Oregon State Merges Archives and Special Collections as Part of Overall Reorganization

Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries recently announced that it was merging its University Archives and Special Collections units as part of an overall reorganization of OSU and its libraries which began in 2009.

The merger, which began following the retirement of Special Collections head Cliff Mead in January 2011, will continue over the next several months, with a goal to "create one public service point from which all collections within the new department will be made available to the onsite researchers," said Larry Landis, the director of the newly created Special Collections & Archives Research Center; OSU's University Librarian Faye Chadwell; and Associate University Librarian for Innovative User Services Jennifer Nutefall, in a joint email to LJ. The merger will, among other advantages, eliminate the need for researchers to visit separate reading rooms.

Long term, OSU Libraries plans to consolidate the storage, office, and work space, and create a separate classroom space for the new department, they said. Goals for the remainder of 2011 include combining workflows for collections processing, digital collections creation, and instruction and outreach, using teams made up of staff from both previous departments.

"We are not anticipating a decrease in staff," the librarians said, and are now looking to recruit a new History of Science Collections librarian, who will concentrate on a major focus of the Special Collections, the papers of Nobel Prize-winning scientist and OSU graduate Linus Pauling. Future open staff positions may also be repurposed to the new department.

According to the October 21 press release regarding the merger, OSU students will also have the opportunity to work with the combined collections as student assistants and interns.

Combining and consolidating
The librarians said that the merger is part of an overall realignment at OSU, which started during the 2009-10 academic year to create four divisions out of 11 existing colleges.

OSU Libraries, as part of that effort, developed a plan to decrease the number of library units from eight to six (not including the academic publisher Oregon State University Press, which is also part of OSU Libraries), and in the process combine several departments.

For example, its Acquisitions, Collection Development, Interlibrary Loan, and Access (or checkout) departments were combined into a single unit, Collections and Resource Sharing. A separate Research and Innovative Services unit was eliminated. The streamlining was not undertaken "as a means to gain budgetary savings," the librarians said, but as a way to create "more efficient and productive workflows and routines because of staffing changes."

Other units after the realignment include Teaching and Engagement, the Center for Digital Scholarship and Services, Branch Libraries, and Emerging Technologies and Services.