Here’s a slightly delayed, but interesting news item from the world of collections: the RLG (which is a non-profit Mountain View-based organization with the aim to help scholars get ‘access to research materials held in libraries, archives, and museums’) had a meeting in July 2005 under the heading ‘Libraries, Archives, & Museums—Three-Ring Circus, One Big Show?’:
Evolving from separate organizations with particular content and services, libraries, archives, and museums are developing into partners in providing access to research resources. In the age of the Internet, users are more interested in searching a comprehensive body of cultural resources, rather than digging through separate “silos” of information. By collaborating, libraries, museums, and archives can deliver the one-stop-shopping for content their users have come to expect. While this development promises great benefits for users, individual organizations face the challenge of making it a reality.
The 12 presentations (most are available as text-files or powerpoint-presentations) give a comprehensive view of the way the RLG expert community are thinking about the relation between book collections, archives, and material item collections.