Course

Introduction to Archives for Special Collections Librarians, Booksellers & Collectors

L 60
  • Course Length
    30 hours
  • Course Week
    1–6 June 2025
  • Format
    in person, Yale University in New Haven, CT
  • Fee
    $1,495

Course Description

Libraries with special collections increasingly collect, curate, and provide access to many forms of rare and archival materials within one integrated environment. Managers, curators, catalogers, and reference librarians whose education and experience have focused on published materials must therefore be conversant with archival issues and collection management strategies. Similarly, booksellers and collectors commonly find themselves handling material that may best be managed using archival principles. This course, intended for those without significant archival education or experience, will explore archival approaches to appraisal, acquisition, description, and access to personal papers and organizational records. Challenges associated with digitization and born-digital materials will be addressed. The course will include lectures, readings, discussion, and practical exercises, including an introduction to ArchivesSpace, a commonly used archival management platform built on archival principles. The course also draws heavily on examples from special collections at Williams College and Yale University, the environments with which the instructors are most familiar. The use of ArchivesSpace and site-specific examples is not intended to be prescriptive.
In their personal statements, applicants should describe their professional education, work experience, engagement with archives, collecting experience, and any topics they would particularly like to address in the course.

Faculty

Alison Clemens

Alison Clemens is the Director of Access Services and Operations at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, where she develops vision, strategy, service offerings, and policies and practices …

Lisa Conathan

Lisa Conathan is Head of Special Collections at Williams College, overseeing the Chapin Library of Rare Books and the College Archives. Before joining Williams, she worked at the Beinecke Rare …

Advance Reading List

Required Reading/Watching

Students admitted to L-60 should read/watch the following materials in advance of the beginning of the course. These materials, taken together, will frame our presentations, activities, and discussions during the week. For those not entirely familiar with the work of archivists, we recommend reading these in the order given below:

Berry, Dorothy and Betts Coup. What is an archive? What is a finding aid?  2020.

Society of American Archivists. Code of Ethics. 2020.

Society of American Archivists, Technical Subcommittee on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (TS-DACS). Instructional workshop series videos on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS).

Society of American Archivists. Describing Archives: A Content Standard (version 2019.0.3). Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2020. Read the “Statement of Principles,” pages x–xvii, as part of the advance readings for course L-60.

OCLC Research. Total Cost of Stewardship: Responsible Collection Building in Archives and Special Collections, pages 1–14. 2021.

Archival Accessioning Best Practices. “Accessioning: The Roots of Archival Stewardship” (page 5) and “Guiding Principles” (pages 14-5).

Optional Resources

Light, Michelle. Controlling Goods or Promoting the Public Good: Choices for Special Collections in the Marketplace. Presentation at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, Association of College and Research Libraries, conference, Las Vegas, NV, June 2014.

Meissner, Dennis. Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts. Archival Fundamental Series III, no. 2. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2019

Malerba, Lynn, Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel and Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty. “Mohegan Tribe, Cornell Partner to Repatriate Fidelia Fielding Diaries.” Library Journal, March 4, 2021.

First Archivist Circle. Protocols for Native American Archival Materials. 2007.

Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Working Group. Anti-Racist Description Resources by Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia. 2020.

Wiedeman, Greg. “The Historical Hazards of Finding Aids.” The American Archivist (2019) 82 (2): 381–420.

Course Evaluations

2025
2023
2022
2021

Course History

  • 2023–

    Alison Clemens and Lisa Conathan co-teach this course in person at Yale University.

  • 2021–2022

    Lisa Conathan and Bill Landis co-teach this course online (22 hours) as “Introduction to Archives for Special Collections Librarians, Booksellers & Collectors.”

  • 2010–2014

    Jackie Dooley and Bill Landis co-teach this course as “Introduction to Archives for Special Collections Librarians.”

  • 2008–2009

    Jackie Dooley and Bill Landis co-teach this course as “Introduction to Archives for Rare Book Librarians.”