Special Collections Committee meeting of September 21, 2000

Present: Diane Kaplan, Elisabeth Fairman, Christine de Vallet, Toby Appel, Jae Williams, David Walls, Chris Weideman, Maggie Powell, George Miles, Richard Boursy, Richard Warren.

1. We discussed the various existing lists of special collections at Yale.
a. We will ask the Research Workstation Advisory Board to consider having the "Special Collections" link at the top of the "Subject Guides" page go directly to our web site's list of Special Collections. If this is not an option and they want to keep the list of individual links to special collections, we will ask them to reconsider the inclusion of the American Oriental Society, Avalon Project, Mountaineering Collection, Newspaper and Microtext Reading Room, and Project Diana.
b. We will consider the inclusion of the following collections on our web site's list:
Elizabethan Club - Elisabeth will investigate
Star Charts & Geology - George will investigate
c. We will change our list by grouping Faber-Birren, Drama, and Visual Resources under an Arts Library heading (Martha)
d. We will include a general phone number in our brief listings - Everyone should send Martha the appropriate phone #
e. Martha will talk with Andy Shimp re. possible reconfiguration of the Libraries & Collections listing in order to separate umbrella sites from individual sites.

2. We discussed our "Access and Use" page.
a. We will make a separate "Information for staff" link from the front page and put the copyright document on it, as well as links for sites of interest (SAA, NEA, etc.) and a list of contact people (members of Subcommittee) (Martha)
b. We will change the wording of the statement re. access to say "and other researchers..." (Martha)
c. We will try to come up with more Frequently Asked Questions, including among them a question re. reproduction criteria. - Everyone should suggest one or more FAQ to Martha, who will compile them for further discussion.

3. We discussed our "Overview" page
a. We will change the wording to read "Yale University's libraries include extensive special collections of ancient clay tablets, art works, coins, ephemera, manuscripts, maps, music scores, photographs, rare books, sound recordings, and other unique research material."
See http://www.library.yale.edu/CDC/public/subcommittees/SpecialCollections/minutes/scm030497.html#draft for the document re. financial support that Chris W. referred to. There may be some wording from this that can also be included in the overview.

4. We will change the "Information for Donors" link to go to an intermediary page that also includes links for the Library Associates, Medical Library "friends", etc. - Everyone should send Martha the URL for any such organization that you would like to see included.