Greetings - I am coordinating a two-year project at the
University of Virginia that is assessing all of the
Library's Special Collections holdings (nearly 14,000
collections). The project is funded by the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation, and the Virginia Historical Society is
working on a similar project.

As part of our assessment, we are attempting to establish
a "research value" for each collection, to assist with
setting priorities for future preservation, conservation,
and re-housing.

Specifically, we are attempting to identify how these
collections support current and future "research trends"
in numerous subject areas.

We are interested in the condition, quality, and quantity
of our holdings that have received considerable prior
attention, are gaining currency, or have the potential to
attract significant researcher interest.

For the purposes of this project, a research trend is a
specific area of study within an established academic
discipline that is increasingly visible in journal and
book publications, dissertations, and grants applied for
and/or received.

While we are interested in research trends, broadly
understood, we also want to pay special attention to the
presence of those trends locally. We are attempting to
develop methodologies for recognizing research trends.

I and my research assistant will be consulting
dissertation proposals and publications (at UVA and
elsewhere), journal and book publications, faculty
publications (including books published by faculty at UVA
over the past five years), and grant proposals. We will
survey the table of contents for the five (5) top journals
in each of the designated disciplines to identify trends
in article publication. So that we are sure to identify
the trends most salient to the evaluation of our
collections, we will focus on those areas of study that
correspond to our holdings.

At the end of the day, we will attempt to identify a
causal link between research trends and usage. We want to
be able to support our inference that the research trends
we pinpoint will have a bearing on the collections?
employment. We may gather similar, although possibly more
limited, data on research trends (in the manner discussed
above) for a five/ten year period five years ago. We will
then look at the correlation between older trends and
current usage. From there, we will make an inference about
the directional relationship and make a case for the
extrapolation we engage in when predicting future usage.

I would be interested in hearing from VA-HIST and VA-ROOTS
subscribers about this project. Do you have any thoughts
about how to identify research trends? How about for
Virginia history and family history research? Are you
working within other disciplines, and if so, do you have
any thoughts about how to identify research trends in
those areas?

Here are the broad subject areas we are using to classify
our collections in the internal database we are creating.
In addition to the broad headings, we are also adding
qualifiers that identify materials in the collections that
relate to Thomas Jefferson, UVA, Civil War, African
Americans, Native Americans, and Women:

Arts, Architecture, Music and Humanities
Business
Civil Rights
Education
Genealogy and Family History
Health and Medicine
Legal
Local and Urban History
Military
Politics
Religion and Church History
Sciences and Engineering
Sports and Recreation
Civil War
Korean War
Revolutionary War
Spanish-American War
Vietnam War
War of 1812
World War I
World War II

I would be interested in any thoughts you might have about
our approach, or insights into research trends you might
have personally identified in any of our broad topics or
our qualifiers.

Thank you!

Elizabeth

--
Elizabeth Roderick, Director
Mellon Special Collections Assessment Project
The University of Virginia
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(434) 982-2980

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