Primary Research Group has published Trends in Rare Book & Documents 
Special Collections Management (ISBN: 1-57440-095-9). 

This special report examines the management practices and business 
decisions of special collections libraries with a focus on rare books, 
manuscripts, maps, and other historical documents. The report profiles the 
John J. Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections at Boston 
College, the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, the L. Tom Perry 
Special Collections at Brigham Young University-Provo, the Huntington 
Library, the Newberry Library, the San Antonio Public Library, the 
Watkinson Library at Trinity College, the Special Collections Research 
Center at the University of Southern Illinois-Carbondale, and the Bancroft 
Library at the University of California-Berkeley. Interviews were 
conducted in November and December of 2007.  Additional information 
through an online form was provided by San Jose State University Kent 
State University Map Library AGS Libraries, University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee and California State University-Chico. 

Some of the main findings of the report were that:

•	Trends in special collections libraries management are relatively 
stable in terms of acquisitions, staff, and preservation strategy but are 
in a transition with newer issues such as choosing new technologies and 
growing an online presence with more searchable, browsable features. 

•	Consortiums and, to a lesser degree, relationships with commercial 
vendors have played a large role in bringing digitization projects, 
catalog availability, and general publicity to special collections 
libraries that otherwise might lack the resources to work on such 
projects. Similarly, many smaller libraries simply lack the resources to 
develop complex applications to manage data or streamline workflows, and 
are dependent on larger libraries to provide the programming expertise and 
developmental leadership to offer solutions, open source or otherwise. 

•	Relationships with commercial vendors to provide limited edition 
materials and other items for sale seem to be on the upswing. 

•	Nearly all librarians we spoke to mentioned an interest in 
digitizing their patron tracking system but no vendors had provided a way 
to effectively address the needs of a special collections library. Most 
currently use entirely paper records, and the very few who used any kind 
of digital tracking had not progressed beyond simple Microsoft Excel 
sheets. 

•	We found that digitization generally has a dual purpose but is 
currently more effective in piquing interest and drawing Web traffic than 
it is in preservation. Digitization may also help with making available 
collections that are normally stored offsite, but a certain amount of 
technological infrastructure needs to be in place before any of this can 
happen. 

•	Online exhibits with metadata-tagged images and text also bring in 
significant additional traffic and publicity. These exhibits do not have 
to be large or comprehensive of the collection itself in order to draw in 
viewers and researchers, but lack of infrastructure and staff resources 
often blocks libraries from doing such projects. In these cases, 
consortiums can play a significant role in digitizing exhibits when the 
home institution is not equipped to work on such projects alone. 

For further information view our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com