ASERL’s Special Collections Interest Group was established in 2017 to encourage cooperation and partnerships among member libraries. A series of activities was undertaken in 2017 to bring together special collections professionals and libraries, in particular for shared digital collections and expanding professional development. Activities included site visits to 24 member institutions and a professional development survey to inform future webinars.
In 2019, the group offered two webinars on outreach and community engagement and donor relations, a disaster response survey and is planning a Shared digital exhibit to launch in Fall 2019. See the Webinar Archive for recordings of these sessions.
Activities
- COVID19 Resources for Archives and Special Collections
- Collection Profiles gathered from site visits and interviews with administrators of special collections
- ASERL Disaster Response Survey (*.xls format) results from an information gathering survey on disaster supplies and response at member institutions
- Shared Exhibit exploring the history of enslavement in the Southeastern US as part of the 400th anniversary of the first arrival of Africans to the English colonies
Interest Group
- Brenda Burk bburk@clemson.edu (Head of Special Collections, Clemson University Library)
- Chrystal Carpenter carpenterc2@vcu.edu (Head, Special Collections and Archives, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries)
- Cristina Favretto cfavretto@miami.edu (Head, Special Collections, University of Miami Library)
- Laura Micham laura.m@duke.edu (Director, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Duke University Libraries)
- Aaron Pahl apahl@uab.edu (Digital Curation Librarian, University of Alabama at Birmingham Library)
- Tammy Trần ttran58@gmu.edu (Library Fellow, George Mason University Law Library)
- Ximena Valdivia xvaldivi@fiu.edu (Cataloging and Metadata Librarian, Florida International University Library)
Special Collection Profiles
University of Florida Special and Area Studies Collections
University of South Florida Special Collections
University of Central Florida Special Collections
University of Alabama Special
Collections
University of North Carolina-Greensboro Special Collections and Archives
Collections Spotlight
Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History — Duke University
The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History acquires, preserves, and promotes materials that document the history of the advertising, marketing, and sales industries, as well as the consumer movement. The center, housed at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, makes these materials available to a diverse group of researchers from around the world. The Hartman Center collections include advertising agency records, items from advertising collectors, archives from Consumer Reports, Direct Marketing materials, outdoor advertising content, professional papers from industry leaders, sales literature, tobacco advertising & ephemera, and items from numerous trade associations. See https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/hartman/about for more details.
Herbert M. Webster Photograph Collection — University of Tennessee – Knoxville
Herbert M. Webster began chronicling his adventures of the Great Smoky Mountains at age 16 when he attended at Rotary Club camps for underprivileged boys is Gatlinburg. He has since captured many enduring images of the Smoky Mountain backcountry, including nearly 600 images in this collection.
Live from a Dark Room — University of Louisville
The Live from a Dark Room exhibition photographs digital collection features 290 images used in a 2018 exhibit in Archives & Special Collections by the same name. This exhibit, and now digital collection, offers a wide sampling of the bands, people, venues, and photographers that have defined rock, indie, punk, and hardcore music in Louisville. Like the exhibition from which it derived, this digital collection is in no way comprehensive—many vital Louisville musicians and bands are not represented. This digital collection is a part of the Louisville Underground Music Archive (LUMA), founded in 2013 by the University of Louisville Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections (ASC), which documents the history and culture of the Louisville rock music scene from the 1970s to the present.
Triad Black Lives Matter Collection — UNC Greensboro
The purpose of the Triad Black Lives Matters Collection is to document the BLM movement, police brutality protests, and race relations in the Triad area of North Carolina. The collection contains digital photographs and video footage relating to the Black Lives Matter movement and the George Floyd protests.
“Business As Usual?” Unconference for Curators & Special Collections Librarians
ASERL Members’ Input Needed for New BBQ Guide
Call for Presenters: Who’s experimenting / playing with Gen-AI tools in their library?
ASERL Professional Development Retreat at Florida International University (Miami, Florida)
Five Questions with Denice Lewis, Wake Forest University
