Public Services and Outreach in Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Libraries

RAREBOOK, MANUSCRIPT, A N D SPECIAL COLLECTIONS libraries remain both more difficult and more forbidding to use than any other parts of most libraries.A shift from an ethos that emphasized acquisition, catalogmg, and preservation has brought into new prominence issues generally grouped together under the rubric of “promotion.” This essay considers some of the ways in which this addition to the ethos of special collections has the potential to change for the better the ways such libraries are perceived and used. INTRODUCTION Many of the people who might otherwise use them, and even some who do, find rare book, manuscript, and special collections libraries both more difficult and more forbidding than any other part of a library. Long efforts to alter that unhappily persistent truth have met with only limited success. First, the closedor limited-access stacks and storage facilities inherent in the nature of rare book collections (my shorthand for “rare book, manuscript, and special collections”) prohibit would-be readers from browsing shelves to locate materials of interest.l The larger the collection, the more troublesome this prohibition becomes. For all of the improvements, at least as librarians see them, of online access and online browsing, such restrictions on physical browsing pose problems. Our readers tend to remain astonishingly less skilled than we like to imagine them at using tools that represent books rather than books them~elves.~ Second, the generally persistent formidability characteristic of rare book collections and their staffs does not make them seem any easier to use than their closed stacks ~uggest .~ Students in particular may find them offDaniel Traister, Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206 LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 52, No. 1,Summer 2003, pp. 87-108