I’ve just come back from the annual conference for the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (more commonly known as RBMS, thank goodness, because that’s a mouthful). I was honored to be asked to be one of the speakers for the plenary on “A Broad and Deep Look at Outreach” and for my talk, I decided to look at how friendly and open the special collections digital landscape is. (Spoiler alert: not as radically open as it could be and should be! I’ve deposited my talk in MLA’s CORE if you’d like to read it, and I will post the link to the audio of the session once RBMS makes it available.) As part of my exploration, I decided to try searching for facsimiles of early editions of various books—part of what makes the digital landscape so frustrating is that there isn’t a centralized…
Month: June 2016
how do you use digital special collections?
I’ve been thinking about the digital landscape of special collections recently (hi, RBMS16!) and while I have lots of thoughts on how I come across and use the digital incarnations of rare books and manuscript libraries, I’m curious about what other people do. When I think of the digital landscape of these libraries, I’m thinking of everything from social media (institutional and personal accounts) to digital collections and exhibitions to user-generated websites and projects. How do you encounter and interact with that landscape? Are you looking for specific images? Are you browsing for pretty pictures? Are you following social media feeds for entertainment? Are you researching specific topics? Are you bored? Are you inspired to create your own work from it? Does it never, ever occur to you to look for or look at special collections online? I’d love it if you wanted to share your thoughts in the comments below, whether…