Jan 05 2009
Collection talk in a fragile economic climate
Welcome back from the holiday break!
The roads are icy here this morning, and classes won’t start for another two days, so campus is a fairly quiet place. I’ve found that this is a great time to get work done in my office. Sadly, the campus Starbucks has restricted hours until the students return… so I’ve brought my own caffeine supply from home.
So, a few thoughts from the break. First, an article about the Country Music Hall of Fame, which is relevant because items were given and money promised by a donor who committed suicide and was then sued for swindling investors. According to the article, the museum settled with the estate and paid some of the money back in order not to lose either the donated items or other items purchased with money from the donor. If this happened to your institution, how would you handle it? Many archives, libraries and museums are self-insured, meaning that a lawsuit like this could be a really big problem.
Next up, an article about the Library of Congress/American Folklife Center’s “Inauguration 2009 Sermons and Orations” project, which aims to collect sermons and speeches made between January 16-25th about the new Obama administration. I think that this is an interesting project, and I wonder what kind of diverse geographical response they’ll receive (if any), and what other outreach has been done to congregations outside of the Beltway?
Last, an op-ed titled “Hard Times, a Helping Hand” that details an old story of a mysterious benefactor in Canton, Ohio. While the op-ed is about the author’s discovery that the man who helped out his neighbors in 1933 was in fact, his grandfather, I was of course also interested in the suitcase full of documents and what they held. I hope that a regional collection like the University of Akron Special Collections or the Western Reserve Historical Society will talk to the author about donating this interesting piece of Canton history.
Do you have collection development plans for the new year? Have your plans changed based on recent economic factors? Now is a good time to reassess the goals and needs of your repository for 2009. What’s next?
2 Responses to “Collection talk in a fragile economic climate”
In a county archives, collection development is often based on retention schedules and agency decisions. With the economic recession/depression hitting counties hard, I anticipate a large number of accessions as entire divisions cease operations. The county serves the most needy citizens in the area. Who will help them now? Greedy plutocrats? House-flipping investers? I doubt it.
I think that’s a good point– accessions will probably rise in the short term as some things shut down. However, I’m thinking that we won’t see the damage clearly for awhile– there will be staff and budget shortages, which will probably lead to less aggressive collecting and appraisal practices, which will probably/eventually lead to a gap in the record. Food for thought, I guess.