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Rare & Special: News from the Rare Books and Special Collections Section of IFLA Blog

Join us at WLIC 2019 in Athens! 0

Join us at WLIC 2019 in Athens!

IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections Section events at WLIC 2019 The Rare Books and Special Collections Section invites you to join our programme of events during the Congress in Athens, 24-30 August 2019. Full details of each session are posted on the Congress website but this post gives a short summary. Get involved! If you are interested in the Rare Books and Special Collections section, and in the issues involved in working with rare books and special collections of any kind, please come and speak to us at the Congress. You are invited to attend our programme sessions and...

University Libraries and the Sendai Framework 0

University Libraries and the Sendai Framework

Funding cuts, climate change, conflict, natural hazards and other disruptive events are affecting cultural heritage around the world, including special collections held in libraries. The protection of heritage during disruptive events contributes to the international agenda for risk reduction via the priorities outlined in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, the leading guide for disaster risk reduction across the globe. The framework states the importance of protecting heritage from disruptive events via Priority 3: Investing in Disaster Risk Reduction for Resilience 30 (d) which states the protection or support of the protection, for cultural and collecting institutions, and...

What is the state of Collection Security in your library? 0

What is the state of Collection Security in your library?

The Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) is working to help its member libraries and other organisations that curate cultural heritage collections to answer precisely that question. As a membership organisation, CERL aims to facilitate, enhance, and improve the use and impact of printed and manuscript cultural heritage material. CERL raises the awareness of cultural heritage collections and their content among scholars and interested parties worldwide. CERL is service and partnership oriented by offering its members and the library, archival, and scholarly world at large high quality digital resources and tools using modern technology, by arranging seminars and workshops, and...

IFLA Survey on Rare Materials Cataloguing with RDA 1

IFLA Survey on Rare Materials Cataloguing with RDA

Standardized cataloguing of rare materials has always been a complex matter, historically fragmented within geographical regions until the arrival in the 1980s of standardized models, such as ISBD and DCRM, which were quickly adopted internationally. In general, rare materials are never the first to adopt new standards. Manuscripts are a good example: DCRM(MSS) was first published in 2016 and ISBD has not  included unpublished resources until its current revision. Complex in themselves and full of details that need a thorough guidance for an accurate description, rare materials’ relationship with standardization has always been a love-hate one: such a structured description...

Why not join us as a committee member? 0

Why not join us as a committee member?

IFLA has announced its Call for Nominations for Section Standing Committees August 2019 – August 2023 is now open. This call outlines what is expected of committee members in general. If you are interested in standing for a position, or in nominating someone, please read through these and make sure that you or the nominee can commit to the time, the travel and the activity involved. There is more information in the IFLA webpages for committee members. Please note that this year’s nomination and election process takes place earlier than normal, with the completed nomination to be received by IFLA...

Welcome to our Knowledge Café! 0

Welcome to our Knowledge Café!

At this year’s WLIC in Kuala Lumpur the Rare Books and Special Collections section held our first ever Knowledge Cafe, on the subject of rare materials cataloguing. This format is designed to encourage people to come and discuss issues with one another, and we wanted this one in particular to look at the following questions • Are existing standards satisfactory and effective? • Are there gaps in the existing standards for cataloguing rare materials? • What can be done to promote and develop standards for rare materials? There were a few brief presentations designed to stimulate thinking on the subject...

Call for paper: Crisis or Enlightenment? Developments in the Book Trade (1650-1750) 0

Call for paper: Crisis or Enlightenment? Developments in the Book Trade (1650-1750)

Crisis or Enlightenment? Developments in the Book Trade (1650-1750) St Andrews Book Conference, 20-22 June 2019 It has never been questioned that the European Enlightenment was made by books. The intellectual movement which swept across Europe and the Atlantic world from the end of the seventeenth century was fostered, expressed and realised by a sophisticated international market for books. Complex ventures such as Bayle’s Dictionnaire and the ever-expanding number of periodicals indicate that authors and intellectuals were keenly aware of print as a powerful tool. Yet did the book trade reciprocate this enthusiasm? How far did the book market embrace the...

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RBSCG Annual Study Conference : The Library as Classroom

RBSCG Annual Study Conference : The Library as Classroom The RBSCG Annual Study Conference will be held at Downing College, the University of Cambridge, from 5th-7th September 2018. Delegates are invited to hear speakers from across the country discuss using special collections for teaching across all library environments.   Confirmed speakers include Dr Jessica Gardner (University of Cambridge), Siobhan Britton (University of Brighton), Sarah Mahurter (University of the Arts London), Dr Tabitha Tuckett (University College London), Sally Stafford (University of Cambridge), Professor Simon Eliot (London Rare Book School), Dr Niveen Kassem (Newcastle University), Jason Scott-Warren and Andrew Zurcher (Centre for Material...

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JORNADA “O TRÁFICO ILÍCITO DO PATRIMÔNIO BIBLIOGRÁFICO NA AMÉRICA LATINA E CARIBE” – 28 de noviembre de 2018

JORNADA “O TRÁFICO ILÍCITO DO PATRIMÔNIO BIBLIOGRÁFICO NA AMÉRICA LATINA E CARIBE” Organiza: Fundación Biblioteca Nacional del Brasil & IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections Section Está abierta la convocatoria de trabajos a ser presentados durante la II Jornada IFLA El tráfico ilícito del patrimonio bibliográfico en América Latina y el Caribe a realizarse el 28 de noviembre de 2018, en la Biblioteca Nacional del Brasil – Auditorio Machado de Assis – en la ciudad de Río de Janeiro. De acuerdo con IFLA Cultural Heritage Programme Advisory Committee, el patrimonio cultural consiste en bienes tangibles e intangibles, naturales y culturales,...

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Survey on rare materials cataloguing with RDA

In the last years an increasing number of libraries are adopting RDA as a cataloguing standard. Still, what happens to their rare materials? Is RDA fit for the description of their rare books, their manuscripts, their graphic and cartographic materials, their music? Will it be able to overtake extremely detailed rules such as DCRM or ISBD? Probably not by itself, although the RSC, aware of the complexity of the situation, already has a Rare Materials Working Group managing some of the points where RDA collides with the needs of the description of rare materials. But it could very well accomplish...

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Programme now available for IFLA RBSCS Mid-term conference!

The programme for the IFLA Rare Books & Special Collections section mid-term conference has now been published! You can view it below or download it here.   Libraries in the sky large-scale collaboration strategies and infrastructures to enhance the use of digital heritage collections National Library of Norway (Oslo), 12 April 2018 09:00: Coffee, welcome and opening: Hege Stensrud Høsøien, National Library of Norway Helen Vincent, Chair of IFLA RBSC section 09:30-10:30 Digital Discovery of Cultural Heritage Treasures V. Zupan: Legacy Treasure of the “Svetozar Markovic” university library in Belgrade: Experience from a Digital Environment P. Granholm: Manuscripta – a...

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Call for Papers: Libraries in the sky: large-scale collaboration strategies and infrastructures to enhance the use of digital heritage collections

  Libraries in the sky: large-scale collaboration strategies and infrastructures to enhance the use of digital heritage collections IFLA RBSCS mid-term conference, National Library of Norway (Oslo) April 12th 2018 In many countries, libraries have worked together to enhance the visibility of their national heritage through a national digital library. In Europe, Europeana is the continental digital library, and humanity as a whole has a World Digital Library to discover its most precious treasures. Now the time has come to reinforce and expand these collaborative initiatives over the cloud, to foster new research opportunities and include born digital documents as...

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The Société bibliographique de France: A new organisation for promoting the history of the book in the French world

Over the past few decades book history has been something of an outsider in the French intellectual world. Whilst in Anglophone countries the discipline thrived, in France the subject was increasingly marginalised. Elsewhere in academia, numerous student programs, research centres and well-funded projects have been founded and developed into being a well-respected part of the university landscape. Well-established groups such as the Bibliographical Society in London, or IFLA itself, along with large international organisations like SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing) have steadily grown in stature. Libraries have also recognised the interest in their rare books...

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Towards the new RDA Toolkit: RSC meeting in Madrid

The RDA Steering Committee convened last week in Madrid, at the National Library of Spain, in the context of its 3R Project (RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign Project). Along with the closed business meetings, the institution hosted two open sessions. In the first, “Towards the new RDA Toolkit”, RSC members explained the recent restructure of the tool and discussed topics of interest such as serials, aggregates, the development of attributes as relations and types of description. The new Toolkit will be a much more helpful tool for the cataloguer, as it allows each institution to display its policy statements together...

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Call for Papers: William Birch and the Complexities of American Visual Culture: A Symposium Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Visual Culture Program at the Library Company of Philadelphia

Call for Papers: William Birch and the Complexities of American Visual Culture: A Symposium Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Visual Culture Program at the Library Company of Philadelphia Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa., October 5, 2018 “This country is new and flourishing. The mechanical arts are at their highest pitch, but the fine arts are of another complexion. They are the last polish of a refined nation… From an insignificant conceit of merit we have generally no knowledge of or feeling for, our imitations of nature, however beautiful, are mechanical altogether. But [these limitations] may be considered as...