Special Collections Research Center
The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) is the principal repository for rare books, manuscripts, and archives in the University of Chicago Library. The SCRC was founded as the Department of Special Collections in 1953 and became the Special Collections Research Center in 2002. Public services, collections, and exhibitions of the SCRC are housed in the Joseph Regenstein Library.
In 2003-2004, SCRC celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a series of exhibitions and events. The following description of SCRC and its work is drawn from the illustrated 50th anniversary publication, Research at the Center. Copies of the full publication are available from Special Collections.
SCRC: Research at the Center
Research has been at the center of Special Collections at the University of Chicago from its formative years. Just as the University itself has been defined by consistent emphasis on the production and dissemination of knowledge, the Library's rare books, manuscripts, and archives have always been collected and valued for their scholarly and educational potential. By preserving and providing primary sources, Special Collections plays a central role in stimulating and supporting teaching and research at the University.
Separate departments of rare books, manuscripts, archives, and Lincolniana were consolidated in 1953 under the leadership of the founding Curator, Robert Rosenthal. Fifty years after its founding, the Special Collections Research Center continues to expand the scope of its programs and services. Among the essential components of these efforts are staff expertise; collaborations with library, faculty, national, and international colleagues; information technology; physical renovations; and support from foundations, collection donors, and friends. Alongside new digital initiatives, traditional programs such as exhibitions, teaching support, and preservation are being redefined. The Special Collections Research Center embarks on its second half-century with energy, commitment, and broadened opportunities for discovery.
In the generation after Special Collections was established in 1953, the Center moved beyond the safekeeping of historical treasures to encompass curatorial selection and interpretation. The 1970 opening of Regenstein Library launched a new era in the role of Special Collections at the University of Chicago. In the last three decades, Special Collections has become a far more integral and integrated component of the Library's support for teaching and research at the University. The space has the elegant "aura" of a private library, but the facilities were designed to encourage and facilitate use of the collections.
A program of classes, exhibitions, lectures, and other events was important in setting the stage for the vigorous emphasis on access and use that has characterized developments of the past several years. Special Collections has always been a "working" collection, and its resources have supported a wide range of dissertations and scholarly monographs. Advanced researchers - faculty members, graduate students, and visiting scholars -- continue to be among our most frequent users. At the same time and in growing numbers, new users are discovering Special Collections, among them many undergraduates and members of the general public.
With its deep collections closely paralleling areas of exceptional strength at the University, Special Collections is able to respond to the needs of emerging scholarly disciplines and new methodological approaches for primary sources. Researchers are returning to "old" sources with fresh questions and perspectives; and they are seeking and finding "new" sources, some held in the collections for generations but now fully accessible, others acquired recently to deepen existing strengths and support new directions in scholarship. Widespread interest in material culture is sharpening researchers' understanding of the intellectual importance and aesthetic appeal of the original artifact. Librarians and scholars are collaborating to maximize the full research potential of physical and digital collections of primary sources by careful selection, interpretation, and presentation.
SCRC: Exhibitions, Teaching, and Research
During the late 1990s, modifications to the physical space of the Special Collections Research Center strengthened its ability to support research and teaching. As part of the Regenstein Reconfiguration Project, the Special Collections Reference Area has been expanded, and computer workstations are situated in close proximity to information and reference staff. Two additional staff members are now located on the first floor to increase support for reference and interpretive services. A glass-enclosed group study room allows researchers to work together. The Seminar Room in the Special Collections Research Center is regularly used for individual class sessions and full courses that draw on the Center's collections. A generous gift in honor of Marie Louise Rosenthal supported its recent renovation into a technology-equipped space for teaching and learning, the Marie Louise Rosenthal Seminar Room.
Regenstein Library was designed with an exhibition gallery that provides ample space for comprehensive and scholarly presentations, and exhibitions are a major component of Special Collections programs. Drawing on the subject expertise of faculty, graduate students, and Library staff, a regular series of exhibitions has been organized to bring the collections to the attention of a wider audience. Often accompanied by publications, a number of them award-winning, the exhibitions are also the occasion for collaborations with academic departments and other campus units. Among the most successful projects have been ones organized in conjunction with scholarly conferences or seminar courses, for example those at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, that result in complementary exhibitions at the Library and Smart Museum. The World Wide Web offers potential for online exhibitions that reach a vast audience that would not otherwise visit Special Collections exhibitions. The texts for a number of physical exhibitions have been made available online, and the series of publications issued in conjunction with exhibitions held during the 1991-1992 celebration of the University's centennial is being published in electronic form. Online presentations are also made available as part of digital collections, such as two created in conjunction with the Library of Congress's American Memory Project, American Environmental Photographs and The First American West: Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820.
SCRC: Developing the Collections
Since Special Collections was established, the collections have grown substantially; and they continue to do so through acquisitions, gifts, and transfers from University and other Library units. Some growth is steady and incremental, but occasionally a collection - for example over 17,000 titles in the Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica - is of a physical size or intellectual scope that changes the dimensions of Special Collections. In deciding whether to acquire materials or accept a gift, the principal criterion is whether research and teaching at the University of Chicago will be enhanced by the availability of these new sources.
The generous support of individual donors has been a major factor in additions to the collections over the past 50 years. Gifts of materials have enriched the collections with sources that are unique to the University of Chicago and others that could not have been acquired in any other way. Funds to acquire, preserve, and process materials have also enabled Special Collections to meet teaching and research needs. This ability was substantially expanded by a major gift from the Regenstein Foundation to establish the Helen and Joseph Regenstein Collection of Rare Books. This endowment is facilitating acquisition of works of distinction, including titles that are of immediate interest to faculty and students.
Scholarship at the University has evolved over the past half-century, and researchers study a much wider range of individuals and topics. As with "classics" that yield new insights to generations of readers who bring their own perspectives, so also do the collections in Special Collections support a wide variety of investigations. When a new discipline takes shape or a new emphasis emerges in an academic program at the University, Special Collections looks for ways to develop primary sources to support this work. For example, a number of existing collections are of great interest to researchers in gender studies, but the field's growth over the past decade has also presented opportunities for new accessions. And, while the archive of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse has made the University of Chicago a center for study of modern poetry, recent interest has stimulated efforts to acquire editorial files of contemporary poetry publications.
SCRC: Preservation
Choosing which books and other materials will receive physical treatment is a challenge in Special Collections as well as for the rest of the University of Chicago Library, since the number of items needing attention far exceeds available staff and financial resources. Special Collections is fortunate in having a large number of books originally bound for use by scholars in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in sturdy parchment bindings that are still very durable. But there are also many volumes printed on brittle paper and in deteriorating leather bindings that require attention, including a growing number of 19th-century texts transferred to Special Collections from the general collections. Special Collections holds responsibility for preserving collections in all formats, and we are beginning to take on the complex task of preserving University archival and other information in electronic form.
To ensure the long-term availability of materials for use by future researchers, Special Collections, along with the Library's Preservation Department, emphasizes preventive measures in its preservation program. Separate facilities for preservation activities and exhibition preparation accommodate work on Special Collections materials. Books needing a protective enclosure for additional support, or other repairs, are identified when they are first added to the collection, used by a researcher, or included in an exhibition. Volumes that need to be rebound, and books or documents that require substantial repairs, are sent to specialized conservators. Replacing poor-quality folders and boxes with alkaline-based materials, removing damaging metal fasteners, and enclosing brittle documents in polyester film are among the basic steps taken during archival processing. Advances in preservation technology have improved the quality and diversity of archival supplies and techniques, providing more protection for the collections.
Special projects have made it possible to address a particular problem or treat an entire collection. A matching grant from the University of Chicago Women's Board launched a successful effort to conserve the elephant folio first edition of John James Audubon's Birds of America. The University of Chicago Library Society supported repair of a 17th-century volume of engravings of trades by Annibale Carracci. An award from the federal Save America's Treasures program supported preservation work on the archive of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse as well as preparation of a complete microfilm of the collection. Archival processing projects, such as one for social sciences collections that was funded by the U.S. Department of Education, always include preservation needs along with improving access.
The University of Chicago Library recently received a one million dollar matching grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to increase the amount of preservation work that can be accomplished across the Library's collections. While it will always be necessary to make difficult decisions, the expanded program will provide exciting opportunities for the Library, including Special Collections.
SCRC: Improving Access
The University of Chicago Library began creating online records for books newly added to the collections in the mid-1970s, and Special Collections materials were included from the beginning. In the late 1980s and early 1990s active efforts began to convert existing paper records to electronic form and provide online access to uncataloged materials. Taking advantage of records available on international databases such as OCLC that could be adapted for local use, brief online records were created for titles in the Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica, the R. R. Donnelley Company & Sons Training Library, and a collection of 18th-century French plays - all examples of the types of previously inaccessible holdings that were being represented online for the first time. Collection-level records were used to describe large groups of pamphlets and other materials. Thus, the Lincke collection of German popular fiction, for which individual records are still a goal, is now visible online. As part of the Library's retrospective conversion project, completed in 1999, Special Collections book holdings achieved nearly complete online representation. Work continues to refine and enhance these bibliographic records. New features of the catalog make it possible to recognize donors and to create "virtual" collections that preserve the intellectual integrity of a collection that has been physically dispersed.
Organizing and cataloging archives and manuscripts collections is a multi-stage activity culminating in the creation of a finding aid and a catalog record. This work must be undertaken by individual repositories, since each collection is unique and requires an original description. In the 1980s, the development of a catalog format for archives and manuscripts permitted records to be included in library databases; at the end of the 20th century, archivists led the way in developing an encoding scheme to facilitate searching across collections to locate finding aids describing related materials. Over the last few years, Special Collections has aggressively pursued each of these means to improve access. A special project is creating online catalog records for archives and manuscripts, while a new continuing position and project funds are helping to reduce the processing backlog. Encoded in accordance with the Encoded Archival Description standard, the Library's finding aids are also now available for searching on the World Wide Web.
SCRC: Digital Initiatives
Electronic technology is making possible the creation of a new form of research resource, the digital collection, with the capacity for online presentations of high-quality images, digital versions of full texts, and interfaces that offer sophisticated searching across collections and repositories. Special Collections is highly selective in determining what to present in digital form; and staff are guided in their decisions by the needs of researchers, the condition of the originals, and their copyright status.
Digital collections can take many forms. Some, like the Library's Chopin Early Editions site or the Archives Photographic Files, display a collection of materials in its entirety, with each original item digitized. Others, like the site devoted to the First American West, present a selection of items associated with a theme. In other instances, such as the Philip M. Klutznick digital collection, the development of the digital site closely parallels the processing of original materials and the creation of a digital finding aid.
Creating a digital resource is a highly complex and collaborative process, involving many staff in Special Collections and colleagues across the University and the Library, most especially in the Digital Library Development Center and Preservation Department. Sites under development are evaluated by Library groups and by bibliographers, faculty, and other colleagues with expertise in the subject matter and experience in the use of digital materials. And, since digital collections often require external funding, colleagues in Library Development are important allies in these efforts.
As the Goodspeed New Testament Manuscripts project aims to demonstrate, digital collections can be used in conjunction with print and manuscript materials to transform teaching and provide the basis for new scholarly tools. At the same time, staff in Special Collections can now highlight newly revealed connections among collections in different formats, while digital initiatives are also helping to identify materials in particular need of preservation treatment. As use of primary sources continues to evolve, researchers will draw on the rare book, manuscript, and archival collections in original and digital forms. In the years to come as in the past, decisions about enlarging and enhancing Special Collections will be guided by the needs of research and teaching at the University of Chicago.
For further information about SCRC please contact:
Special Collections Research Center
University of Chicago Library
1100 E. 57th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60637
SpecialCollections@lib.uchicago.edu
Phone: (773) 702-8705
Fax: (773) 702-3728