdings and seek opportunities to explore new areas. Through our collections, we facilitate study and research from multicultural and interdisciplinary perspectives.
This plan is not intended to be a final statement but will be reviewed at regular intervals and revised as required. In addition to subject areas documented here, we seek opportunities to acquire new collections that are of sufficient substance and depth to result in new areas of research strength.8
Our audiences and communities of use are increasingly diverse, both on and off campus. Generations of previous Rochester special collections staff and directors have helped build a collection that goes well beyond a traditional focus on documenting primarily European or mainstream white American cultural heritage. An individual and collective challenge in the profession remains how best to carry such practices into the future, and how to ensure that new areas of possible collecting are not neglected due, for instance, to implicit bias, or to important changes on campus or in our larger communities to which we may be slow to react.9 What alliances might we miss if our mission is to build only on present strengths?
Policy statements are only effective as implemented.10 And so biweekly collection development meetings are important venues for talking with colleagues about opportunities for purchase or for gift-in-kind, about connections with existing collections, and with current curricular strengths and activities, as are specific one-on-one conversations across campus with faculty members working in Science Fiction, Medieval Studies, Linguistics, and so on, about the potential usefulness of our collections for their teaching and research.11 But additional useful practices exist that can help implement clear policy statements, and can inform discussions that come out of a commitment to open communication with potential donors.12
At a time when more and more special collections departments are collecting born-digital materials, and most of us are well into our second decade digitizing analog materials; at a time when all archivally based research and teaching necessarily include deep digs into online textual or archival corpora as well as bibliographical databases; at a time when many university library budgets are flat or worse—at such a time special collections librarians and rare book curators are in need of updated tools for print and archival collection development. As Dupont and Yakel put this
Special collections and archives can and do contribute unique value to research and learning, but their value has not been effectively communicated due to a lack of standards and best practices for measuring and assessing their impact. Although past efforts to define and operationalize special collections and archival metrics have not met with much success, the current focus of research libraries on value propositions and return on investment provides a new opportunity to remedy the deficiency.13
Although this essay is not concerned primarily with user-centered metrics and assessment techniques, a variety of additional, perhaps kindred, best practices might be advocated for, and are beginning to be considered at the River Campus Libraries.
In an age of mass digitization, how can we best build and maintain distinctive print collections, as compared to EEBO, ECCO, Hathi, and NCCO?14 Put differently, what would a checklist for comparing print copies in hand or on offer with the ubiquitous digital look like? Collating a specific print copy with an online copy is certainly possible with a portable optical collator (although my own eyes could use a bit more practice before I am confident at such hybrid collation).15 But what about reasons to buy, or to accept a gift-in-kind? How should we articulate to administrators, or better yet to undergraduates, why specific physical copies are important—not despite the online access that is available but in fact because of that online access? When should rare book curators and others with purchasing authority buy physical copies when Hathi or ECCO availability exists on campus? When should print copies be retained despite new access to online “copies” through trusted digital repositories? “Always” is likely the answer on most of our lips at the moment, but is not likely to remain the answer in years to come.
Among projects that seem promising in addressing some of these questions is Book Traces, “a crowd-sourced web project aimed at identifying unique copies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books on library shelves,” with a focus “on customizations made by original owners in personal copies, primarily in the form of marginalia and inserts.”16 Sponsored by NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship) at the University of Virginia and led by NINES Director Andrew Stauffer, the project’s focus on encouraging library-user identification of books showing history of readership is aimed in part to “help devise a triage process for discovering them, cataloging them more fully, and making better-informed decisions about print collections management.”17 With luck, unique copies of books from the machine-press era will be saved through such efforts; in addition, such consciousness-raising about the importance of readership traces in our open stacks should help spur new research into the unique aspects of open stack collections while encouraging both rare book and general collection catalogers to continue local enhancement of bibliographic records with copy-specific details.
One data-driven tool we have begun to put to use in evaluating both rare and open stack print collections is the GreenGlass service offered (until its recent acquisition by OCLC) by a company called Sustainable Collection Services.18 Although most institutions have used the tool primarily to evaluate circulating collections, the River Campus Libraries chose to include rare printed holdings in our data set as well, with the result that we now have a collection visualization tool that provides data about our LC-classed printed holdings in both general and rare stacks, and how these compare broadly to other local, state, national, and online collections.
For instance, with GreenGlass data we can now evaluate which among our rare and open stacks printed items are
■ in the public domain but not present in HathiTrust: i.e., probable local candidates for digitization and contribution to HathiTrust
■ not held by Center for Research Libraries, that is, probable candidates for public commitment to print retention
■ locally held but also full-text online via HathiTrust, regardless of copyright status, i.e., possible candidates for storage at our local offsite annex, after bibliographic record enhancement with copy-specific details
Although the marketing language for this service focuses on how to “responsibly drawdown” print collections, my colleagues and I contend that the tool can be used to help justify keeping print copies in our special collections and open stacks, that is, as we collectively begin to look closer at our collections, to compare them with the holdings of others, and to digital surrogates, we will discover far more unique copies than previously suspected, including those currently identified as duplicates.19 The hope is that we may—through access to fuller comparative data about our holdings—begin to make better-informed decisions about digitization, about public commitment to print retention, about on-site retention, and about areas for possible metadata enhancement.
A further effort at encouraging enhanced “hybrid” access to both print and online holdings by special collections researchers includes our decision to test load certain HathiTrust bibliographic records into the River Campus Libraries’ Voyager database.20 This test is aimed at investigating the feasibility, cost, and usefulness of loading records for targeted subsets of HathiTrust public domain titles, aimed at specific classifications corresponding to rare book and special collections strengths in the River Campus Libraries and the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.21 Specific proposed Library of Congress classification ranges to be included are SB1-SB1110 (Plant Culture) and TR (Photography). The hope here is that a modest and targeted integration of access to print, archival, and digitized online holdings through the Voyager catalog will enhance research and access experience for all users, but especially those with a primary research interest in areas of strength in our special collections.
Meanwhile, formal print retention partnerships are expanding, another promising development in helping libraries evaluate how individual institutional choices might affect the “collective collection.” For instance, the University of Rochester is now a member of the Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST). Formerly known as the Northeast Regional Library Print Management Project, as of July 2014 this newly forming shared print retention partnership includes sixty libraries in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania and “will use a ‘distributed retention model’ whereby libraries become retention partners committed to retaining and sharing designated print copies of monographs and journals for use of the patrons of any of the libraries participating in EAST.”22 EAST-designated print retention copies must circulate, meaning that most of this work will go on in general stacks of member institutions; still, a fuller understanding of the regional distribution of print copies can only help inform local decisions about individual volumes, and their appropriate retention, circulation status, or designation for transfer into (or perhaps in some cases out of) rare and special collections stacks.
On a more local level, we work in the “burned over district” of Western New York, and the nineteenth century’s Second Great Awakening.23 Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, Latter Day Saints, Millerites, Shakers, Utopians, table-rapping Spiritualists; abolitionists, suffrage activists, temperance moralizers and social radicals—there are strong and deep research collections throughout central and western New York in all of these areas—as there are also in the history of photography. And this is just one example of a single region in a single state. Of course, strong regional, state, and national rare and special collections holdings exist and overlap across multiple institutions throughout the country. Regardless of an institution’s location, a fuller knowledge by special collections librarians and archivists of local and regional holdings should influence decisions to purchase, or to accept via gift, collection material.
For instance, our collecting related to the life, career, and influence of George Eastman necessarily is influenced by the work of a local and internationally prominent museum and sister institution. For this reason, our posted policy indicates that
Recognizing that there is overlap with the holdings and collecting practices of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, we actively acquire manuscript and book materials that directly relate to Eastman and his career through gift or purchase.24
We therefore typically discuss acquisitions through gift or purchase with the House, particularly when such potential acquisitions are of the type of material that might be among “hidden” or under-cataloged collections at each institution.
A bit further afield in Western New York are significant holdings in utopian societies at Syracuse University, which is the repository for the Oneida Community.25 Therefore although our collecting policy states that “we selectively acquire manuscript and printed materials relating to the nineteenth-century Spiritualism movement, its proponents, opponents, and practitioners through gift or purchase,” we do not actively seek to add holdings of utopian societies where such collecting may overlap with our neighboring institution.
Similarly, as we consider what collections might be added to support the research value of our growing collection of AIDS posters covering more than thirty years of a continuing epidemic, we are mindful of regional collections with related strengths. Our collection is strongest in AIDS posters, but we have additional and at present uncataloged collections of AIDS-related ephemera, books, and journals. Our collection will never—nor should it aspire to—duplicate the scope and holdings of the Cornell Human Sexuality Collection.26 On the contrary, as we continue to add to our holdings on the global history of the AIDS epidemic and its response, we can better serve the human sexuality researcher in Western New York whose scope is more limited. And so, for instance, as the River Campus Libraries continue to work closely with the Archival and Historical Preservation Initiative of the Shoulders To Stand On program of the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley (GAGV) to build Rochester-related collections in this area, GAGV holdings themselves will continue to go to Cornell, which already holds the collection of record for this important local activist group.27
One final, anonymized, Western New York example will help prove the point: an approximately nine-and-one-half ton publisher’s archive left Rochester-area storage in early 2015, bound not for collections at the University of Rochester, but for a peer institution in another state, after a successful round of collaboration by a number of special collections librarians in support of its intact preservation.
These sorts of collaborations have quietly been going on for generations, and will certainly continue. To what extent could open, formal, and publicly documented collaborative collection development help strengthen these efforts? I hope that new affinities and alliances are waiting to be built—not just of the traditional sort among special collections librarians and donors, booksellers, and auction-houses—but also between and among collecting institutions themselves. Through such strengthened inter-institutional ties we can begin collectively—and locally—to address bracing challenges such as those expressed by Yale University Librarian Susan Gibbons in her welcome and opening remarks to a 2013 conference, “Past Forward! Meeting Stakeholder Needs in Twenty-First Century Special Collections.”
It’s one thing to say to the President, to the Provost, to Library Directors and others, about the collections that we already have . . . that we have a stewardship responsibility to take care of these . . . even though it is quite expensive to do so—the preservation, conservation, the environmental conditions, the space, all of that. But going forward as we bring in more collections, that’s a harder one to argue. . . . For us to say it’s important for us to bring in these new collections which will require in perpetuity more stewardship responsibilities when our budgets are shrinking and we have many other constraints. . . . The argument back will be “I agree someone has to take care of this collection but does it have to be our institution? Why our institution . . . ?” We know what the answers are, but are we good at articulating this? Are we good at expressing this?28
Through use of open-policy publication, data-driven, and collaboration-oriented tools for building alliances, perhaps we can begin to increase our effectiveness at articulating the paths by which our collections should and will grow and strengthen. And in so doing we will have compelling new ways to engage in open communication with potential donors of gifts-in-kind.
Traditional donor stewardship will of course continue to be a critically important part of our roles as stewards of archival, rare book, and special collections. I’ll close with two collaborative alliances with major collectors in the completist vein, as examples of modest ways of extending the significance of their gifts—both of which, as it happens, are of poster collections.29 These are the sort of collectors described by Geoffrey Smith at the “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future” colloquium as:
the private collector who from a universe of knowledge has a passion, an intellectual design, and gathers together disparate parts of that and puts together in many cases with great passion strong wonderful collections that become monuments to scholarship.30
First, visitors to the Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation through December 22, 2014, had a rare opportunity to see one hundred years of posters recently donated from an important Gilbert and Sullivan collection largely still in private hands.31 Bequeathed to the University in 2003, the Harold A. Kanthor Collection of Gilbert and Sullivan saw a 2004–2005 exhibition in the department from the privately held collection.32 That collection has continued to grow for the past decade, and is now starting to come to us in outright annual gifts. Hence our recent remarkable exhibition of gifted posters, showing a wide variety of graphic designs, and depicting the production history of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and how they have been adapted, parodied, and translated into foreign languages. Dr. Kanthor has led tours of the exhibit; the Hopeman Memorial Carillon in Rush Rhees Library’s tower performed a Gilbert and Sullivan concert for our 2014 homecoming weekend; and Dr. Kanthor has provided invaluable assistance in cataloging and inventorying the collection. This collaboration included a welcome donor stipulation for both public exhibition and poster cataloging as part of the agreement to donate. When is a bequest more than a bequest? When it also can act as a recurring gift, over time.
My final example is for visitors to the online projects website of our department, and an international, multilingual database of digitized AIDS Education Posters now numbering over 7,300 (aep.lib.rochester.edu). Put together by Dr. Edward C. Atwater over the course of more than two decades, the physical posters were given starting in 2006, with additional accruals up through the present. Dating from 1982, and documenting efforts to educate and inform the people of over one hundred countries in over sixty languages, this collection is easiest to research in its online form. But there is no substitute for seeing the posters themselves—some of which are large multi-panel billboards. And so we frequently make use of the posters in teaching; in campus exhibits around December 1, World AIDS Day; and have reproduced a number of them on vinyl for use in traveling and outdoor exhibits.33
The donor’s stipulation—with Rochester’s enthusiastic agreement—that the posters be digitized and cataloged online has meant that as a continuing collector, Dr. Atwater can purchase additional posters without duplication. And this really is the best way to provide student and researcher access. However, although we own the posters, we do not own the copyrights. And so our site includes an online disclaimer and takedown notice, assembled with the cooperation of university counsel, which reads as follows:
Copyright: The posters in the collection are presented here for research purposes only, and may be protected by copyright either according to US law or according to the laws applicable in their countries of origin. Any further reproduction of the materials may require copyright or other rights clearance and is the sole responsibility of the user.
If you are the copyright holder for materials in this collection and would prefer that the image of the item(s) not appear on this website, please let us know. We hope that in making your decision, you will consider the place your work has in adding to a comprehensive understanding of the education effect that these posters were, and are, a part of.34
I should add that in the seven years since the website launch, the River Campus Libraries have never received a takedown request. One “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future” participant challenged us to consider how we might engage in collaborative transformative non-infringing uses of our collections, in keeping with principles of fair use.35 I think of this—and other—AIDS Poster Collections as providing a model approach.36
Publicly posted collection development policies that don’t rely solely on building on existing strengths, along with open communication and a data-driven approach to collaboration and alliance-building, can help us extend and enhance access to our unique collections while helping to guide our choices in collection building through donation. Our policies should balance collaboration with the private collector and his or her “monument to scholarship” with new consideration for how our collections should grow in affinities and alliances with neighbor institutions, with the underrepresented local communities perhaps currently beyond our ken; but also, and perhaps increasingly, should address the continuing question that we each individually, and together collectively, confront: “Why our institution?”
NOTES
1. The David Perlman Oz Collection is now fully cataloged; portions were exhibited in the 2014 on-site exhibition “‘Acquiring Minds’: Building Special Collections, 2009–2014.” Lyman Frank Baum had a local connection; he performed under the stage name of Louis F. Baum in a February 1883 Rochester production of his own play The Maid of Arran. The Andrew Hunt Gordon Collection of H. G. Wells, given by an alum (’70, MS Geology) is being processed into the collections at the time of this writing. The corporate archive Hope Reports Collection is accompanied by a full run of the publications issued by Thomas W. Hope (1969–2000). The AIDS Education Posters Collection, online at https://aep.lib.rochester.edu, is discussed in greater detail in the last section of this paper.
2. The department includes quite a few collections documenting Rochester’s strong social reform and social justice movements. Our nineteenth-century collections in this area have a strong focus on abolitionism and women’s rights. Our twentieth-century local history collections continue this trend, but expand into other areas as well, for instance, politics (e.g., Rochester Socialist Scrapbook Collection, 1910–1919, Call number: D.110); the events and aftermath of the 1964 Rochester riots (e.g., among others, the P. David Finks Papers, 1965–2009, Call number: D.393); the Franklin Florence Papers, 1962–1972, Call number: D.167; the Rochester Race Riot Papers, 1964–1966, Call number: D.185); and the local history of gay rights (e.g., a full run and online public access to Rochester’s The Empty Closet, one of the oldest continuously published LGBT papers in the United States). The River Campus Libraries houses corporate and research laboratory archives for the Eastman Kodak Company, the largest of which is our Kodak Historical Collection #003, 1854–2006, Call number: D.319. The department also houses the University Archives, which selectively adds the papers of retiring faculty, staff, and alumni with relevance to the University and its institutional history. And the department holds the collection of record, including the corporate research library, of the Ellwanger and Barry Company of Rochester, as well as other firms who helped make the city a horticultural capital during the latter half of the nineteenth century. For more on these collections, see the numerous articles published on Ellwanger and Barry and other nursery firms and on chromolithographed horticultural plates, in the University of Rochester Library Bulletin, as well as Blake McKelvey, “The Flower City,” Rochester Historical Society Publications 18 (1940), 121–69.
3. Geoffrey Smith, Selby Kiffer, Jon Lindseth, Jim Kuhn, and Christoph Irmscher, “Where Are We Today?” a panel discussion presented at “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future” (Cleveland, OH, October 22, 2014): 19:06, https://youtu.be/FkNA2XAx5yA.
4. A variety of essays address the multivariate ways in which archival materials have meanings that may be incommensurable with, potentially inscribed over, or otherwise elided by well-meaning traditional archival practices. Among the essays that have helped address such issues in considering the past and future work of a department that includes both nineteenth- and twentieth-century social justice movements include Andrew Flinn, “Other Ways of Thinking, Other Ways of Being,” in What Are Archives? ed. L. Craven (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 109–28; Randall C. Jimerson, “Archives for All,” American Archivist 70 (2007): 252–81; Annemaree Lloyd, “Guarding Against Collective Amnesia?,” Library Trends 56 (2007): 53–65; Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, “Archives, Records, and Power,” Archival Science 2 (2002): 1–19.
5. University of Rochester River Campus Libraries Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, “Collection Development and Management,” www.library.rochester.edu/rbscp/collectiondevelopment.
6. Collection overviews, guides, and statements of strengths can be found in a number of past publications. For instance, the departmental website subject guides are based in large part on University of Rochester Library, Guide to the Collections (Rochester, NY: The Library, 1994). Other descriptions, including annual lists of gifts, can be found in back issues of the University of Rochester Library Bulletin. See, for example, “Our Special Collections,” IV (1949): 45–55, and “The Department of Special Collections: A Survey,” XXIV (1968): 5–15.
7. University of Rochester River Campus Libraries Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, “Collection Development and Management,” www.library.rochester.edu/rbscp/collectiondevelopment.
8. Ibid.
9. One panel presentation at “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future” was given by E. Haven Hawley (Chair, Special and Area Studies Collections Department, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida). Dr. Hawley addressed collecting for marginalized or underrepresented communities, in an interrogation of traditional collecting practices through the lens of the Structuration theories of Anthony Giddens; see Joel Silver, Ken Lopez, Paul Ruxin, Daniel De Simone, and E. Haven Hawley, “Acknowledging the Past,” a panel discussion presented at “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future” (October 21, 2014): 41:09–55:15, https://youtu.be/k6vYBWFdSw8. For essays that address these issues for an area of increasing interest at the River Campus Libraries, the LGBT and Queer collection material especially related to AIDS and sexual health, see Anna Conlan, “Representing Possibility,” in Gender, Sexuality and Museums, ed. A. Levin (London: Routledge, 2010): 253–63; and Angela L. DiVeglia, “Accessibility, Accountability, and Activism,” in Make Your Own History, ed. L. Bly and K. Wooten (Los Angeles: Litwin Books, 2012): 69–88.
10. A variety of recent documents proved useful in updating our collection development practices, including the work of Melissa Hubbard (Team Leader, Scholarly Resources and Special Collections), especially in the collection development diversity statement of the Kelvin Smith Library Scholarly Resources and Special Collections Collection Development Policy; a UK policy statement regarding “core collections which would not normally be considered for disposal” in Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals, “Disposals Policy for Rare Books and Manuscripts,” www.cilip.org.uk/rare-books-and-special-collections-group/policy-statements/disposals-policy-rare-books-and; Steven K. Galbraith and Geoffrey D. Smith, “Getting to Know Your Collections,” Rare Book Librarianship (Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited, 2012); and Society of American Archivists Technical Subcommittee on Guidelines for Reappraisal and Deaccessioning, Guidelines for Reappraisal and Deaccessioning (2012).
11. These expansive conversations at our institution do not—yet—approach the admirable goal described by Jay Satterfield (Special Collections Librarian, Dartmouth College) of “taking advice broadly” about potential acquisitions, where routing slips for catalogs include anyone in the Rauner Special Collections Library who is interested in seeing them, and where interns have successfully advocated for collection additions; see Jay Satterfield, “Considering the Present: Special Collections Are the Meal, Not the Dessert,” presented at “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future” (October 21, 2014): 8:06, https://youtu.be/mlWonr6CY2M.
12. Updated formal gift-in-kind processing forms developed in consultation with advancement officers on campus, standardized deed of gift forms, and standard estimates for costs of processing and rehousing have proved useful traditional methods for building and documenting new relationships with donors of collection material. Our own recently updated forms are in large part based on guidance from Association of Research Libraries, “Model Deed of Gift, Including Mixed IP Rights,” Research Library Issues 279 (2012): 7–9. Annual meetings of the Academic Library Advancement and Development Network, founded in 1996, have also proved to be useful opportunities for networking with and learning from fundraising professionals, special collection librarians, and deans.
13. Christian Dupont and Elizabeth Yakel, “‘What’s So Special about Special Collections?’ Or, Assessing the Value Special Collections Bring to Academic Libraries,” Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 8 (2013): 9–21.
14. Chadwyck-Healey Early English Books Online, “Early English Books Online (EEBO),” http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home; Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, “Early English Books Online-Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP),” www.textcreationpartnership.org/tcp-eebo/; Gale Cengage Learning, “Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO),” http://gale.cengage.co.uk/product-highlights/history/eighteenth-century-collections-online.aspx; “HathiTrust Digital Library,” https://www.hathitrust.org/; University of Rochester River Campus Libraries, “University of Rochester Libraries Join HathiTrust,” www.library.rochester.edu/news/libraries-join-hathitrust; Gale Cengage Learning, “Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO),” http://gale.cengage.co.uk/product-highlights/history/nineteenth-century-collections-online.aspx.
15. Optical collation has a history dating back at least to the Victorian period; see, for instance Daniel Zalewski, “Field Notes: Through the Looking Glass,” Lingua Franca 7 (1997). For a sampling of recent work on experimental prototypes and techniques for optical and computer-aided textual collation, see Barbara Bordalejo, “Caxton’s Editing of the Canterbury Tales,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 108 (2014): 41–60; Jim Kuhn, “‘A Hawk from a Handsaw,’” in New Technologies and Renaissance Studies II, ed. T. Gniady, K. McAbee, and J. Murphy (Toronto: Iter, 2014): 67–90; The Sapheos Project (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 2011); Judith Siefring and Pip Willcox, “More than Was Dreamt of in Our Philosophy,” in Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, ed. B. Nelson and M. Terras (Tempe, AZ: Iter, 2012): 83–111; Pip Willcox, “‘A Creature Native and Indued /Unto That Element’? Digitizing Hamlet: How to Start; Where to Stop,” paper presented at SDH 2011 (Copenhagen, November 17, 2011).
16. “Book Traces: About,” www.booktraces.org/about/.
17. Ibid.
18. OCLC, “Sustainable Collection Services,” https://www.oclc.org/sustainable-collections/features.en.html.
19. OCLC, “Sustainable Collection Services and GreenGlass,” www.oclc.org/sustainable-collections.en.html.
20. Details about this and other options and features available to partner institutions are described online; see: HathiTrust, “HathiTrust Digital Library: Our Partnership,” https://www.hathitrust.org/partnership.
21. The University of Rochester’s Voyager catalog includes bibliographic records for a wider community than the River Campus Libraries. Also included are the print holdings of the George Eastman House, the University’s Memorial Art Gallery, and the libraries—including special collections—of the University’s School of Medicine and Dentistry (the Edward G. Miner Library and its Rare Books and Manuscripts Section), and the Eastman School of Music (the Sibley Music Library, and its Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections). This combined catalog facilitates local researcher access to holdings that are otherwise separately housed and administered.
22. Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST), “About Us,” https://www.blc.org/east-project.
23. The appellation has its origin in Reverend Finney’s 1876 Memoirs, which refers to western New York as a “burnt district;” see Charles G. Finney, Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1876): 78. Whitney Cross wrote the classic twentieth-century account of this region’s social, religious, and intellectual history; see Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950). The influence of Cross’s landmark work on later historians is discussed usefully in a 1989 review; see Judith Wellman, “Crossing Over Cross,” Reviews in American History 17 (1989): 159–74.
24. University of Rochester River Campus Libraries Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, “Collection Development and Management,” www.library.rochester.edu/rbscp/collectiondevelopment.
25. Syracuse University Libraries Special Collections Research Center, “Oneida Community Collection,” http://library.syr.edu/find/scrc/collections/diglib/oneida/.
26. Cornell University Library Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, “Human Sexuality Collection,” http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/HSC/.
27. Evelyn Bailey, “Gay Alliance Places Historical Records in Permanent Repositories,” Shoulders to Stand On, June 12, 2012, http://womenwopinions.typepad.com/shoulders_to_stand_on/2012/06/gay-alliance-places-historical-records-in-permanent-repositories.html; Cornell University Library Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, “Guide to the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley Records, 1970–2012. Collection Number: 7560,” http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM07560.html.
28. Susan Gibbons, “Welcome and Opening Remarks,” presented at “Past Forward! Meeting Stakeholder Needs in Twenty-First Century Special Collections,” (New Haven, CT, June 4, 2013): 1:57, https://youtu.be/qFFRgTTv38M.
29. Collecting, preserving, and digitizing posters in special collections can present challenges unique to their format and content. Some useful perspectives on these challenges can be found in essays by Teetaert and Tschabrun; see Vince Teetaert, “Whatcha Doin’ After the Demo?” in Informed Agitation, ed. M. Morrone (Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press, 2014): 163–72; and Susan Tschabrun, “Off the Wall and into a Drawer,” American Archivist 66 (2003): 303–24.
30. Geoffrey Smith, Selby Kiffer, Jon Lindseth, Jim Kuhn, and Christoph Irmscher, “Where Are We Today?,” a panel discussion presented at “Acknowledging the Past” (October 22, 2014): 0:28, https://youtu.be/FkNA2XAx5yA.
31. Those unable to attend had an opportunity to see reproductions of a few of the posters in the alumni magazine; see Adam Fenster, “The Very Model of a Major Collection,” Rochester Review 77 (2015): 8–9. Other major US Gilbert and Sullivan collections have long existed and been periodically exhibited at Harvard University and the Morgan Library & Museum; the University of Rochester bequest is one of the few major US. collections still in private hands. In 2014 George Mason University received the David and Annabelle Stone Gilbert and Sullivan Collection, while in 2015, OSU Libraries’ Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute received the Jesse and Rochelle Shereff Gilbert and Sullivan Collection; see Corey Jenkins Schaut, “Gilbert and Sullivan Collection to Make Its Home at Mason,” George Mason University News, October 7, 2014, http://newsdesk.gmu.edu/2014/10/gilbert-sullivan-collection-make-home-mason/; Karla Strieb, “From the Director,” The Ohio State University—University Libraries—Libraries News and Information, July 20, 2015, https://library.osu.edu/blogs/osulstaff/2015/07/20/from-the-director-july-20-2015-ala-technical-servicescollections-report/.
32. Harold Kanthor and the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, Gilbert and Sullivan, From London to America (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, 2004).
33. For additional background about this collection, see Sarah Clune, “An Illustrated History of AIDS,” PBS Newshour, December 1, 2011, www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/an-illustrated-history-of-aids/; Hans Villarica, “From Haring to Condom Man: Art as Weapon in the War Against AIDS,” The Atlantic, December 5, 2011, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/12/from-haring-to-condom-man-art-as-weapon-in-the-war-against-aids/249229/. The literature on AIDS and art is vast. Selected resources for learning more specifically about the international history of AIDS educational and activist posters include, for instance, Centre Régional d’Information et de Prévention du SIDA, Images and SIDA (Paris: CRIPS, 1992–1996); Douglas Crimp and Adam Rolston, AIDS Demo Graphics (Seattle: Bay Press, 1990); Ted Gott, “Where the Streets Have New Aims,” in Don’t Leave Me This Way (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1994): 187–211; Lutz Hieber and ACT UP, Bilderschock (Hannover: Bürgerinitiative Raschplatz e. V., 1990); Richard Meyer, “This Is to Enrage You,” in But Is It Art? ed. N. Felshin (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995): 51–84; Hugh Rigby and Susan Leibtag, HardWear (Edmonton: Quon Editions, 1994); Tommaso Speratta, Rebels Rebels (Gent: Merz, 2014). To learn more about metadata- and copyright-related issues associated with collecting and providing meaningful access to the history of educational engagement with communities of gender and sexual diversity see, for instance, Emily Drabinski, “Teaching Other Tongues,” Journal of Information Ethics 20 (2011): 42–55; K. J. Rawson, “Accessing Transgender // Desiring Queer(er?) Archival Logics,” Archivaria 68 (2009): 123–40; K. R. Roberto, “Inflexible Bodies,” Journal of Information Ethics 20 (2011): 56–64; Graham Willett and Steve Wright, “Copyright, Copywrong, and Ethics,” in Queers Online, ed. R. Wexelbaum (Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books, 2015): 129–44. To learn about, as well as to find tools for dealing with censorship challenges that may arise in this context, see for instance: Marcel Barriault, “Hard to Dismiss,” Archivaria 68 (2009): 219–46; James LaRue, “Responding to a Challenge,” in Serving LGBTIQ Library and Archives Users, ed. by E. Greenblatt (Jefferson: McFarland, 2010): 278–81; William Leonard and Anne Mitchell, “The Use of Sexually Explicit Materials in HIV/AIDS Initiatives Targeted at Gay Men,” Australian National Council, 2000; Svetlana Mintcheva, “Art Censorship Today,” in Library Juice Press Handbook of Intellectual Freedom, ed. by M. Alfino and L. Koltutsky (Sacramento: Library Juice Press, 2014): 334–62; Rachel Wexelbaum, “Censorship of Online LGBTIQ Content in Libraries,” in Queers Online, ed. by R. Wexelbaum (Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books, 2015): 205–13.
34. University of Rochester River Campus Libraries Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, “AIDS Education Posters Collection: About,” http://aep.lib.rochester.edu/about.
35. Alice Schreyer, “Exploring the Past,” presented at “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future” (Cleveland, OH, October 21, 2014), https://youtu.be/XD7hwqstRhI.
36. Inviting out-outs or take-down notices is becoming more common in special collections departments. At the University of Rochester we are in fact indebted to the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library History and Special Collections Division, whose opt-out procedure for its own online AIDS Poster site was the inspiration for the River Campus Libraries’ approach; see University of California, Los Angeles Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library History and Special Collections Division, “AIDS Posters: Copyright and Opt-Out Procedure,” http://digital.library.ucla.edu/aidsposters/optout.html. It is fitting then that this essay close with a sincere thanks and acknowledgment to the work of UCLA special collection colleagues, and indeed all of those whose efforts have helped to shape, to inform, and to mentor “Where We Are Today.” A previous version of this paper was presented at “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future,” (held October 21–22, 2014, at Case Western Reserve University’s Kelvin Smith Library,), as part of the “Where Are We Today?,” a panel discussion moderated by Geoffrey Smith (Head of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, The Ohio State University), and including Selby Kiffer (Senior Vice President, Sotheby’s), Jon Lindseth (Private Collector), and Christoph Irmscher (Provost Professor, George F. Getz Jr. Professor in the Wells Scholars Program, Wells Scholars Program Director, Indiana University Bloomington). My thanks to Melissa Hubbard and her colleagues for organizing this conference and for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and to the panel moderator and participants for a lively and wide-ranging discussion.