New Directions for Special Collections: An Anthology of Practice. Eds. Lynne M. Thomas and Beth M. Whittaker. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited, 2017. 249p. $85.00 (ISBN 978-1-4408-4290-0).

Abstract

In their introduction to New Directions for Special Collections: An Anthology of Practice, Lynne M. Thomas and Beth M. Whittaker outline their approach: rather than create a current guide or textbook for a field where best practices, technology, and expectations are changing rapidly, they endeavor to provide a “snapshot” of where the field is now. An open call for submissions, along with a few solicited contributions, has resulted in twenty-one chapters from a diverse group of special collections, metadata, and preservation librarians, as well as conservators, directors, and archivists, speaking to various components of their work as it stands today, and as they see it evolving in the future (descriptions of the individual authors’ background are included). Each chapter can stand alone, and there are no groupings according to subject (the index is perfectly adequate for searching within the chapters).