The document summarizes the findings of a survey on hidden collections in UK libraries. It found that over 13 million volumes across 77 responding institutions remain uncataloged, with some collections over 100 years old. Specific formats like maps, photographs, and foreign language materials made up a large portion of the backlogs. There was support for creating a national registry of collection-level descriptions to help prioritize retroactive cataloging efforts and make these hidden collections more accessible. However, others were skeptical that a new report would lead to real changes without a coordinated national strategy.

1. Hidden Collections
Mike Mertens,
Deputy Director, RLUK
RLUK Conference, Newcastle, 16 November, 2012

2. Can you guess the title…?
“I went out of that gallery and into another and still larger one,
which at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with
tattered flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the
sides of it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books.
They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of
print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and
cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a
literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all
ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force
was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre
wilderness of rotting paper testified.”

3. Themes
• Context, aims and impulse of Report
• What it covered
• Stand-out figures findings
• Why retro again? (but what might have changed
how to keep Lorcan Dempsey happy)
• Where to start?
• National Research Collection – new boundaries?

4. Context #1
• 1997 Making the most of our libraries - 548 libraries
responded, 50 million records awaiting
retroconversion, calls for a national programme with
5 year target, through Library Information
Commission (merges into Re:source, later MLA)
• 1999 Full Disclosure, national programme,10 years
to complete 80% of the work, nominates MLA.
• 1999-2002 RSLP, £30 million for projects including
retro 48 HEIs, 68% of these used funds for retro
work

5. Context #2
• The beginnings of the Discovery Programme
• Community model of assessment not consultancy in
austere times – idea from The London Library
• Creating public good as part of charitable aims
• Exploring new models of cross-sector engagement for
RLUK
• Precursor to present Unique and Distinctive Collections
strand
• Demise of MLA (which had been given task of overseeing
national retrospective cataloguing strategy).

6. Aims
• Get evidence for further support funding for
retrospective cataloguing in the UK, across library sectors.
• Update and augment the evidence gathered in the 2007
RIN survey. “Uncovering Hidden Resources” (95 libraries,
50% collections still hidden).
• To make such snapshot reports redundant – sought views
of librarians on establishing a National Register of
retrospective cataloguing needs.
• Establishing potential demand for openly licensed RLUK
open data

7. Impulse
• Dunia García-Ontiveros, The London Library.
• Assessment that its own retroconversion project
would take 20 years, cover 400,000 volumes (i.e.
about 40% of its collections awaiting cataloguing).
• What had been achieved (and what was left to do)
just over a decade after Full Disclosure report
called for a national strategy to ensure the
retrospective cataloguing of collections across all
our libraries?

8. What the survey covered #1
• The responder (job title)
• Their institution (including library sector).
• Details of their collections (size, subject, formats,
dates, visibility).
• Retrospective conversion/cataloguing needs (size,
subject, formats, dates, visibility).
• Record enhancement needs (size, subject, formats,
dates, visibility).

9. What the survey covered #2
• Status, methods and funding of projects past,
present and planned to carry out the work
mentioned.
• Further comments and suggestions, including views
on the online register.
• Extra questions from Copac and RLUK (for e.g.,
demand for services based on holdings data:
Collection analysis, Prioritizing digitisation,
preservation activity)

10. Stand-out figures findings #1
• 77 responses were made to the survey
(representing 75 separate institutions), including
from 38 academic, seven public and 32 specialist
libraries (including museums and subscription
libraries, and the National Library of Scotland).
• Only 12 RLUK libraries gave figures (approximately
one third of membership)

11. Stand-out figures findings #2
• Over 13 m volumes uncatalogued in libraries that
responded, 18.5% of total number of volumes held.
• Over 4 million more (in a smaller number of
libraries) have unsatisfactory catalogue records.
• Museums, public libraries independent libraries
have a higher proportion of invisible collections
• HE libraries have better coverage of printed
collections but hidden archival ones often very
large

12. Stand-out figures findings #3
• Modern material is being added to the backlogs. The
presence of 21st century materials in backlogs
suggests some libraries are unable to keep up even
with current acquisitions.
• Foreign language material and formats which require
particular skills and expertise (maps, music,
archives) are heavily represented.
• There are serious problems in collating and
comparing metrics for materials other than printed
books.

13. Stand-out figures findings #4
• Most special collections as such held in date range
19-20th Centuries
• Most hidden collections are in the same date range
• 53 (69%) respondents stated that special
collections in their libraries were in want of
retrospective cataloguing.
• Numbers of specific formats: 1.1 million maps (1 st
place), 182,000 photographs (In 4th place).

14. Why retro again…?
“The material culture of print was an exceptionally
important part of the history and culture of the 20th
century…We are already losing much material that
illuminates the 20th century because of the fragility of
our understanding and appreciation of the material
culture of print in the 20th century – provenance,
advertising, ephemera, use and re-use of materials –
this evidence is being lost as we dispose of copies and
rely on digital archives to provide access.”
Richard Ovenden: Pixels, pointers, and pieces: the future of
collections, RRLM collections workshop, 2012.

15. • Why a community-based, self-
edited registry of hidden
collections?
• A new lease of life for Collection
Level Descriptions?

16. “Collection description metadata and searchable online
databases of collection information were developed in
response to several factors. Large-scale digitisation
(principally of texts and images) was often not matched by
resources to catalogue the newly created items, surveys
revealed that quantities of materials (often older and rarer
items) in traditional collections still had no records in online
public access catalogues and there was an increasing need to
improve the effectiveness of resource discovery techniques
for digital materials across archive, library and museum
collections. Describing materials at collection level provided a
new route for discovery.”
Ann Chapman, Turning Off Tap Into Bath, Ariadne, January, 2011

17. But some are not happy…
• Lorcan ‫@‏‬lorcanD 12.11.12
‘groan .... Create a national register of hidden
collections http://www.rluk.ac.uk/files/RLUK
%20Hidden%20Collections.pdf … #rluk….’
‘@RLUK_Mike Given this report, RIN attention in
interim, and now this one - what has changed? What
hasn't?... An obvious question: why didn't stuff move
along since?’

18. The problem with (traditional)
CLDs?
“Individual libraries rarely use formal or standard
collection-level description methods, and often do not
recognise the coherence of various collection
attributes. As a result, collection-level metadata tends
to be scattered, missing, and generally incoherent
within a library; there are notable exceptions, usually
where a library has an extensive set of special or
named collections.”
Gordon Dunsire, Use Case Collection-Level Description, 10 February 2011, http://www.w3.org/2005/
Incubator/lld/wiki/Use_Case_Collection-Level_Description

19. Full Disclosure like it’s 1999…
• Ch-ch-changes:
• Linked Data
• Digital Humanities
• Crowdsourcing
• Georeferencing

20. What a registry could do #1
• Standardize CLDs
• Provide the foundation for improved metrics
• Allow diachronically comparable data
• Help prioritize coordinated cataloguing, digitization
and preservation effort above the institution.
• A CLD in the age of potential crowdsourcing is a
sign you want to have in neon.

21. What a registry could do #2
• Encourage more linkages between HE researchers
and non-HE collection holders
• Give a better overview visibility of a truly
national collection in waiting across sectors
• Help to target further #UKDiscovery work around
describing new augmenting extant aggregations
• Assist in collections integrity and security

22. Where to start?
Not collection mapping so much as map
collections

23. Thanks principally to
• Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros
• Alison Cullingford
• Melanie Cheung
• Lisa Jeskins
• Ann Chapman

24. Thank you!
@RLUK_Mike
(Literary conundrum: H.G. Wells, The Time Machine)