This document summarizes a presentation given by Crónán Ó Doibhlin on unique and distinctive collections. It discusses how research libraries are transforming to focus on these special collections in a digital era. It provides examples of unique collections from various institutions and examines challenges in strategically collecting, preserving, and providing access to special collections going forward. Recommendations include assessing the significance of collections, partnerships for visibility, digitization, and treating research data as a potential unique collection.

1. “From UFOs to UDCs :
building research collections in a new era?”
Crónán Ó Doibhlin
Head of Research Collections & Communications, UCC Library
CONUL 3 June 2015

2. Summary
• Context: the transformation of our environment
• RLUK Unique and Distinctive Collections: Opportunities for Research
Libraries
• The Institutional Mission
• Collecting and the business of sustainability

3. .“especially when I may call myself a stranger in a strange land.”
Jonathan Swift’s Letter XXXVIII to Alexander Pope 11 August 1729
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (2008) p19.

4. Laputa, a flying island described in Gulliver's Travels (1726). It is
about 4.5 miles in diameter, with an adamantine base, which its
inhabitants can manoever in any direction using magnetic
levitation.
In Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), Robert Heinlein references
Laputa's system for managing communication through the use of
the climenole, or flapper.
Illustration from 1847 French ed. Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (13
September 1803– 17 March 1847, Vanves), generally known by the
pseudonym of Jean-Jacques or J. J. Grandville

6. Eaton Collection

7. Recent RLUK and OCLC Reports..
RLUK Unique and Distinctive Collections: Opportunities for Research Libraries
OCLC Making Archival and
Special Collections more
accessible
RLUK/OCLC Survey of Special
Collections and Archives in the UK
and Ireland.

9. CONUL Taskforce 4 – Definition of UDCs
2012
“UDCs may consist of all types of documentary material: manuscripts
and archives, books, pamphlets and periodicals, maps, graphic
materials, sound and moving image material, as well as born-digital
and digitised collections. A UDC may consist of entirely unique or
rare materials; more commonly its uniqueness or distinctiveness
derives from the totality of items rather than individual items that
may not be special themselves. Indeed, one might go further. As the
electronic displaces print and the rate of addition to print stocks slows
down, many institutions will hold material that may not be considered
initially to be 'special collections' at all but which could be exploited
more closely for research purposes.”

10. CONUL Sub-Committee on Collections, Preservation
& Conservation Strategic Plan 2013-16
1.Identify Unique & Distinct Collections in member institutions, to ensure
the preservation needs of the collections are promoted, along with the
scholarly and cultural value of the collections.
4. Collection development, to support CONUL in the promotion of its
Unique and Distinctive Collections.

11. RLUK Unique and Distinctive Collections:
Opportunities for Research Libraries (2014)
• Strand of strategic plan 2011-2014 to exploring the ways in which libraries
can maximise the potential and impact of unique and distinctive
collections
• Fundamental changes within the environment
• “Opportunity to make a clear and compelling case especially in a period of
economic pressure.”
• Making the institution itself unique and distinctive : Thinking afresh what
is special!
• Community enterprise

12. RLUK Definition of UDCs
‘A collection that, regardless of format or location within
an institution, derives significance from its interest to
research, teaching or society through its association with
a person, place or topic, such as to distinguish the
constituent items from similar items which may exist
elsewhere’.

13. Key Points
• UDCs used to articulate the significance of collections to the institutional
mission
• Differentiation in a period of strategic commonality
• The importance of visibility of difference and therefore collections
• Impact of technology and engagement

14. Recommendations
• Significance, appraisal and strategic assessment of collections
• Community approach and partnerships
• Digitisation, Research Data Sets and “the born-digital”
• Collection Management and Development

15. Significance assessments: identifying UDCs
• Heritage: International or national significant depth and breadth which will
continue to be developed.
• Legacy: Have historic strength. (Of international or national significance, but do
not reflect current research and teaching needs).
• Self-renewing: Do not have sufficient depth or breadth to be of national
significance, but are required for current research and teaching.
• Finite: These are collections which have neither historic strength, nor relevance
to current teaching and research. Considered for withdrawal.
Collections Strategy for Leeds University Library, 2013

16. The Institutional Mission
• Essential context for any appraisal of value or significance
• External environment: Funders, student as consumer, expectations,
changes in the nature of publishing, leadership in sector-wide
collaboration
• Impact: Research Ranking, Student Experience, best staff and best
students, “Globalisation”, social responsibility, sustainability, economic

17. “Rising importance of Special Collections”
“What the world needs research libraries to do now –
and this need is both powerful and growing – is provide
broad and easy access to the intellectual content of rare
and unique non-commodity documents that would
otherwise remain unfindable and unusable.”
Rick Anderson, Can’t buy us love: The declining importance of Library Books and the rising
importance of special collections. P4, 2013.

18. Emory Libraries
“Our special collections bring an energy to Emory that nothing
else can,” Morgan says. “Having these collections is really
important in terms of becoming one of a handful of outstanding
libraries in the country.”
John Morgan, Chair of the Emory University Board of Trustees.

19. George Boole 200

20. Boole Supporting UCC Strategic Objectives
• Approx. 65 university projects
• Media, PR, Marketing and Communications
• Establishment of the UCC George Boole Institute
• Partnerships: Cork City Council, Lincoln, The Royal Society, MIT
• Employment and partnership with ICT in Cork

22. New York University – Fales Library

23. Stanford’s Tom Law Punk Poster Collection

25. The business of collecting..
• Our traditional collections?
• Emergent collections
• The market, commodity and public responsibility
• What are we not collecting?

27. The vocation of curation
curate, n. : /ˈkjʊərət/
ME–17 curat, ME curet(t, 15 currat, curatte. Etymology: < medieval Latin cūrātus, in
Italian curato, French curé (13th cent. in Littré).
1. One entrusted with the cure of souls; a spiritual pastor.
2. To act as curator of (a museum, exhibits, etc.); to look after and preserve.
In extended use: to select the performers or performances to be included in (a festival,
album, programme, etc.); (also) to select, organize, and present (content), as on a web
site.

28. A business of sustainability
Investing in curation; a shared path to sustainability, 4C, 2015

29. • University libraries seek to increase discovery, access and re-use of the unique and
distinctive collections that they hold.
• RLUK report “…research libraries should consider the implications of managing
datasets and other born-digital materials as the UDCs of the future and examine the
policies, staffing and infrastructure which enable them to manage born-digital UDCs
alongside traditional special collection materials”.
• Mapping workflows for Research Data at the University of Kent alongside those of our
other UDCs e.g. British Cartoon Archive, University Archive and Image Collections, as
well as research publications and theses in the Kent Academic Repository and
publications in the University’s Open Access Journals.
Research Data as a Unique and Distinctive Collection (UDC)

30. Identify the asset and make the choice
The Digital Curation Sustainability Model, 4C 2015

31. The Opportunities
• A new approach and new choices
• A systematic appraisal and understanding of significance
• National approach to collecting : ambition !
• Convincing business case : sustainability
• Collective responsibility and leadership

32. Crónán Ó Doibhlin
Head of Research Collections & Communications
c.odoibhlin@ucc.ie
UCC Library
CONUL 3 June 2015
Thank you!