Special Collections Subcommittee meeting
February 8, 2005

 

Present: Toby Appel, Richard Boursy, Susan Brady, Ulla Kasten, George Miles, Martha Smalley, Susan Walker, David Walls, Richard Warren

 

Guest: Diana Timlin

 

Diana Timlin provided information about events planned for the 75th anniversary of Sterling Memorial Library.  A gala event is planned for October 21, 2005.  She encouraged us to come up with an exhibit to be mounted during the 2005/2006 academic year that would complement the anniversary celebration.

 

Diana indicated that Library Development office is willing to have the Special Collections brochure and foldout map reprinted.  She will ask Antonia to check on supplies of the current editions.  Martha will send out the text of the current brochure and ask for revisions.  OHAM would like to be added to the brochure. Perhaps the Art Gallery and Peabody should also be included.

 

We talked about methods of publicity for the Special Collections Fair scheduled for October 4th. Diana indicated that the Library would be willing to provide funds for a Yale Daily News ad. She will also help us to coordinate publicity in the graduate school newsletter, Yale Bulletin & Calendar, listservs, and other appropriate channels of communication. 

 

We agreed that an announcement of the Fair should be included in any library material given out to incoming students.  Martha will ask Emily Horning about this.  The Fair should also be featured at the Special Collections table at the Graduate Student fair in August.  Diana indicated that the Library would be willing to provide pencils as giveaways and a banner for the Special Collections table.  Susan Brady will pursue this offer.

***********

We discuss ideas for a theme for the May-July 2005 Special Collection exhibit in the SML corridor.

Ideas suggested included: unusual or strange items; mysteries & puzzles; items with fascinating stories behind them; donations from Yale graduates; stories of donators or creators of items; how we are making Special Collections available digitally.  I think we more or less agreed to pursue the idea of stories of donors & creators / interesting background stories of items – a kind of “Where on earth did this come from?” idea. We will finalize the theme at our next meeting, March 22nd. 

 

As far as exhibit preparation is concerned, Susan Brady agreed to contact Gisela re. a workshop on mounting and labels.  She will also pursue the idea of having labels made by Merwin’s.

 

In talking about a possible Special Collections exhibit to complement the 75th anniversary, we came up with the idea of a “Timeline of the human record.”  This would be a cross-collection exhibit, hopefully including the nave cases as well as the corridor, that would trace the format and technology of communication from tablet to scroll, codex, hand-printing, etc.  Martha will inquire about a time for this exhibit.

 

***********

 

Rich Szary was unable to come to our meeting to discuss the Mellon Collections Collaborative.  George and Martha relayed some of the information that Rich had provided at a recent CDC meeting.  There will be a kick-off event on April 29th.  There will be three rounds of grants provided for collaborative projects, the first of which will come this spring.  Committee members should be thinking about possible proposals.

 

***********
George provided some information about the work of the Conservation Committee, which was initiated by the Provost’s office.  Let by Jack Meyers, the Committee included George as Beinecke representative, Bobbie Pilette and Gisela Noack, representatives from Yale Art Gallery, Center for British Art, and Peabody.  A joint conservation/preservation facility of 50,000 sq. feet was proposed for “Site 2” of the arts renovation project.

 

**********
George gave us printout of a recent Archives listserv exchange that referred to the copyright statement prepared by our committee: http://www.library.yale.edu/special_collections/copyright.html. Peter Hirtle of Cornell has some disagreements with the Yale statement.  We agreed to discuss this in a future meeting. [Martha will compile the messages in question and send them out to the Committee.]

 

 

 

Next meeting will be March 22, 2005, 11:00 a.m. in SML 410.