| Report to CDC: Reassessing the Circulation of Special Materials in the Yale Library October 24, 1997 Since before Sterling Library opened, the Yale University Library has worked to balance the value of convenience for current scholars that browsable, circulating collections provide, with the value of preservation for use by future generations that closed-stack, non-circulating collections help assure. Over the years, Yale librarians have considered the rarity, the fragility, and the likelihood of theft or mutilation of original materials, as well as the availability of secure shelving areas and supervised reading rooms, to decide which materials should be removed from circulation for inclusion in one of the University's special collections. Every year individual books, pamphlets, prints, and broadsides are transferred from circulating to non-circulating status. Now, the construction of a high-efficiency, off-campus shelving facility, the installation of compact shelving in Beinecke Library, and the proposed renovation of Seeley Mudd Library present to library staff the first major opportunity since the opening of the Beinecke Library more than 30 years ago to reassess the broad guidelines which inform our decisions about which materials should receive special handling to assure their availability not only for contemporary scholars but also for their successors for decades to come. As we plan to relocate major portions of our collections in the next few years, it seems appropriate to review groups of material whose circulating status seems problematic and to suggest new ways of handling them. I. The scope of the problem We believe that a variety of titles presently housed in browsable, circulating collections, or in collections that are used outside supervised reading rooms, are of such rarity, fragility, or monetary value as to warrant special treatment in the future. For instance, although most academic research libraries regard any item printed before 1800 (or before 1820 in the Americas) as sufficiently rare to warrant removal from circulation, Yale presently leaves many 17th and 18th century imprints in circulation. Our decision has been influenced by the size of our collections and the difficulty of providing secure shelving and reading room service for all of these titles. The planned construction and renovation projects offer the possibility of changing the existing chronological guidelines for special treatment. We believe that the library's selectors and curators, in consultation with our patrons, should develop a consensus for a new cut-off date (or dates, depending upon where items were published). As a starting point, Beinecke Library has expressed an interest and willingness to take direct responsibility for any item printed before 1700, an extension from their previous cut-off of 1600. Another broad category of books that deserve special consideration are those whose original, physical composition contains valuable information about their history or about the history of printing. Early, original bindings, which often contain important evidence about the history of bookmaking and print culture, may be destroyed through the stress of general circulation and unsupervised photocopying. Other books are easily damaged because of their format. Folio books are frequently mishandled with damage to their spines and decorative covers. Miniatures can be lost. In addition, a thriving market for plates extracted from books makes many of Yale's 19th and early 20th century illustrated books vulnerable to mutilation. Besides their market value, many illustrated works represent unique variant states of books that were never issued in the standardized fashion of modern trade books. Even if another copy of a lost, stolen or damaged work can be obtained, important physical evidence may be lost. Yale has extensive holdings of publications by and about controversial organizations. For example, material once held in the library of the National Socialist Party in Germany presently circulates. These publications are prime candidates for theft and/or mutilation. Yale also holds ephemeral materials with less controversial origins, but which are often under weak bibliographic control. At present, many are gathered in pamphlet boxes for which the only bibliographic record is a brief subject heading that fails to note the number or nature of the items contained within the box. If individual items are lost or stolen, the library has no record that they ever existed. Pending a review of such collections, it would be better to designate them as part of the non-circulating collections, to be used only in a supervised reading room. It is not possible to determine with precision the number of volumes that might be strong candidates for removal from circulation. Orbis presently records some 10,000 items in the Sterling and Mudd stacks that were published before 1800. While it is extremely difficult to extrapolate from this sample, we imagine that recon might identify at least three times that number. The Divinity Library and the Music Library each has some 15,000 non-circulating volumes that will be housed in the off-campus shelving facility; an additional 15,000 volumes are currently in the "zeta" collection. It seems reasonable to conclude, then, that there are at least some 100,000 volumes that should be considered for special treatment; the number is likely to be closer to 200,000. Given the difficulty of identifying immediately all special format books, and the fact that we continue to add such materials to the collections, the size of these special collections is likely to grow over time. II. Service model Special materials should not be in browsable, circulating collections, but should receive special handling and mediated use. They should be stored in the best environmental conditions we can reasonably provide and should only be used in a supervised reading room. The Beinecke Library has made a proposal that might help us to think through a service model. They suggest that we differentiate between "holding" (owning an item and shelving it on-site), "owning" (having responsibility for the long-term care and handling of an item, even if it is not shelved on-site), and "hosting" (providing reading room service and supervision for the use of an item that is "owned" by someone else). Under this paradigm, for example, the Beinecke would "hold" volumes on-site, as it now does, but might also take "ownership" of volumes that are shelved off-site. It might also "host" a volume "owned" by Divinity, Music or an SML selector, but which is located in the off-campus shelving facility. Using this paradigm, special materials now in the SML and Mudd stacks could be treated in one of three ways: 1. Some items might be physically transferred to "holding" libraries. The Beinecke has offered to have any item published before 1700 physically located in the Beinecke. Other items might be transferred to other special collections, such as Manuscripts and Archives, Arts of the Book, the Arts Library, or Historical Medical. The identification of materials to be included in these categories would be the responsibility of selectors and curators. Some items, such as early imprints, could be identified through reports from Orbis or the recon process. Items in other categories could be identified by selectors as they review their collections. Circulation and preservation staff, staff processing materials for the off-campus shelving facility, or faculty could also identify material to be reviewed by the appropriate selector. III. Handling We propose that special procedures be integrated into the work-flow for the off-campus shelving facility that would ensure the proper care and handling of special materials housed there. The procedures should include provision for the following: 1. Records should be flagged to identify material as special, perhaps by the use of a special sub-location. The location might be merely virtual, or might be a special section of the facility. Special material would be paged for use in one or more supervised reading rooms around campus. The definition of a supervised reading room calls for further discussion among selectors, curators, and public service staff, but we believe that such facilities already exist, or could without too much difficulty or expense be arranged. Beinecke, Manuscripts & Archives, and the British Art Center have such facilities. Arts of the Book, Medical, Music, and Divinity also have some provision for the use of special materials. We may be unaware of other suitable locations. As we design a service model, we must determine the limits of the software for the off-campus shelving facility, in particular, whether, it will be possible to limit paging for some items to only one location (presumably the "owning" library), while allowing others items to be paged to any one of a number of "host" locations.
Toby Appel last updated: May 2000
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