Five Theses on the Future of Special Collections
Abstract
I was pleased to be asked by Shannon Supple and Nina Schneider, co-chairs of the 2012 RBMS preconference, to reflect on the themes of the conference in these pages. The presentations were engrossing and provocative, and I hope here to offer some equally provocative thoughts in response as my contribution to the ongoing discussion about the peril and promise—mostly, I firmly believe, the latter—that the future holds for our profession.
The future of special collections is distribution. It hardly needs to be said that digitization, and the ability to share digitized materials widely, is enacting a wholesale transformation . . .
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