Collections, Collaborations and the Digital Environment: Increasing Research 'Dividends' from an Academic Library

Traditionally, librarians and archivists have served the academic community by describing and managing collections, thus making them available as primary material for researchers to exploit. Although this division in roles between curators and academic colleagues has never been entirely distinct, particularly in university special collections departments, over the past few years projects in which library staff and researchers collaborate closely together have demonstrated the added value that can be achieved in terms of both 'resource discovery' and new knowledge. Many of these collaborations are facilitated by and dependent upon the expanding digital environment. This paper reviews a number of such projects undertaken within the Special Collections at the JRUL over the past five years. These include the Rylands Genizah Project, an AHRC funded project which has involved the digitization of a collection of 11,000 fragments from the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo. This major research project is one of a number of initiatives involving libraries in the UK, the US and Israel which are re-uniting the contents of this ancient storehouse. Recognising that primary sources for future historians will inevitably include electronic documents and other material, we have been keen to explore the challenges and issues associated with the acquisition and management of archive collections born-digital. The paper concludes by speculating on how collaborations involving librarians, archivists and image curators can add further value to the research potential of their collections by exploiting the increasingly flexible and interactive digital environment.