Important Cultural Heritage Collections – Yale

Yale University Library

Ann Okerson

Doha – WDL – December 2010

Salisbury - legacy collection

• YUL Near East collection is one of oldest in North America.

• Edward Elbridge Salisbury appointed to teach Arabic/Islamic Studies in 1841.– Collected everything possible.– Arabic & Islamic Studies in their infancy in the

West.– Printing presses were in early days.– Assembled one of the most comprehensive in

the United States.– Purchased with his own money.

Other key collections at YUL• Carlo Landberg (Swedish Arabist) Collection of 700

volumes purchased in 1900.• Arabic books from Egypt donated by LC’s PL480 program.• Yale Babylonian Collection – Cuneiform tablets from

Ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq); largest assemblage in the US. 40,000 inscriptions are clay tablets in all sizes and shapes.

• American Oriental Society: est.15,000 volumes, including Middle East.

• Manuscripts in Rare Books Library – between 6,000 – 7,000, mostly Arabic; some Persian and Turkish.

• Overall: about 270,000 Arabic & Persian volumes; 1900 periodicals; over 500,000 volumes about ME in Western languages; posters, motion pictures.

Preservation and access efforts

• NEH Grant $300,000 – 3 year grant in 2005 to preserve 16,000 Salisbury books

• Began retrospective conversion of all card catalog records into MARC format in 1990s.

• By late 1990s, started to include author-title entries in native language AND transliteration.

• Recon completed by mid 2000s.• DL projects began with bibliographic union list

funded by US government – OACIS. 3-year grant, 2002-2005.– Approx. 20 partner libraries incl. in ME contribute

records. Approx 70 – 80,000 holdings.

Barriers to digitization• Lack of effective metadata/cataloging.

– Manuscripts mostly not catalogued– American Oriental Society, brief records – Special collections such as films and posters– Periodical holdings not always correct

• Funding to do the job right.– Not just “scanning”– Metadata, OCR & discovery mechanisms,

sufficient technologically expert staff• Copyright and rights, including moral rights.• Institutional priorities of many sorts.

Questions?