Thoughts on Special Collections and Our Research Communities

Abstract

Toward the end of August in 2009, a van pulled up to the loading dock of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan. Book trucks were unloaded and moved into the stacks. Then we began to load those trucks, shelf by shelf, so that the entire contents of the cataloged printed collection of the Bentley would pass through the scanning operation of what we know as the “Google project.” In five weeks, about ninety percent of the cataloged titles would be fully scanned. Those out of copyright would be available online. Those in copyright would be searchable. Problems . . .