Securing the Future of Collections at Senate House Library: Data-driven, Collaborative Appraisal and Accessioning for Financially Sustainable Special Collections and Archives
Creators: name: Kimbell, Caroline
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019

description: Senate House Library sits at the heart of the federal University of London, acting as a shared, central resource for the advanced study of the arts and humanities. Since 2016, the library’s archives and special collections have been curated and developed partly as a business asset, with licensing and engagement potential ranked alongside research and physical properties when new accessions are considered. With many libraries under pressure to deliver value-for-money services and strategic leadership within their university’s academic strategy, the cross-departmental approach used to evaluate, develop and promote special collections across 8 key subjects is proving successful.

Collection mapping across London’s college and institute libraries has produced a shared evaluation schema (Flagship/Must Keep, Heritage, Research and Teaching Support and Low Priority) which allows institutions to compare and (potentially) exchange material in order to focus effectively on collection strengths, and compensate for the disproportionately high costs of maintaining and producing rare books and manuscripts to readers.

Whereas in the past, collecting policies often mirrored the individual interests and specialisms of librarians, or short-term teaching needs, each accession is now vetted by a cross-departmental group – from storage, cataloguing and production to licensing for digitisation and exhibition planning. Public engagement takes the form of summer and winter seasons of exhibitions, events, seminars, press and media to highlight the library’s unique holdings around themes which key into current research activity, anniversaries and popular interest. Each new accession is evaluated not just for intrinsic research and teaching value, but run past potential digital licensees and through the lens of engagement and exhibition potential. We no longer accept material on loan, and ideally, only accept donations with the full assignment of rights to the University. This approach ensures that the costs of storage, curation, cataloguing and production can be offset by income wherever possible.

The establishment of a staff Green Shoots group, hand-picked for their optimistic, entrepreneurial outlooks, and with a brief to brain-storm and model new business and fund-raising initiatives drawing on the library’s unique collections, heritage spaces and staff expertise has been critical to the cultural change across the organisation essential in our switch to a new business model. Several new have initiatives have emerged from this group to date, including escape rooms, a cinema club, the revival of early computer games deposited within special collections, and the establishment of a lucrative programme of conservation training days, focused on such themes as basic conservation science, environmental and pest control and the protection of heritage interiors during filming.

This paper will set out the lessons learned through the cultural and organisational change programmes necessary to embed an entrepreneurial business-model, and contribute to the conference debate around the social, technical, economic and intellectual role of research libraries today.