David de Lorenzo: The Future of Special Collections Libraries in the 21st Century (AUDIO)

The Internet and the advent of born-digital items have had a significant influence on archives and special collections repositories in important and fundamental ways. The acquisition and preservation of artifacts and paper-based documents are no longer the sole raison d'etre. Traditional genre, such as posters, maps, correspondence, diaries, newspapers, photographs, etc. are now created and made available in electronic form only. This talk will focus on the effect such changes have had and what the future will bring to special collections in the areas of cataloging, access services, preservation, physical plant, staffing, and fund-raising. A captioned version of this presentation is available on the SLIS Website.