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Special Collections Subcommittee Minutes Memo Date: December 11, 1996 To: Ann Okerson and Max Marmor From: Chris Weideman Re: Second meeting of the CDC Special Collections Subcommittee
In attendance: Toby Appel, Bridget Burke, Christine de Vallet, Elisabeth Fairman, Diane Kaplan, George Miles, Martha Smalley, Richard Warren, Chris Weideman, Richard Williams
We met on December 3 and discussed the first five items in our October memo to you. We appreciated your responses to that memo and they informed our discussions. 1. The focus of this subcommittee. We will stay affiliated with CDC and will let you know when we need assistance regarding issues related to collection management. Richard Warren is exploring whom we might invite to future meetings from the Peabody (it will probably be Barbara Narenda). Elisabeth Fairman suggested that Richard Field, curator of prints, photographs and drawings at the Art Gallery, be invited at some point to attend one of our meetings. 2. The disposition of unwanted materials.We will use select-l to describe and offer unwanted materials. If no one is interested, we will ask the selectors if they can recommend vendors to whom the materials can be offered for sale. George Miles recommended that such materials not be offered on consignment because of the paperwork and tracking involved. Additionally, vendors should not be allowed to take only what they want; they need to take the entirety of whatever is offered so that the library unit does not have to dispose of what is left behind. We believe this is in keeping with the spirit of library procedures, especially sections B-7a and B-7b in the Library procedures manual. We reviewed these sections at the meeting and wonder whether library administration still considers them official library policy. They have not been revised in a number of years and they only focus on individual items in excess of $1000 and/or collections worth in excess of $5000. Is there a procedure for discarding materials that neither the library nor dealers want? Regarding the use of proceeds from the sale of items, at a later date we will review the policies Manuscripts and Archives has recently put in place to dispose of unwanted stamps and how it plans to use any proceeds it receives. 3. Donor financial support for care of materials.Members of the committee are sending Chris Weideman information about donors who have offered financial support for the preservation and care of their collections. There was a lengthy discussion about what we might do with financial support offered by donors. Some donors might provide money solely for the support of their own collection. Others might be willing to contribute to an endowment fund for the preservation and care of special collection materials throughout the library system, a fund which might be similar in kind and administration to the Library Associates Fund. We are going to resume this discussion at our next meeting; early next year we will ask Carolyn Claflin to meet with us to hear our ideas and share her expertise. 4. Library travel funds. We fully understand the need to do as you say in your response - to articulate the value of our trips. They are of value to the library, the collection, the university, and to ourselves. We are concerned, however, about the trips we need to take on short notice that involve "local" travel, such as to another part of the state or into New York City. Often times, special collections staff receive phone calls from donors/potential donors and are asked to view materials, to decide whether we want them, and/or to retrieve them on very short notice. Applying in writing for prior authorization for such trips is often not feasible. This type of travel, however, is a normal and important function of collection development in special collections. The trips themselves are not especially costly, but staff members need to be assured that they will be reimbursed for whatever out-of-pocket expenses are incurred (such as purchasing train tickets, paying for a hotel room for a night, paying for gas for a rental car/van, etc.) It is not clear to us what the library's policy is for such trips and what procedures we need to follow in order to ensure our reimbursement. We would appreciate hearing your thoughts in this regard. 5. Storage. We reviewed Max's response to our inquiry. When the second CDC task force on implementation is appointed we assume there will be a special collections representative. As soon as we learn who that person is, we will invite him/her to a meeting where we review and discuss our interests in and concerns about the off-campus shelving. We look forward to that meeting. Topics for next meeting, January 14:
1) Kinds of donor financial support.
Topic for future meeting: 1. Kinds of storage made use of by special collections in the YUL and our assessment of their adequacy.
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