Many of the University of Massachusetts students’ frequenting the W.E.B. Du Bois Library are unaware of one of the library’s special collections.
The Department of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) is this hidden gem, residing on the library’s twenty-fifth floor.
Despite holding “approximately 35,000 rare books, nationally significant manuscript collections, historic maps and the official records of the University of Massachusetts Amherst,” according to the library’s website, research within this department is often difficult, owing to the fact that until now, research and data-gathering processes have been conducted only by hand.
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That may be changing soon, however, thanks to a set of nine digitization principles recently endorsed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in Washington, D.C.
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According to Karla Strieb, the ARL’s Assistant Executive Director, the digitization of any university’s special collections gives schools a huge advantage in terms of ready access to reserves of information.
“Basically, the idea is to make [this information] more easily discoverable,” Strieb said. “Simply to find out they exist is much easier when they’re in digital form because … they can be accessed in a wider variety of ways than going and visiting the special collections room and having the curator bring you the information while you look at it supervised.”
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