Special Collections and Archives

Policies and Procedures

The following policies are meant to guide decision-making and access to Buley Library's Special Collections Department. They are not intended as a barrier to access and engagement, but as a guide to librarians what the highest goals in providing that access and creating a safe environment for students, faculty, researchers, and books. It is hoped that providing these procedures publicly will set baseline expectations for the social contract between librarian and collection user of any level. We also hope that, by explicitly stating our policies, we can allow for community to be informed by and to comment on those policies. While, as you will see, we have drawn many of these from professional organizations and standards, we realize that these policies must have room to meet the needs of the community they serve. While we cannot rewrite the standards of our profession, we welcome input on how to better engage with users, as this will inform future iterations of these policies and allow us to make collections more accessible in an intentional way tailored to our user needs.

The bulk of these policies have been informed by policy documents and recommendations drawn from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Division of the American Library Association (ALA). Additionally, especially on specialized content and procedure, guidance has been taken from documents issued by appropriate bodies (e.g. the Society of American Archivists (SAA), the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC), et al.). We have attempted to be guided as much as possible by best practices, while also adapting to meet the needs of our collection and users and the to work within pragmatic realities of the building, budget, and scope of the collections.