L-60. Introduction to Archives for Special Collections Librarians, Booksellers & Collectors
Alison Clemens Lisa Conathan
Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 1–6 June 2025
Format: in person, Yale University in New Haven, CT
Fee: $1,495
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.
Course History
Faculty
-
Alison Clemens
-
Lisa Conathan
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 pertaining to providing seamless, equitable access to Yale Library’s special collections. She leads Beinecke’s Access Services and Operations department, which is responsible for reading room operations and services, circulation and stacks management, reference quality reprographics services, strategic projects, organizational operations, and organizational development. She has also held Head of Processing and Archivist roles at Yale Library; she has extensive experience in archival processing and accessioning work. She is an M.S.I.S. graduate of the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information and has a B.A. from Scripps College. She is particularly interested in user experience in special collections; literary and historical manuscripts; uniting technical services with front line user services; and the ongoing education, development, and support of special collections librarians.
Full Bio »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 Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, as Archivist and Head of Digital Services. Lisa’s research interests center on the creation and reuse of endangered language documentation, focusing on vernacular literacy and oral discourse in Native North America. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.L.S. from the University of Maryland.
Full Bio »