Luv yer politicians' papers

Politicians' papers was a great session not only for learning about the holdings of specific special collections, but also to learn more about the process and problems with acquiring any political papers.

• Betty Carter, University Archivist at UNCG, discussed the recent acquisition of the papers of Kay Hagan and Howard Coble and her "newbie" perspective on entering into the game of acquiring politiians' papers.
• Tim West, Director of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC Chapel Hill, talked about their large holdings and the need to consider not only politicians' papers, but also a wide variety of collections of political individuals, such as local activists, political journalists and judges.
• Maury York, assistant director for special collections at ECU, discussed Eastern Carolina University's collection of political papers. ECU's focus areas are general NC history, military history with emphasis on naval and maritime history, american missionaries, and tobacco related collections. Within those areas they have a strong politicians' papers collection that includes some oral histories.

They also discussed the challenges of acquiring political papers including:

• balancing the acquisition of large collections against the potential use and value of the collection.
• absorbing the expenses required both in terms of money and staff time.
• marketing and promoting the collection once acquired.
• meeting donor requirements (some collections may have strict restrictions).
• initiating the process of digitizing collections or dealing with electronic records.
• dealing with issues of copyright in relation to the collection.

Some interesting areas for the future include the possibility of these and other libraries collaborating on future acquisitions, coordinating acquisitions, and also conducting studies of use of these collections. ECU also has a cool class for first year students that requires the students use a primary source from the collection. Because of this assignment, many of these students become interested in using primary sources in their future assignments. Sounds great to me!!