Cultural Heritage and the Campus Community: Academic Libraries and Museums in Collaboration, Alexia Hudson-Ward, Julie Rodrigues Widholm, and Scott Walter (eds.), Association of College and Research Libraries, 2022, 9780838936719, Softcover, 260 pages, $86.00

Cultural Heritage and the Campus Community consists of sixteen practical case studies detailing Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAMs) collaborations within academic settings. While most of the universities and colleges featured in these case studies are large, this volume is useful to read no matter the size of the academic institution. All the case studies emphasize the importance of institutional-level buy-in and support, and demonstrate that GLAM relationships are stronger together on college campuses. Realizing and harnessing these partnerships is key to successful efforts to highlight the work libraries do to steward and create access to cultural heritage collections and expanding classroom learning.

Chapter 1 focuses on advocacy and goes into detail on developing shared visions and goals between libraries and museums. Expanding on the traditional and well-known SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) model, the campus GLAM alliance in this case study creates and runs a STEEPA (social, technological, environmental, economic, political, and aesthetic) scan to better unearth intersections and identify shared values. Chapter 2 shows how design thinking can be applied to GLAM work. This alliance strategically taps into a pre-existing, cross-campus team that interviewed stakeholders, read current literature, and conducted brainstorming sessions to distribute a list of recommendations. Having an established group that operated outside of the GLAMs on campus allowed non-GLAM professionals to get an in-depth look into the issues, challenges, and opportunities faced by GLAMs, including proffered recommendations that might benefit teachers and students.

Chapter 3 describes a fusion between Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, along with the utilization of an assessment rubric. Chapter 4 uses quilting and oral history to bring students together with a southern community. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss centralized digitization efforts as a unifying factor. Chapter 5 highlights a collaboration between the university library and the natural history museum that came out of digitization efforts that resulted in joint programming, exhibits, and emergency response planning. Chapter 6 notes particular challenges and considerations faced when digitizing tribal collections, an effort highlighting a collaboration with Indigenous American tribes to scan collections and make them accessible online to a larger population. Chapter 7 looks at a case study where a newly created, shared position, Exhibits Coordinator, helped bridge the gap between the libraries and an art museum, illustrating the importance of dedicated staff. Chapter 9 offers examples of two expansive, collaborative exhibits between the library, special collections, and the on-campus museum, highlighting GLAMs as natural partners with exhibits benefiting all involved parties and alliances between staff members.

Chapters 8, 11, 13, and 14 all detail how uniting GLAMs can support student learning and engagement with materials. Chapter 12 offers an illustration demonstrating how GLAMs can work together to support K–12 educators in integrating original resources into their teaching curriculum. This particular case study sheds light on the need to expose younger audiences to primary sources in order for critical thinking skills to be developed and nurtured. When special collections practitioners within academic institutions working with K–12 educators invest in elementary youth, there are often powerful impacts in long-term learning development and knowledge acquisition.

Many of the citations provided will be useful to practitioners. Several of the case studies reference OCLC’s 2008 report “Beyond the Silos of the LAMs: Collaboration among Libraries, Archives, and Museums,”1 an important resource for planning and extending partnerships. Cultural Heritage, however, would be stronger if it included concrete and transferable examples like rubrics, forms, and job descriptions that readers could adapt to their own needs. Further, specifics like budgets and time lines would be helpful to see alongside these case studies. Time, staff availability, and money are important factors that should be thought through as much as possible in the planning stages of any project, especially ones that involve collaborations between different stakeholders across departments or institutions. These ancillary materials would enable practitioners to implement many of the ideas discussed in this collection more rapidly.

For those not working in academic institutions, it might seem that it should be easy for museums, libraries, and archives to collaborate. These units often share similar values and missions within a larger institution, but collaboration is sometimes hard due to unclear or competing priorities. Even when GLAMs are housed in the same department, working together can prove difficult. This collection of case studies provides a good sampling of different types of collaborative efforts and will be of interest to anyone working within an academic library, museum, or archive. —Elizabeth Call, Rochester Institute of Technology

Note

1. Zorich, D. M., Waibel, G., & Erway, R. (2008). Beyond the Silos of the LAMs: Collaboration among Libraries, Archives and Museums. OCLC Research, September 2008. https://doi.org/10.25333/x187-3w53