Advances in Librarianship

Reinventing the treasure room: The role of special collections librarianship in the 21st
century
Jonathan B. Bengtson
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 !1111
Reinventing the Treasure Room: The Role
of Special Collections Librarianship in the
21 st Century
Jonathan B. Bengtson
The Massachusetts Horticultural Society
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Wellesley, Massachusetts 02482- 0026

I. Introduction

"'Either this is madness or it is Hell.' 'It is neither,' calmly replied the voice
of the Sphere, 'it is knowledge'" (Abbott, 1998, p. 93). The narrator in E. A.
Abbott's two-dimensional world must both intellectualize and make a leap
of faith in order to visualize a world with a third dimension--a situation
not dissimilar to library planning in the ever-changing technological envi-
ronment of recent years. Professionals from all sectors of librarianship are
being compelled to challenge the status quo while, at the same time, defend-
ing those traditional skills that technology cannot supplant. This is nowhere
more the case than in the special collections area, which is redefining itself in
the face of information technology (IT) advances. The advent of on-line pub-
lishing and digitization has been compared to the invention of the printing
press and the subsequent domination of the printed book over the manu-
script. Historians are quick to point out that most new technologies do
not entirely supplant their older predecessors witness the continuing
strength of radio despite the cultural dominance of television. Debate will
continue in many quarters about whether and for how long the printed book
will survive as the central medium for the dissemination of knowledge and
what form will emerge to challenge our cultural bias toward print. Libra-
rians have been at the forefront of these discussions and have led change in
many instances. It may seem that in the realm of special collections
such issues are of less immediacy. Most of our collection policies are not
driven by the need to supply readers with the latest on-line journal on a
given subject but rather to preserve and acquire past knowledge pri-
marily, but not exclusively, in the form of manuscripts and printed books.

ADVANCES IN LIBRARIANSHIP~VOL, 25
Copyright © 2001 by AcademicPress. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
0065-2830/01 $35.00 187
 188 Jonathan B. Bengtson

Nevertheless, the exploitation of IT is creating a more central role for special

collections within many institutions.
An elitist and expensive irrelevance? The sine qua non of the academic
library? Something in between? Historically the academic library sector as a
whole has never quite arrived at a consensus on the place of the rare books
and special collections department. Departments, with their focus on historic
material, are sometimes seen as elitist, parochial, and backward looking. Special
collections librarians are often (but certainly not always!) privileged to work in
architecturally elegant rooms with rare and beautiful books and manuscripts
where they are called upon to wine and dine potential donors. From the outside
this may seem a function that has little to do with running a modern library--
particularly if special collections librarians do not take the time to explain
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their work to colleagues in other sectors of the library. This has never been
more the case than now when the printed book's place at the center of the
learning method (and hence the library budget) is being eroded and electronic
surrogates are offered in its place. Particularly over the past 5 or 6 years the
profession has been asking itself hard questions concerning its role in the new
world order of library provision. What follows is a brief overview of some
aspects of this reevaluation in the United States and United Kingdom.

II. Historical Overview

A "special collection" is a relative thing. The term itself (Joyce, 1994, pp.
595-597; 1988) has altered in meaning over the past century from a desig-
nation of a specific subject collection of published material to a substantive
group of nonbook materials to rare book and manuscript collections to vari-
ous combinations of all three. Indeed, it is still not a universal term and the
designation "rare books" or "historical collections" are commonly found par-
ticularly in European libraries in preference to "special collections." Even the
renaming process in the United States has been a gradual process over the
past half-century. Manuscripts, archives, and other collections that cannot be
easily integrated with the general working collections or that require special
handling are most often amalgamated under the special collections heading.
Yet, the criteria that designate an item as deserving inclusion in a library's spe-
cial collection will differ from every institution and depend on any number of
local factors. We can all agree that a copy of Audubon's Birds of America would
make the cut, but what about an early 19th-century cloth-bound copy of Mil-
ton printed in London? The latter might be found on the open shelves of a
400-year-old Cambridge college library but in a special collection department
with a strength in 19th-century English imprints. In the final analysis the items
in a special collections department are acknowledged by an institution to be
worth preserving and collecting for the benefit of the scholarly community.
 Reinventing the Treasure Room 189

This, at least, is the standard late 20th-century interpretation of special col-

lections and, indeed, one that will remain valid. However, the acceptance of
what types of collections are worth preserving has widened significantly in
the past decades beyond "high culture" to encompass all manner of subjects
such as women's studies, regional studies, and minority ethnic, and cultural
groups--much of this material is ephemeral, such as printed advertisements
and newspapers.
Long-established libraries have collections that reflect and inform the his-
tory and character of their institution. There is a difference between libraries
that have special collections derived from what was once their circulating
collections and libraries that have bought intact collections from elsewhere.
In this respect, collecting has a much longer history in Europe, with library
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holdings often based around centuries of acquisitions. In the United States the
19th-century development of the lecture/seminar form of education based on
the German model necessitated the building of large research collections to
support scholarship. The expansion of many major collections began around
this time. Collections were bought en masse from European public institutions
and private individuals. For instance (Cardmann, 2000, p. 248), in 1921, the
University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign purchased, among other large
collections between ca. 1909 and 1918, a collection of 30,000 volumes of
mainly. Italian material from Count Antonio Cavagna Sangiulianai di Gual-
dana of Pavia. Faculty were also encouraged to buy for the library and given the
authority to do so while on research trips in Europe. As a result, the collection
grew many times over during this period.
Yale University in the 1890s was one of the first U.S. institutions to sep-
arate its rare book collection from the main library. A number of universities
constructed new and elaborate rooms and buildings to house the collections,
which reflected the notion of special collections as "treasures" to be locked
away in some templelike inner sanctum. The creation of specific departments
did not occur overnight, although by the time the Library of Congress formed
its dMsion upon the acquisition of the John Boyd Thatcher Collection in
1925 most major U.S. academic libraries had rare books departments already
in place. This movement coincided with increases in spending on rare books
acquisitions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This, in turn, reflected
the expansive rare books market led in the United States by wealthy collectors
and active dealers such as J. R Morgan, Huntington, and A. S. Rosenbach. In
comparison, in this period UK libraries lagged behind their U.S. counterparts
in the acquisition of rare books and manuscripts.
In the UK, rare books departments at Cambridge and the British Museum
were established in the 1930s, although the nonbook collections had been
separated earlier. However, although many libraries in the UK have holdings
that could be defined as special collections, the separation of these collections
from the rest of the library is sometimes blurred. This is particularly the case
 190 Jonathan B. Bengtson

in small libraries with few staff such as the Oxford and Cambridge colleges,
where many of the rare books were the circulating working collections of past
generations of scholars. In such institutions it is still common to find many
19th-century(and even earlier) volumes on the circulating shelves. Even when
collections are clearly defined as "special," the manner of acquisition impacts
on their interpretation within an institution. Indeed there are striking differ-
ences between the United States and UK in the manner of how collections
were acquired. For instance, one could compare the similarly sized collections
of the University of Southern California and St. Andrews University in Scot-
land. The former first acquired a rare books collection in 1911 and formed the
special collections department in 1963. The latter's collection contains books
acquired by gift and purchases dating back to the university's foundation in the
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15th century. Many items were also acquired between 1710 and 1837 under
the Copyright Act that entitled the library to a free copy of every book printed
in Britain. Some major collections evolved into special collections, such as the
John Rylands Library in Manchester, which was opened to the public as an
independent library on January 1, 1900, and although at the time it contained
vast collections of rare books and manuscripts, it was only integrated as a specif-
ically special collections library into the University of Manchester in 1972.
A number of academic libraries in the United States in the 1950s and
1960s expanded many times over, with large increases in collections, staffing,
and budgets. For instance (Wiegand, 1999, p. 14), between 1944 and 1961
UCLA increased its staffing level by a multiple of four, its collections by a
multiple of three, and its book budget by a multiple of seven. Since the end of
the Second World War the growing interest in social and cultural history has
been reflected in the collecting of nonbook materials and ephemera such as
newspapers, music, and prints (and even toy soldiers in the case of the Brown
University special collections department, which has ca. 5000). As a result of
the emphasis put on such material many departments have changed from "rare
books" to the more widely encompassing term "special collections." Even so,
early modern libraries in Europe often had natural history objects, scientific
instruments, and coins as integral parts of their collections long before the
idea developed of segregating them. These objects were not just the trinkets
of antiquarians but formed important educational supplements to the book
collections. Most, but not all, of these collections now form parts of museum
collections donated primarily over the past century.
Most national library associations now have a division focusing on rare
books/special collections. The Research Libraries Group (RLG) continues to
play an international role in supporting widening access and proper preser-
vation of special collections. So too does IFLA, which publishes various di-
rectories and an annual bibliography and coordinates international standards
in the field. In America, the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS)
of ACRL was established in 1958 (Schreyer, 1988) in order to bring together
 Reinventingthe Treasure Room 191

people involved in overseeing the rare books collections in university libraries.

The RBMS has been active in publishing guidelines and a professional journal,
bestowing rewards for excellence in the field, and improving lines of communi-
cation. Among its many activities have been popular preconference programs
prior to the main ALA annual conferences. In the United Kingdom, the an-
nual study conference of the Library Association Rare Books Group (RBG)
in recent years has tended to be organized around time periods and types of
material and less around collection theory as in the RBMS preconferences.
The RBG was founded in 1966 and now has well over 1000 members from
around the world.
In the United Kingdom (Mowat, 1998) the impact of"nonformula" fund-
ing on special collections departments is difficult to underestimate. The "Fol-
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lett Report" (1993) of the Joint Funding Councils Libraries Review Group
included a number of recommendations, such as the invitation for bids of
recurrent nonformula funding to "support specialized research collections,
which are widely used by researchers in the humanities." (paragraph 228; see:
http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/hefc/follett/report/). Through the Higher
Education funding bodies, money has been spent on conservation, cataloging,
preservation, and other projects, including digitization. Over 60 UK Higher
Education institutions coveting over 300 projects have received funding to
date. The end result has been to raise the profile and reaffirm the importance
of special collections within the higher education sector. For instance (Hobbs,
1998, pp. 290-295), at Glasgow, among other benefits, the microfilm studio
was reequipped and the catalog digitized, and money was made available to
promote the resources of the special collections department. Usage of the
collections has increased dramatically.
Arguably the best run special collections departments reflect the overall
strategic mission of the libraries of which they are part. The evolution of
"rare books" departments into "special collections" or even "cultural heritage"
departments has certainly helped. There is also the matter of how a collection
is used and interpreted. A rare book collection in a library focusing on the
book arts will be promoted in very different ways from a library that is part of
a research collection.

Ill. The Role of Information Technology

The starting point of any special collections digital project should be the real-
ization that the special collections department's "prime directive" (to protect,
preserve, and allow access to materials) will not be altered. I T enhances rather
than replaces the traditional roles of the special collections department. If any-
thing, I T projects place greater demands on the materials and staffin special
collections. This is certainly the case when items are cited in on-line catalogs.
 192 Jonathan B. Bengtson

Even though it is not always possible to produce acceptable surrogates in the

form of microfilm or digitized copies, electronic document delivery of special
collections items is already a reality. With an inexpensive digital camera, for
instance, a manuscript page can be photographed with a minimum of fuss and
sent across the world to a scholar who needs a working copy. Indeed, there is
great scope for international collaboration using digital surrogates of special
collections. Files can be sent to any number of scholars who may chose to
work together in "real time" on their respective computers in the same way
that distance learning courses are evolving.
To date, the single greatest advance that computerization has brought to
special collections has been the creation of on-line catalogs. Essential printed
catalogs such as the English Short Title Catalogue are now searchable from any
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computer with an Internet connection (http://eureka.rlg.ac.uk/). The retro-

spective conversion of catalog records, such as the B odleian pre-1920 catalog,
is exposing collections to a far wider range of potential users than ever before.
The demand on materials in special collection departments is growing as a
result. The quality of on-line records varies widely. In a project such as the
Bodleian pre-1920 catalog, descriptions are minimal with few details beyond
author, title, date, and place of publication. Conversely, the Early Printed
Books Project in Oxford provides much more detailed records on the Oxford
University OLIS on-line catalog (http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/;Simpson, 1997, pp.
61-62). This project, in its modern form, began in 1995 with a grant from the
Higher Education Funding Council for England with the stated aim "to cre-
ate a database of accurate bibliographical descriptions for all foreign books
in non-Bodleian libraries, printed before 1641." The initial funding came to
an end in 1997 but additional sources have made it possible to continue the
project. In the future, the organizers hope to link records with digitized images
of bindings, signatures, and inscriptions. Through such projects involving the
linking of images to text descriptions, the catalog record will evolve into an
ever more useful research tool.
"Digitization" is the buzzword of modern librarianship, and digitization
projects come in all shapes and sizes. One study (Love and Feather, 1998, p.
215) carried out in 1998 revealed that the principal motive for digital exhibi-
tions in the UK was for promotional purposes rather than to supply scholars
with a wide range of useable digital surrogates. This situation is changing
in favor of digitization of collections for document delivery and preservation
purposes--electronic surrogates will become more pervasive than microfilm
in the coming decades. Indeed, properly indexed and searchable digital images
will become the format of choice for all but a handful of researchers. Con-
venience and ease and speed of access coupled with the ability to manipulate
images on screen will entice researchers out of traditional reading rooms. Re-
search solely via such images does have its disadvantages (see below) that will
 Reinventingthe Treasure Room 193

never be entirely outweighed by digitization. Such activity requires a great

deal of institutional support. Files must be stored, maintained, and indexed
in some meaningful way and this can be costly. Costs of digitizing objects
pales in comparison to the support costs of metadata creation and the main-
tenance of databases. Midterm costs of digital projects will remain relatively
high and therefore it is prudent for institutions with relatively poor fund-
ing to wait for the major libraries and national and international organi-
zations to make further advances (Gundersheimer, 2000, pp. 14-26). Care
should also be taken not to succumb merely to fashionable or opportunistic
projects. There are growing efforts to coordinate digital programs so as to
maximize and safeguard the investment of money and time. In the ~ the
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National Preservation Office (Feeney, 1999) has taken a leading role in en-
suring continued access to digital information. Current major projects at the
Bodleian in Oxford include making manuscript and archives records available
on the Web; the systematic digitization of the large collections of early mod-
ern printed books in partnership with Bell & Howell and the University of
Michigan; a medieval manuscript digitization project; and, in collaboration
with other U K libraries, the Internet Library of Early Journals. In the United
States, projects of a similar size are being carried out by institutions such
as Columbia (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/digital/images.html) and
the University of California (http://www.cdlib.org/). T h e American "Digital
Libraries Initiative" supports research into technological issues to the rtme
of tens of millions of dollars (http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/dlione/). This major
initiative is supported by high-profile agencies such as the National Science
Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the National Endowment of the
Humanities.
Except in rare cases, the purpose of digitizing an early printed book is not
to permanently replace the physical text with a digital surrogate but to provide
another means of access for scholars and spare delicate items from handling.
This access is often more flexible and convenient for users but does not tell the
entire story, which only the physical object itself can convey. The American
Modern Language Association (2000) statement (htt-p://palimpsest.stanford.
edu/byorg/mla/mlaprim.html) on the significance of primary records summa-
rizes the situation well
The advantagesof the new formsin whichold texts can now be made availablemust not be
allowedto obscure the factthat the new formscannotfullysubstitutefor the actualphysical
objects in whichthose earliertextswere embodiedat particulartimesin the past.., texts are
inevitablyaffectedby the physicalmeans of their transmission;the physicalfeaturesof the
artifactsconveyingtexts thereforeplayan integralrole in the attempt to comprehendthose
texts.., all objects purportingto present the same text--whether finishedmanuscripts,first
editions,later printings,or photocopies--areseparaterecordswith their owncharacteristics;
theyall carrydifferentinformation,evenifwords and punctuationare indeedidentical,since
each one reflectsa differenthistoricalmoment.
 194 Jonathan B. Bengtson

Scrolling down a computer screen to read an 18th-century newspaper

is not the same cognitive experience as consulting the original it alters the
context and so removes possibility of interpreting the physical object itself as
a cultural artifact. It thus becomes easier to "miss the point" of why a text was
transmitted in a specific physical format if all one has to go on is an image on
a screen.

IV. Research

Special collections departments exist because their collections are seen to be

of relevance for current scholars or thought to be worth saving as a resource
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for future scholarship. The ease and degree of availability and access to such
collections can drive research, particularly in the humanities, and there is
nothing more satisfying in the world of special collections than to see the
collection being well used. Ease of access is a key feature of the successful
and dynamic special collections department. First and foremost this means
providing searchable catalogs of materials.
All too often, overzealous university library administrators accept dona-
tions of large collections with little or no consultation with the special collec-
tions department, which may not have the resources to catalog the collection.
There is no point in acquiring a multimillion-dollar collection if there are
insufficient funds for cataloging--better that such collections find their home
elsewhere. Items may also require costly and time-consuming conservation
work before they are in a condition suitable for consultation by readers.
Special collections readers require supervision and attention often well
beyond the level in general areas of the library. The items that are being
consulted are often of great monetary value and so readers must be properly
supervised. Many items can be easily damaged so book supports must be sup-
plied and readers taught how to use them. Reader queries also take up a great
deal of the special collection librarian's time and properly answering letters,
phone calls, and e-mails can sometimes take long hours of research in the col-
lections. Fellowship programs and financial support for visiting researchers
bring in readers who can require a great deal of individual attention into
the special collections. Sometimes scholars arrive without warning during a
research trip and have only one morning or afternoon to consult material so
staffing must be flexible to cope with the unexpected. It is in this research
support role that librarians and researchers have much common ground and
there are many examples of collaborative projects between faculty and special
collections staff. There are a number of active e-mail lists such as EXLIBRIS,
SHARP-L, and LIS-RAREBOOKS that provide forums for collective and
international support.
 Reinventingthe TreasureRoom 195

¥. Teaching
Many special collections staff now spend a substantial part of their time teach-
ing and supporting courses on the history of the book. Revived interest in the
subject can perhaps be traced to influences like the publication of Elizabeth
Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change in 1979 (Gross, 1998, p. 8),
the establishment of the Library of Congress's Center for the Book in 1977,
and departmental courses such as those at University College London. The
development of new forms of literary theory (Oram, 1993) in the past few
decades should not be underestimated.
There has been a marked growth over the past decades in the number of in-
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stitutions offering history of the book courses. Such courses trace the cultural,
economic, and social impact of the spread of printing. In turn, the practical
aspects of the subject--that is, how a book is produced and then sold---inform
more esoteric literary and historical theory. The theorists' natural tendency to
focus on evidence for the transmission, circulation, and use of texts draws them
back to the physical object itself--and so back within the traditional sphere of
the bibliographer and rare books librarian, who are interested in past owner-
ship marks (provenance), binding styles, variations of collation, and so forth.
Interest in "authorship" and the dispersal of ideas merges the realms of the
literary theorist and the rare books specialist. The result is often strong in-
stitutional support for interdisciplinary seminars led not only by faculty but
also by special collections staff. Indeed the very use of special collections in
this manner helps to redefine their place within the academic community.
Through the study of the history of the book the interrelationship between
subjects become apparent and traditional barriers between departments are
broken down. What emerges is a vast range of unanswered questions and grist
for thousands of new dissertations. Such activity also helps to relate special
collections to the general collections. Special collections librarians need to be
active and aggressive in encouraging faculty to use the collections in this way.
Furthermore, attitudes of many in the field need to change in order to allow
greater access and use by students who are not specialists for class projects, ex-
hibitions, and general consultation. In the United States excessive bureaucracy
tends to discourage such usage while some European rare books departments
cling on to elitist models of access. There are, of course, exceptions like the
Bodleian where, excepting a handful of items, readers can request virtually
any printed book or manuscript. The use of special collections as teaching
resources can draw students in to a closer understanding of the subject with
which they are engaged. Or, as Bianca Falbo (2000, p. 33) puts it, "asking
students to work with archival materials creates the opportunity for a more
student-centered classroom. It transforms the traditional pedagogical model
in which the teacher owns and disseminates information the students 'lack.'"
 196 JonathanB. Bengtson
The interdisciplinary nature of the history of the book is, by extension, ex-
trainstitutional and supranational, thus creating possibilities for collaboration
beyond the normal confines of academia. Booksellers and book collectors share
common interests with book historians and often own material that sheds fur-
ther light on academic study. With collections dispersed throughout the world
and the increasing ease of communication there is scope to take up Stephen
Ferguson's (1999, p. 48) call for an international coordinating committee for
the study of the history of the book.
Digital teaching resources do not replace the experience of handling pri-
mary source material in the original format but they can provide access to a
much wider constituency. If well designed, these projects enhance traditional
teaching methods--such as the Oxford-based "Gun Powder, Compass and
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Printing Press: Technology and Society in Renaissance and Early Modern

Europe" (http://henman.oucs.ox.ac.uk/history/). This pilot project was de-
veloped by the Humanities Computing Unit in cooperation with the History
Faculty Library and the Museum of the History of Science and supports a new
course begun in 1999. The site provides source material not easily accessible
to students, including facsimile pages from 16th-century books, maps, images
of objects, and paintings, and has proved useful for teaching of other courses.
Such sites require the commitment and time in equal measure of faculty, mu-
seum, and library staff. They are particularly useful in broadening access to
collections beyond the confines of the library.
Shared ownership schemes allow access to materials that would otherwise
be out of the reach of indMdual institutions to acquire. Although the vast
majority of items are owned by single institutions, joint-ownership arrange-
ments are becoming more common as institutions pool resources to compete
with private collectors for new acquisitions. For instance (Jones and Saenger,
2000), the Newberry Library in Chicago has participated in a number of joint-
ownership purchases of manuscripts with institutions such as Notre Dame
and Western Michigan University. European libraries have also made such
arrangements such as the joint purchase in 1984 of a medieval gospel book by
the Bavarian State Library in Munich and the Herzog August Bibliothek in
Wolfenbiittel. Such programs highlight the focus on access to materials above
merely ownership of materials.

Vl. Development (Fundraising) and Outreach

There are few more effective ways to inspire library benefactors than a private
tour of carefully chosen items from the inner vaults of the special collections.
A face-to-face encounter with a Gutenberg or First Folio is not an experi-
ence easily forgotten. The potential "sacro-power" of books, as Paul Mosher,
 Reinventingthe Treasure Room 197

vice-provost and director of libraries at the University of Pennsylvania terms

it (Allen, 1999, p. 111), should not be discarded out of hand. Carefully chosen
tours and exhibitions excite benefactors and the distinction of the collection
helps create a positive overall perception of the university. Donors who are
inspired enough to loosen their purse strings implicitly realize this. In giving
money to the library a bridge is formed between current, past, and future gen-
erations. It is therefore an essential aspect of the role of a special collections
librarian to be able to articulate the goals of the library and university and to
cultivate relationships with donors.
Acquisitions of rare book material is constrained by budgetary limits. This
is particularly true in times of retrenchment when special collections are vul-
nerable to cost cutting in terms of acquisitions and staffing. However, the
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very nature of acquisitions in the field is opportunistic and depends on when

items come up for sale that fit within the specific collections of the library.
Endowment funds, free from the fetters of annual budgets, greatly aid in a
more flexible acquisitions policy and donors are the most likely source of such
funds. Direct donations of books and manuscripts have had an even greater
affect on collections. For instance, until the 19th-century Oxford and Cam-
bridge libraries relied primarily on gifts to build their collections. These now
form the bulk of the special collections in the two ancient universities. The
college libraries are autonomous from the university libraries in these institu-
tions and in them may be found all manner of unique and scarce items dating
back thousands of years. The situation is not entirely dissimilar in the United
States, where many major special collections have been built around donated
core collections---the Widener collection at Harvard, the Jefferson collection
at the Library of Congress, and the Clark collection at UCLA to name just a
few. That said, gifts can be a Trojan Horse unless the department adheres to
a strict accessions policy. The cost of cataloging, storing, and maintaining the
collection may outweigh its value as a resource--particularly if a gift contains
a large amount of material already held by a library. Ideally an unconditional
gift is best and allows the department to select items that will add value and
discard items best housed elsewhere. Duplication of acquisitions is a potential
waste of valuable resources and in the future institutions will have to cooperate
more fully in this area.
In the United States, endowments tend to be larger and a more widespread
phenomenon. Acquisitions, beyond modern circulating materials, in Oxford
and Cambridge college collections, to continue the example, are virtually
nonexistent. The interest and value of the colleges' historical collections that
remain in situ are not so much in continuing to add to the collections but
in interpreting their historical connections with the working life of the col-
leges over the centuries. There remains much work to be done in this area--
particularly in assessing the influence and interrelationship of neighboring
 198 Jonathan B. Bengtson

collections in these library-rich ancient universities. In many colleges the lack

of funds for special collections acquisitions, combined with lack of support
for experts in rare books librarianship, creates a risk for collections becoming
seen as museum pieces and their potential value as a resource consequently
lessened. Even in such circumstances, a sensible collection policy for the spe-
cial collections despite limited funding will add overall value to the institu-
tion's research resources over time. Good collections attract good students and
faculty.
An active and creative special collections outreach program can greatly
enhance the perception of the entire library by the rest of the university and
the outside world. Exhibitions, for instance, not only have an educational
component but also promote collections to potential scholars and benefac-
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tors. Broadly speaking, libraries in the United States have better developed
outreach programs compared to European libraries. In large part this is due to
the greater civic role of U.S. universities, which are considered extensions of
the local and regional community. In the United Kingdom the "town versus
gown" attitudes linger on and, although exhibitions of special collections are
open to the public, other outreach activities pale in comparison to some U.S.
research libraries. This is, of course, not true everywhere and to some extent
depends on available institutional funding. The Bodleian library in Oxford
has an active Friends organization whose events often highlight the many rare
book and manuscript treasures. Friends of the Library groups can be enor-
mously helpful in funding purchases of materials. However, the commitment
to such groups can be time consuming for library staff and so ongoing insti-
tutional support is essential. Outreach programs that are developed solely for
fimdraising or publicity pale in comparison to programs that are conceived
with a meaningful service aspect. The better developed and more diverse out-
reach activities are the more likely they will succeed as quality programs. Out-
reach can take the form of lectures, newspaper articles, concerts, booklets, and
the special collections librarian ideally needs a degree of media savvy. Even so,
there is a limit to the natural constituency attracted to such traditional activi-
ties and some thought needs to be given to expanding programs to encompass
other groups. This may be a case of bring the collections to the people. The
visionary librarian Lawrence Clark Powell (1957) once had a plan to establish
a circulating copy of Gutenberg's 42-line Bible complete with parade stops at
schools when it was on route between libraries. Powell wanted the California
legislature to purchase a copy of the Bible for such a purpose. The plan caught
the imagination of Clark's friends and professional contacts within the library
and bookselling world, who saw the educational opportunities in the project.
However, before it came to the stage of approaching the legislature to pur-
chase the Schuckburgh copy on the market at the time, the volume was sold
to a private collector and the plan was shelved.
 ReinvenOngthe TreasureRoom 199

VII. Preservation and Conservation

In 1987, A. M. Scham (p. 60) wrote: "it is with the greatest reluctance that
library administrators are beginning to face the unpleasant fact that books
and archival materials are not indestructible." There are two levels to preser-
vation and conservation--overall collection care and "item-level" care. In an
ideal world, every special collections department would have an appropri-
ate number of trained conservators to repair individual items and oversee
librarywide preservation programs. The unfortunate fact is that many insti-
tutions must rely on semiskilled volunteers or those who do not even have
this minimum level of support established. There is no denying that the
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conservation of rare books and manuscripts is time consuming and expen-

sive. Conditions in storage facilities must be precisely regulated in terms of
light levels, temperature, and humidity--as well as having a high degree of
security--and are therefore expensive to build and maintain. There has been
rising acceptance of conservation/preservation needs since the 1980s in the
United States and longer acceptance in Europe. That said, the Bodleian in
Oxford only began its modem boxing and environmental control progTams
in the 1970s. The current impetus in the U-K is toward a national preser-
vation framework to identify key collections on national, regional, and local
bases.
The tension between preservation and use should not always be resolved
in favor of the former. In general, items in special collections tend to be in
better shape than general circulating material by the very fact that they are
protected, repaired, and used much less often. Books are basically very robust if
they are made well. The text block from a 15th-century book will outlast most
books produced today. There is now a general consensus (though not universal
in practice) that material evidence should be preserved as far as possible--it
is a case of less invasive surgery. Whereas a book with detached boards would
once have been rebound and the older boards discarded, now such an item
might merely be boxed or tied up. The physical object from the text block
to the binding or lack thereof to any hand notations in the text--reflects the
environment in which it was produced and used. Rebacking a spine alters the
historical context of the book forever. That is not to say that there is never a
case in which a book or manuscript should be rebound but that conservation
work needs to be well documented in order to preserve evidence that would
otherwise be lost forever. Nevertheless, the importance of the original format
is why digital surrogates will never completely replace the physical object.
When the British Library disposed of parts of its newspaper collections in
the summer of 2000 the point was made from a number of commentators
that reading a digitized copy of an 18th-century London Times does not give
one a sense of how the actual paper would have appeared to a contemporary.
 200 Jonathan B. Bengtson

Indeed, the very fact that the newspaper was printed on poor-quality paper
says something about the function of the item.
In one survey (Allen, 1999, p. 112f), over 9 of 10 U.S. liberal arts colleges
had rare book collections. However, of those, about a third did not have even
one full-time professional member of staff dedicated to their care and only
about 16% employed more than one. Just over half the institutions surveyed
had endowments. In a recent article inAmerican Libraries, Mark Herring (2000)
argued that libraries which are ill prepared to administer special collections
should simply not do so. Disposing of special collections, he argued, would ease
financial restraints on other parts of the library by raising possibly significant
funds, allow for better preservation of remaining materials, and leave the job
of caring for such collections to institutions that have the financial clout to do
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so (Traister, 1999b).
Certainly no library can collect everything and so collecting decisions are
necessarily value judgments--just as are decisions about prioritizing materials
in a conservation repair program. Historically rare books departments have
been better at collecting mainstream material with some obvious relevance
to current scholarship. Inevitably this has involved primarily "high-culture"
materials from the religious, governmental, and literary establishments. The
greater challenges are to predict what might be of interest to future scholarship
and preserve "minority" viewpoints--often of a very ephemeral nature. But is
all this bulk of material worth the expense in time and money?
The sale of items from a library's special collections, for reasons such as
to regain space or obtain funds for other library projects, is almost always a
delicate issue. Circumstances will differ from library to library. In the United
Kingdom the rare book collections in Oxford and Cambridge universities and
their college libraries have been built up through gifts over many generations
stretching back centuries. As such, these collections form a body of evidence
and an intact historical artifact that reflect and inform the history and in-
tellectual milieu of these institutions. To sell such collections would be like
destroying unique manuscripts.
Reasons for caution when considering deaccessioning include the fact that
the books may or may not realize the sums expected. It is very difficult to tell
what a book will bring, given the vagaries of the modern rare books market
(largely driven by the American and Japanese markets). The costs of disposal
(valuations, catalogs, and premiums) are also often more than might be as-
sumed. The collection needs to be cataloged to a modem standard so that
some record is kept of provenances since sales most often result in a wide dis-
persal of items, thus destroying the intellectual value of coherent collections.
There is a real danger of adverse publicity (Bradbury, 1994). In the UK in
recent years there have been a number of high-profile sales from collections.
One has only to think of the experience of John Rylands Library in the early
 Reinventing the Treasure Room 201

1990s where university authorities forced through a sale of supposedly du-

plicate material. More recent examples of adverse publicity connected with
book sales in the UK include the Turner Collection at Keele University and
the Richardson Collection by the Royal Academy of Dancing. Implications
for adverse publicity will likely affect the wider university community, not just
the library. Many of the historical collections were either given to libraries or
bought through benefactions of money. The sale of any of these items may
result in difficulties raising future funds for the library. There may also be
legal considerations. Without careful planning libraries risk discarding items
that may be of greater value (monetarily and historically) than realized. Fur-
thermore, future research interests are difficult to judge. Items that are of
little scholarly interest now may, as scholarship progresses along new lines of
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inquiry, become important.

There may be a compelling argument to sell some items for the greater
good of the collection as a whole. However, core collections and copies of
books listed in standard bibliographies should not be considered but items
which might be better housed elsewhere or which have no bearing on the
specializations of the institution are good candidates for disposal. Although
the disposal of collections is as much a part of librarianship--including the
special collections field--as is the acquisition of materials, caution is prudent.
However, as long as there are clearly defined reasons to deaccession material
and the overall result will add value to what remains then there is no reason why
special collections librarians should not consider deaccessioning. Indeed, the
historical movement of books is of great interest to rare books librarians and
provenance research is part and parcel of the profession. Detailed guidelines
on the disposal of collections are available from both the American and UK
library associations (see respective association Web sites).

VIII. Security
At one time or another every library has suffered theft from its rare collections
and most will do so in the future, thus creating a need for ever more sophisti-
cated (and expensive) means of safeguarding collections. Incidents are all too
frequent--for instance, the items for 1 week of the ALA on-line news (week
of September 18, 2000) included two cases of theft. One recorded the loss
of photographic prints from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque
library which were stolen by a lawyer and the other recorded the guilty plea
of a man (he was sentenced to 2 years in prison) caught stealing rare books
formerly owned by President John Quincy Adams. Growing cooperation be-
tween the libraries, national customs officials, anticrime organizations, and the
bookselling world has aided in the reporting of theft.
 202 Jonathan B. Bengtson

The newly printed Shakespeare First Folio sold for around £1 in 1623.
In the early 19th century the copy owned by the Shakespearian actor David
Garrick was purchased for over £34, and 19 years later the same copy sold for
£86 to The Queen's College, Oxford. About 30 years ago, an imperfect copy
was bought for around £3,000. Sotheby's sold a copy in the early 1990s for over
£400,000, and a complete copy in good condition on the market in 2000 could
be expected to sell for significantly more. The great early 20th-century Ameri-
can antiquarian bookseller A. S. Rosenbach based his success on the realization
that a book is worth what someone will pay for it that there is no hard and fast
rule to the value of books. Wide access to on-line bookselling sites are alerting
readers to the potential market value of library books. Whether for monetary
or other gain, it is often extremely difficult to identify bogus readers and so it
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is essential to train staff to follow detailed registration procedures at all times

and to have an awareness of how thieves work. Increasingly, libraries are co-
operating with dealers to ensure that only legitimate items are sold on the open
market. However, the problem of theft remains and in some parts of the world,
such as the former Soviet block, where libraries often do not have the funds or
staff to properly oversee valuable collections, thefts are growing alarmingly.
There are cases of theft from libraries all around the world--committed by
professional thieves to students to university professors to Vatican researchers.
Eternal vigilance is the best and, ultimately, only defense. However, in the need
to secure collections the ultimate purpose of these--use and access--should
not be sacrificed. Special collections departments should at least exist for the
best interests of readers and materials in equal measures. After all, for every
thief there are thousands of legitimate readers.
Detailed security guidelines have been drawn up by national library asso-
ciations such as the ACRL RBMS Guidelines (Zeidberg, 1987) and the LTK
Library Association Rare Books Group. Individual auction houses, booksellers,
and trade organizations such as the Antiquarian Booksellers' Associations of
America and the UK (ABAA and ABA, respectively) have been particularly
helpful in establishing the authenticity of books on the market. For example,
the ABA and the U K Library Association have collaborated on an advisory
code of conduct for the sale and purchase of books and manuscripts.

IX. Training
Library school curricula are changing, and rightly so, in order to teach students
the skills needed in an increasingly IT-driven profession. Indeed, some library
schools have even changed their names to reflect the growing credence of terms
like "information management" and "knowledge management." The tradi-
tional skills of the profession are evolving with technology and new skills must
be learned by librarians in all sectors including special collections. The next
 Reinventing the Treasure Room 203

generation in the field needs to have the technical wherewithal of a computer

scientist and a grounding in traditional library theory as well as a background
in bibliography and book history, language skills, an awareness of conserva-
tion and preservation issues, and a knowledge of the book trade. However,
bibliography and related rare books courses are being dropped from many li-
brary schools, leaving only a handful of institutions to provide training. In the
United States the popularity of the University of Virginia Rare Books School
can in part be attributed to lack of widely available and extensive training else-
where (with the exception of institutions like the University of California at
Los Angeles, the University of Indiana at Bloomington, and the University
of Texas at Austin). Seminars are taught over 5-day periods in the summer
out of the normal academic term so that staff from other institutions have a
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greater opportunity to attend. Annually around 300 students come to the Rare
Books School and enjoy hands-on courses covering a diverse range of related
topics--from 19th-century lithography to European decorative bookbinding
to codicology--all taught by experts from the United States and abroad. The
related Book Arts Press provides videotape introductions to various aspects
of the arts of printing and binding. Likewise, the California Center for the
Book (http://www.calbook.org/) provides some training for professionals and
nonprofessionals.
In the United Kingdom even the venerable library school at Univer-
sity College London only offers two introductory courses--bibliography and
manuscript studies. In the United States less than a dozen library schools of-
fered such courses in 1999 despite the overall growth of curricula (Cloonan
and Berger, 1998, p. 90). This lack of extensive early training in the field is wor-
rying. For instance, the skills and knowledge needed to catalog a 16th-century
edition of Aristotle are very different from running a modern reference service
or setting out a collection development policy for CD-ROMs. Not only must
the rare books cataloger have an understanding of print culture but also an
awareness of the physical smacture of hand-press books, some knowledge of
the historical context in which an individual volume was produced, a detailed
understanding of antiquarian cataloging rules, and so forth. Such knowledge is
difficult to acquire and mastery of rare books cataloging can take years of expe-
rience. Likewise, a special collections manager must have a detailed awareness
of conservation and preservation issues as they relate to particular collections
and single items as well as a knowledge of the history of the book and the
antiquarian book trade in order to make informed accessions decisions.
Of course, the employment market for special collections posts is lim-
ited and, as a relatively small sector in terms of staffing, the challenge will
remain in how to attract skilled professionals at the entry level. By nature, rare
books training is object oriented. Museum and archive work sometimes over-
laps with special collections librarianship, and there is scope for cross-sectoral
partnership training programs. Indeed, there are already well-established joint
 204 Jonathan B. Bengtson

conferences between the archives and library sectors. This is less the case with
the museum sector at the moment. However, with the evolving concept of"cul-
tural heritage" collections one hopes to see further developments in this area.

X. Conclusion

In 1915, the creation of a "Treasure Room" in the newly opened Widener

Library at Harvard University was a reaction to changing concepts of collec-
tions management as a result of primarily 19th-century developments such as
the rise of the antiquarian book trade and book collecting, evolving teaching
methodologies in higher education, and the resultant transformation of re-
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search universities. The development of rare books librarianship over the 20th
century has been shaped by the need to protect increasingly valuable collec-
tions from theft, damage from consultation, and the deterioration of physical
structures. Furthermore, running parallel to the expansion of the market in
antiquarian books has been a growing scholarly interest in the history of the
book. Rare books librarianship now demands specialized knowledge and skills
often acquired over a long period of time. Scholars in fields as diverse as his-
tory, sociology, art and design, and economics have embraced the skills of the
rare books librarian.
University cost-cutting exercises over the past decades have put faculty
posts and even whole departments at risk--a trend also seen in the library
sector. Ever more frequently, zealous administrators who see instant income
instead of core research collections and superfluous staff instead of highly
skilled professionals who add value to their university have targeted rare books
and special collections departments. This is a time, as evidenced by a growing
body of publications, when rare books and special collections librarians are
reassessing where they have been, where they are, and what the future holds.
The use and exploitation of electronic resources continues to be embraced
though often in a haphazard manner. An understanding of the uses and, par-
ticularly, the limitations of IT is crucial--as is an awareness of likely future
developments--so that these resources are exploited to their fullest potential.
Cooperative projects for the training of rare books librarians need to be de-
veloped where appropriate. Rare books collections are resources primarily for
research but their role as teaching materials have yet to be fully developed. So
too can the collections and their keepers aid in university fundraising and com-
munity outreach so long as issues of preservation, conservation, and security
are addressed.
If the history of rare books librarianship in the 20th century can be char-
acterized by acquiring and protecting the "treasures" in library collections
for the use of scholars, in the 21st century those "treasures" must earn their
place on the shelves. Some have suggested that it is time that the term "special
 Reinventingthe Treasure Room 205

collections" be replaced with "cultural heritage department" or some simi-

lar demarcation. Indeed, books themselves are cultural artifacts and defining
them as such is not merely a matter of semantics for librarians in this field. In
April 2000, the LrK Government officially established "Re:source, the Coun-
cil for Museums, Archives and Libraries," which will serve as a strategic ad-
visory body (http://www.resource.gov.uk). At its core is the assumption that
"museums, archives and libraries belong at the very heart of people's lives;
contributing to their enjoyment and inspiration, cultural values, learning po-
tential, economic prosperity and social equality." The same could be said for
special collections and it is the challenge of librarians in the field to promote
and interpret the holdings in their care in order to inform and enrich our
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culture and history.

Departments of special collections must continue to embrace new technol-
ogywhile providing the traditional specialized services that set them apart from
the rest of the library. But then, all sectors of the academic library community,
and indeed the academic community in its entirety, must respond to the op-
portunities that I T brings or risk becoming ossified. There is a bigger picture
here, since the future of university libraries, including their special collections
departments, is inextricably linked with the very furore of the higher education
and how successfully it responds to the challenges of the 21st century.

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