NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 26 number 3 - Spring 2006

Special Collections Research Center: Preserving the Past, Embracing the Future

By Steven Mandeville-Gamble, Special Collections Research Center

Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) is experiencing a tremendous period of growth that is both physical--with a major renovation in progress to add a beautiful reading room and a spacious exhibit gallery--and virtual, with a growing body of unique digital collections. The addition of talented new staff members highlights the center’s expanding initiatives, including a dynamic new exhibits program; faster processing of incoming materials to get them into the hands of researchers; a robust and strategic approach to generating and managing digital special collections; and refocused collection-building practices that emphasize university research priorities and corresponding areas of excellence in the Libraries’ collections. Through new initiatives and enhanced collaboration with colleagues in Collection Management and Information Technology, the Special Collections Research Center is building the kind of unique print and digital collections that will help define exceptional research libraries in the future.

The renovation of the first floor of the D. H. Hill Library's East Wing will create a grand, state-of-the-art exhibit gallery leading to a new reading room. The exhibit gallery will be both attractive and functional and will serve as a conduit to draw students, faculty, and members of the community at large into the new Special Collections Reading Room. It will also be a bold statement of the level of sophistication of the Libraries' exhibits program. Complete with ample built-in display cases, the new gallery space will showcase first-rate, professional exhibits. To take full advantage of this striking new space, an exhibits and outreach librarian position has been established. Kevin Schlesier came to the Libraries in October 2005 and has already brought a bold new vision, strong organizational skills, and professional maturity to an exhibits program that will be worthy of national prestige

Linda Sellars joined the center in September 2005 as the head of technical services for Special Collections. Sellars is streamlining the processing of incoming materials while simultaneously improving the quality of arrangement, description, and holdings maintenance work performed within the SCRC.

Through her supervision and training of staff, graduate students from public history and library science, Park Fellows, and student employees, Sellars has already brought about significant improvements. She has implemented a systematic review of older finding aids to bring them into compliance with evolving professional standards. Chief among the improvements is deeper subject analysis than had been done in the past, bringing some previously "hidden" or "dim" collections into the light.

Digital Technologies Librarian Amy Rudersdorf designs, implements, and oversees practices and procedures for digitizing content and managing long-term preservation and access to digital materials coming into Special Collections. Rudersdorf assumed these responsibilities in October 2005. Working with Information Technology colleagues, she is refining descriptive metadata practices for digital materials to ensure that they can be shared with peer institutions in collaborative efforts. She has also helped develop standards for the digitization of visual and textual materials, while significantly enhancing the SCRC's infrastructure for creating and managing digital content.

Finally, the SCRC is building collections in areas of strategic importance for the university to meet the research needs of students and faculty. Primary areas of emphasis include architecture and design; the history of science; engineering and technology; natural resources; genomics; textiles; and the history of North Carolina State University. These priorities have resulted in recent donations of papers from a number of distinguished faculty members such as Jim Riviere (pharmacology and toxicology), Ron Sederoff (genomics), and Clark Cockerham (statistics and genetics). By emphasizing established and emerging areas of excellence at the university and corresponding strengths within the Libraries’ overall collection, the SCRC aims to be an indispensable source of information for generations of NC State scholars.