Working With The "Long Tail"

Can libraries as a whole effectively utilize the "long tail" of our collections? Is it worth it? What would we have to do?

I think, again, we're trying to do this. I see it in the way we are attempting to make archival materials accessible online. At Rutgers, the collection policy states that we concentrate on collecting materials and manuscripts specific to NJ, and Rutgers, but there's a lot of overlap. For example, I processed part of a collection that was donated by Rutgers professor Angus Gillespie. This collection is ongoing, because Professor Gillespie has a few specific roles: current instructor, author, major player in the annual Folklore Festival, etc. If you view Professor Gillespie's work generally, his total collection is long tail; someone has to be interested in access to this particular person, in this particular time period. His concentration on folklore could be seen as a niche interest that might not necessarily guarantee shelf space in a university scrambling for space. However, once you create finding aids and electronically encode them so that anyone can access your collection materials, you're going to see far more use of those collections because you've made them available globally. You still have to find space - but you can now justify its use.

The finding aid for Angus Gillespie's papers will ultimately be available for search on Google. That's going to be a great help, as he's already become known for a small portion of his entire collection: a book he wrote on the World Trade Center prior to 9/11. These four boxes were the portion I processed, and it was easy to determine how valuable the interviews and ephemera Gillespie collected would be to future researchers. Now, rather than trying to track down all books on the WTC, they would have more rapid access to materials. But even if you didn't know this aspect of Gillespie's career, and approached him as an expert in folklore, you could determine it because of access to the entire finding aid. That's pretty cool.

Also, from an archival perspective, the use of encoded finding aids presents a chance to unify collections online in a way they are not currently organized. It could help institutions solidify present collections by physically aquiring them. It could point potential donors in the right direction. It could help researchers and library users plan collection visits in more logical ways, saving time and money. It would be convenient to have a better idea of what you'd find in a given collection. All of this is going to take time, money, effort, expertise - but better to bite the bullet and do it than turn away collections that will matter to someone. It's true we can't save everything - but I'd argue that it's harder to determine what to save when you're still trying to figure out what you have. Getting everything up online is one way to serve long tail, niche interests we may not have considered.