PDF - CARL - ABRC

Appendices
Recommendations
I. Collecting Carefully, with Regard to Costs, and Ethical and Legal Concerns
Special Collections in ARL Libraries
March 2009
1. Donors and senior administrators need to be informed about the value and the costs of managing collections.
Repositories need carefully to assess their own capabilities prior to accepting collections. Tools should be
developed to assist in this process of assessment.
2. The professionals and administrators who are charged with care of special collections must themselves take
carefully into account the costs of preservation, processing and providing access, including digital access, when
they accept or purchase a collection.
3. The heads of archives and libraries, as well as their special collections staff, must educate donors to the
consequences of lengthy restrictions on access, and should strive to balance considerations of individual privacy
with those of scholarly access and the long-term interests of collections and their users.
4. Rigorous, full, and accurate documentation of the source of any acquisition is essential.
5. Archivists, curators, and librarians must support the work of records management staff and adopt early
intervention practices in order to facilitate collecting, describing, and preserving new types of special collections,
particularly those born-digital
II. Ensuring Discovery and Access
6. Special collections professionals should take a lead in researching and developing new forms of access, and
finding opportunities to apply them to special collections. Libraries and other repositories need to make the
necessary investment in technology to advance the creation of tools, and support their staff in taking this lead.
7. Adequate online metadata is an essential condition for good quality access to both the original and digitized
versions of material. Minimal description is far better than none. Basic information about all collections (e.g., the
initial record of acquisition) should be made available online as quickly as possible.
www.arl.org/bm~doc/scwg-report.pdf Page 33