“From UFOs to UDCs : building research collections in a new era?”

Crónán Ó DoibhlinHead of Research Collections & Communications, UCC Library CONUL 3 June 2015

Summary

• Context: the transformation of our environment

• RLUK Unique and Distinctive Collections: Opportunities for Research Libraries

• The Institutional Mission

• Collecting and the business of sustainability

.“especially when I may call myself a stranger in a strange land.”

Jonathan Swift’s Letter XXXVIII to Alexander Pope 11 August 1729

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (2008) p19.

Laputa, a flying island described in Gulliver's Travels (1726). It is about 4.5 miles in diameter, with an adamantine base, which its inhabitants can manoever in any direction using magnetic levitation.

In Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), Robert Heinlein references Laputa's system for managing communication through the use of the climenole, or flapper.

 Illustration from 1847 French ed. Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (13 September 1803– 17 March 1847, Vanves), generally known by the pseudonym of Jean-Jacques or J. J. Grandville

Eaton Collection

Recent RLUK and OCLC Reports..

RLUK Unique and Distinctive Collections: Opportunities for Research Libraries

OCLC Making Archival and Special Collections more accessible

RLUK/OCLC Survey of Special Collections and Archives in the UK and Ireland.

CONUL Taskforce 4 – Definition of UDCs2012

“UDCs may consist of all types of documentary material: manuscripts and archives, books, pamphlets and periodicals, maps, graphic materials, sound and moving image material, as well as born-digital and digitised collections. A UDC may consist of entirely unique or rare materials; more commonly its uniqueness or distinctiveness derives from the totality of items rather than individual items that may not be special themselves. Indeed, one might go further. As the electronic displaces print and the rate of addition to print stocks slows down, many institutions will hold material that may not be considered initially to be 'special collections' at all but which could be exploited more closely for research purposes.”

CONUL Sub-Committee on Collections, Preservation & Conservation Strategic Plan 2013-16

1.Identify Unique & Distinct Collections in member institutions, to ensure the preservation needs of the collections are promoted, along with the scholarly and cultural value of the collections.

4. Collection development, to support CONUL in the promotion of its Unique and Distinctive Collections.

RLUK Unique and Distinctive Collections: Opportunities for Research Libraries (2014)• Strand of strategic plan 2011-2014 to exploring the ways in which

libraries can maximise the potential and impact of unique and distinctive collections

• Fundamental changes within the environment

• “Opportunity to make a clear and compelling case especially in a period of economic pressure.”

• Making the institution itself unique and distinctive : Thinking afresh what is special!

• Community enterprise

RLUK Definition of UDCs

‘A collection that, regardless of format or location within an institution, derives significance from its interest to research, teaching or society through its association with a person, place or topic, such as to distinguish the constituent items from similar items which may exist elsewhere’.

Key Points

• UDCs used to articulate the significance of collections to the institutional mission

• Differentiation in a period of strategic commonality

• The importance of visibility of difference and therefore collections

• Impact of technology and engagement

Recommendations

• Significance, appraisal and strategic assessment of collections

• Community approach and partnerships

• Digitisation, Research Data Sets and “the born-digital”

• Collection Management and Development

Significance assessments: identifying UDCs• Heritage: International or national significant depth and breadth which

will continue to be developed.

• Legacy: Have historic strength. (Of international or national significance, but do not reflect current research and teaching needs).

• Self-renewing: Do not have sufficient depth or breadth to be of national significance, but are required for current research and teaching.

• Finite: These are collections which have neither historic strength, nor relevance to current teaching and research. Considered for withdrawal.

Collections Strategy for Leeds University Library, 2013

The Institutional Mission

• Essential context for any appraisal of value or significance

• External environment: Funders, student as consumer, expectations, changes in the nature of publishing, leadership in sector-wide collaboration

• Impact: Research Ranking, Student Experience, best staff and best students, “Globalisation”, social responsibility, sustainability, economic

“Rising importance of Special Collections”

“What the world needs research libraries to do now – and this need is both powerful and growing – is provide broad and easy access to the intellectual content of rare and unique non-commodity documents that would otherwise remain unfindable and unusable.”

Rick Anderson, Can’t buy us love: The declining importance of Library Books and the rising importance of special collections. P4, 2013.

Emory Libraries

“Our special collections bring an energy to Emory that nothing else can,” Morgan says. “Having these collections is really important in terms of becoming one of a handful of outstanding libraries in the country.”John Morgan, Chair of the Emory University Board of Trustees.

George Boole 200

Boole Supporting UCC Strategic Objectives

• Approx. 65 university projects

• Media, PR, Marketing and Communications

• Establishment of the UCC George Boole Institute

• Partnerships: Cork City Council, Lincoln, The Royal Society, MIT

• Employment and partnership with ICT in Cork

New York University – Fales Library

Stanford’s Tom Law Punk Poster Collection

The business of collecting..

• Our traditional collections?

• Emergent collections

• The market, commodity and public responsibility

• What are we not collecting?

The vocation of curation

curate, n. :  /ˈkjʊərət/ME–17 curat, ME curet(t, 15 currat, curatte. Etymology:  < medieval Latin cūrātus, in Italian curato, French curé (13th cent. in Littré).

1. One entrusted with the cure of souls; a spiritual pastor. 

2. To act as curator of (a museum, exhibits, etc.); to look after and preserve.

In extended use: to select the performers or performances to be included in (a festival, album, programme, etc.); (also) to select, organize, and present (content), as on a web site.

A business of sustainability

Investing in curation; a shared path to sustainability, 4C, 2015

• University libraries seek to increase discovery, access and re-use of the unique and distinctive collections that they hold.

• RLUK report “…research libraries should consider the implications of managing datasets and other born-digital materials as the UDCs of the future and examine the policies, staffing and infrastructure which enable them to manage born-digital UDCs alongside traditional special collection materials”.

• Mapping workflows for Research Data at the University of Kent alongside those of our other UDCs e.g. British Cartoon Archive, University Archive and Image Collections, as well as research publications and theses in the Kent Academic Repository and publications in the University’s Open Access Journals.

Research Data as a Unique and Distinctive Collection (UDC)

Identify the asset and make the choice

The Digital Curation Sustainability Model, 4C 2015

The Opportunities

• A new approach and new choices

• A systematic appraisal and understanding of significance

• National approach to collecting : ambition !

• Convincing business case : sustainability

• Collective responsibility and leadership

Crónán Ó DoibhlinHead of Research Collections & Communications

c.odoibhlin@ucc.ieUCC Library

CONUL 3 June 2015

Thank you!