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Rarely Analyzed: The Relationship between Digital and Physical Rare Books Collections.

The relationship between physical and digitized rare books can be complex and, at times, nebulous. When building a digital library, should showcasing a representative slice of the physical collection be the goal? Should stakeholders focus on preservation, high-use items, or other concerns? To explor...

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Published in:Information Technology & Libraries Vol. 41; no. 2; pp. 1 - 14
Main Authors: McCormack, Allison, Wittmann, Rachel
Format: Journal Article
Published: American Library Association Jun2022
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Jun2022
      vid: 41
      iid: 2
      pid: 55
      pub: American Library Association
      place: Chicago, Illinois
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        10.6017/ital.v41i2.13415
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        atl: Rarely Analyzed: The Relationship between Digital and Physical Rare Books Collections.
      aug:
        au:
          McCormack, Allison
          Wittmann, Rachel
        affil: Original Cataloger for Special Collections, University of Utah, University of Utah
      sug:
        subj:
          Books
          Collection Development
          Electronic Publications
          Electronic Books
          World Wide Web
          Bibliography and References
          Metadata
      ab: The relationship between physical and digitized rare books can be complex and, at times, nebulous. When building a digital library, should showcasing a representative slice of the physical collection be the goal? Should stakeholders focus on preservation, high-use items, or other concerns? To explore these conundrums, a special collections librarian and a digital services librarian performed a comparative analysis of their library's physical and digital rare books collections. After exporting MARC metadata for the rare books from their ILS, the librarians examined the place of publication, publication date, and broad subject range of the collection. They used this data to create a variety of visualizations with the open-source digital humanities tool Tableau Public. Next, the authors downloaded the rare books metadata from the digital library and created illuminating data visualizations. Were the geographic, temporal, and subject scopes of the digital library similar to those of the physical rare books collection? If not, what accounted for the differences? The implications of these and other findings will be explored.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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