Envisioning Oregon

Oregon Cooperative Collection Development Planning Project

With a grant from the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) through funds distributed by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the University of Oregon in collaboration with Oregon State University, the Oregon Historical Society, and Lewis & Clark College, is building "Envisioning Oregon." "Envisioning Oregon" is a statewide collaborative project to preserve the living memory of our era and preceding eras through acquiring important collections of historical and literary manuscripts, photographs, organizational records, and sound and video recordings in an intentional and coordinated manner. Across the state, we understand that no single institution working alone can accomplish the immense task of collecting the rich documentary heritage of Oregon. All repositories in Oregon need to work together to identify and gather the most important collections in our state.

Of all the services that libraries and historical societies perform, none is more important than that of acquiring, preserving and making available historical records, photographs, and artifacts that document our past, thus building the living memory of our era and preceding eras. Our primary source repositories contain the collective memory of communities, nations, and peoples. Preservation of, public access to, and careful examination of the memories contained in historical and cultural records are essential for a constitutional democracy and a multicultural society.

As many cultural commentators have pointed out, the acquisition and building of these primary source collections have sometimes happened through purpose and at other times haphazardly. In the end, these processes of selecting and preserving cultural and historical records have determined what is remembered and what is forgotten, either deliberately or accidentally.

We in Oregon know that the collective memory of our state and region has been only imperfectly assembled. Indeed, much of the history of our state has not been documented in repositories and is in danger of being lost. This collective silence in our cultural institutions has arisen in large part because the state's repositories have limited resources to identify, collect, and make available our valuable historical and cultural records. This problem is exacerbated by parallel and competitive collecting efforts. While a few high-profile collections are eagerly sought by many, other equally important collections are not sought at all or have been disposed of before a repository could make contact with the creator. Sadly, these collections are often unique, and once they are gone, they are gone forever. Equally important, because of limited funds and an absence of best practices guidelines, many of the collections that we do acquire are stored in backlogs and are not available to researchers. Additionally, scholars, students, and the general public are often completely unaware of the existence of these collections when they do become available, and thus they are unable to view them as a body or study them.

Library and museum ethics require that we consider our present situation and recognize our responsibility in acquiring, preserving, and making accessible our cultural and historical records. To move this forward in an era of ever shrinking budgets and unprecedented growth in information demands new responses. We must put aside the idea of our cultural institutions as competitors. We must embrace collaborative methodologies that help us to identify the materials that have permanent historical, cultural, and legal value among the voluminous records that are being and have been created. We must embrace collaborative methodologies that will assure us that once seminal documentation arrives in the library it will be preserved and made available in a reasonable amount of time. We must embrace collaborative methodologies that will allow repositories to better connect with potential users and thus foster the use of these important collections. We must put these methodologies to work on a regional level.

Purpose and Goals

The project's primary objective is to assemble a consulting team to help us create a plan for cooperative collection development activities among repositories in the State of Oregon. No single institution working alone can accomplish the immense task of collecting the rich documentary heritage of Oregon. We need to work together to identify and gather the most important collections in the state.

The project's second objective is to develop best practices guidelines for organizing and describing the collections we acquire, so that we can make them available for research as soon as possible. These best practices will be developed in part using principles created by Mark Greene (American Heritage Center) and Dennis Meissner (Minnesota Historical Society) for the rapid processing of archival collections. Known as "More Product, Less Processing," these principles were explored by several institutions as part of a Northwest Digital Archives grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

The project's third objective is to enhance and develop statewide strategies for connecting these important collections, once they are available for use, with potential users around our state. These strategies include promoting the use of the Northwest Digital Archives database, which currently comprises archival collection guides from six Oregon repositories.

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Maintained by: N. Helmer, spcarref@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 01/07/2009