University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries Magazine 2017 Summer Libraries Magazine | Page 8

A Vision for the Future:
New Director of Special Collections Shares Ideas
In December 2016, the University of Wisconsin–
Madison Libraries welcomed David Pavelich
as the new Director of Special Collections and
Archives. He sat down to discuss his vision for the
future of Special Collections.
By Erin Doherty
Erin Doherty: What is your background?
David Pavelich: I went to school at UW–
Madison . As an undergraduate, I earned an
English degree, with a focus on modernist
and postmodern poetry. This brought me to
the world of special collections libraries. I
later went to Buffalo and received my master’s
in English, but I came back to Madison
for my library degree. As I was in library
school, I worked in Special Collections,
the Preservation Department, and Digital
Collections. I landed my first professional job
at the University of Chicago in their special
collections library. Eventually, I went to Duke,
and now I’m back in Madison!
ED: What does your position at the Libraries
entail?
DP: I’m in a new position, which oversees
four libraries: Special Collections, University
Archives, the Kohler Art Library, and the Mills
Music Library. I get to work with art, music,
rare books, and manuscript collections, which
is a perfect combination of my passions.
8 | LIBRARIES Summer 2017
ED: What are the challenges facing special
collections libraries?
DP: Academic libraries are focused in two
main directions. One is increasing digital
access to information, which can take
many forms, for instance access to data and
digitizing locally-held collections. The other
focus is unique collections that distinguish
one library from another. Often you enter an
academic library and a lot of the books you
find in the stacks, you’re going to find in the
libraries of our peers, like the University of
Minnesota or Indiana University. But it’s the
unique collections that help us distinguish
ourselves. They don’t have to be just “special
collections” in the sense of rare books—there
are many kinds of distinctive collections. I
think it’s a good time for special collections
libraries.
We want to ensure that we do everything as
efficiently as possible, and that information
can easily get into the hands of scholars. I
also want to open up the collections, make
sure the community knows they’re here. We
have a lot of exciting, unique collections, and
they’re here for the public to enjoy.
ED: What is the value to students and
researchers of having access to physical
materials versus digital ones?
DP: We’re seeking to develop unique
collections that can’t be used anywhere else
or discovered anywhere else and present
them in a way that encourages discovery
and original research. Some books and
manuscripts may be digitized, which we’re
actively doing. Many of them may never be
digitized. We want to promote the experience
of using not just a single item, but an entire
research collection, which is different
than experiencing a standalone item on
the web. And we want students to be able
to experience what it’s like to encounter
something the way it was meant to be
encountered. It’s difficult to communicate
some stories solely through a digital
representation.
ED: What do you hope to accomplish? ED: One of the challenges seems to be the
notion that everything can be found on
Google!
DP: I have a long list! In the short term, I
want to know if we’re using the most up-to-
date tools to do our work. We need to make
sure our collections are discoverable, not
just by the local community, but globally. DP: Sure! And you can find almost anything
on Google—basic kinds of information. We
all do it. Google is a great thing. However,
I think a lot of people think this means
libraries and archives are shrinking, but
they’re not. What we might consider adding
to our collections is actually growing. People
might not think of social media as something
that archives would collect, but it is. When
there’s an event on campus with a hashtag,
the debate among archivists is whether we
should harvest that hashtag. Should we
harvest the Twitter feeds of individuals?
What are the ethics involved? Twitter is
considered a public platform, and anything
you put on it is considered public, but if a
library harvests it, is that ethical? Should you
notify the person who’s posting those things?
These are all really interesting and important
things for us to talk about. I think in the
popular imagination, libraries and archives
are going away, when in reality, they’re
transforming themselves. It’s fun for those of
us who like a challenge.
Born Digital
When people hear “archives,” they tend to think of
boxes full of paper. That’s because if you were an
author in the 1930s, you wrote everything by hand or
with a typewriter on paper. If you’re an author now,
everything you write is likely on a computer and
stored on a hard drive or somewhere else. Archives
are now bringing in material we call “born digital,”
meaning it hasn’t been digitized from a previous
format—it was created that way. When we bring in
an archive, instead of getting a box of papers, we’re
getting an external hard drive full of word processing
documents, spreadsheets, or email files. Archivists
are working to understand how to appraise, store,
and provide access to these materials.
University of Wisconsin–Madison | 9