Visible collections and invisible libraries: through the looking glass to the wonderland of digital special collections

Abstract

Libraries in a digitising world: from shelves and vaults to repositories.

Libraries keep books; at least that's what I thought until I found out they give them away, (although they always want you to return them.) After I went to work in a library in 1979 I found out that libraries kept more than books. I never knew about manuscripts in libraries; I always thought they were kept in museums, together with other works of art and treasures. Behind the walls of numerous libraries everywhere in the world such treasures are kept. For ages libraries have collected handwritten and printed publications: manuscripts, incunabula and post-incunabula, and special collections as maps, photographs and sometimes even works of art. Most of these treasures are unknown to the general public, kept in vaults or stored in climatised depots but researchers generally know about them and have ways of getting to them, although it may take a lot of time to be allowed to consult them. Making collections visible is not just a matter of making a digital copy by scanning and making them accessible on the internet. There are more issues involved: storage, cataloguing, technical aspects and quite important sufficient money.