Rare Books and the College Library: Current Practices in Marrying Undergraduates to Special Collections

Abstract

In this paper I wish to accomplish three things. First, I would like to theorize about how we bring students to our table, for I believe that we must have some understanding of this process in order to be positively committed to providing programs to undergraduates. Second, I would like to present the results of a recent survey I carried out investigating the current state of special collections in liberal arts college libraries. Then I shall describe briefly a few specific programs that have existed in the last several years—some rather innovative and some quite traditional—that have directly . . .