About the Libraries
Related Links
Quick Links
Collecting by the Cubic Foot
Paul Kobulnicky
Director, University Libraries
The University of Connecticut Library is a member of the Association of Research Libraries, a prestigious organization comprising the top 119 libraries in the United States and Canada. Embodied in the name is the concept of a research library. To many people, any library may be viewed as a place to perform research, and the understanding of what qualifies some as research libraries, and others not, is far from obvious. The distinction is worth noting.
A fundamental mission of a research library is to build collections that are distinguished by two important characteristics. First, the collections are permanent, assembled not only for current use but also, and equally important, for the use of future generations of students and scholars. Such collections are intended to increase in both depth and breadth over the course of time. Second, in addition to published books and journals, research collections contain large holdings of primary source materials, i.e., the original data from which scholarship and published work is derived. The purpose of a research library differs from that of school, public, and even most college libraries, which build core collections of classic or contemporary works with the anticipation of concentrated, immediate use. Libraries that are not defined as research libraries deal largely with secondary sources, published books and journals that are the distillation of an author's scholarly work utilizing original data. In contrast, the materials that best define a research library collection are those classified as archives, manuscripts, and special collections.
Building a research library is no easy task--intellectually or physically. The title of this column refers to the physical nature of most research collections: they seldom come in neatly bound packages as do books or journals; more typically, they arrive on our loading dock in boxes and are measured in cubic feet rather than in number of volumes. These boxes are filled with hundreds, often thousands, of individual items, including hand written documents, notebooks and diaries, photographs, audio and video tapes, contracts and reports, letters and memos. They are difficult and costly to organize, to preserve, and to catalog. They come in all sizes and conditions and present challenging problems with storage and conservation. But they are the very stuff of which scholarship and our knowledge of the past is built.
On Sunday, October 15, 1995, the University of Connecticut will dedicate a major new library facility, the Dodd Research Center, which will dramatically enhance the research library capabilities of the University of Connecticut. The Center will enable us to house our archival, manuscript, and special collections in state-of-the-art conservation conditions, helping us to preserve these unique, fragile, and irreplaceable collections for use and study by future researchers. The Center will strengthen the University's ability to acquire additional collections to further document our culture and our history. And most importantly, it will provide an attractive and comfortable setting in which scholars can revisit original documents as they seek to confirm and understand prior scholarship or to construct new and different interpretations of the past.
I hope that you will join my colleagues and me as we celebrate the opening of the Dodd Research Center. The dedication will mark the beginning of a new and glorious period for the University of Connecticut's research library.
Back to the Table of Contents