About Special Libraries
A question and response from former RUSLA Chairperson Polly Beam
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 1:01 PM
Subject: Special Libraries
Polly,
I have a question for you, as chairperson of RUSLA. How is Special Libraries defined in your personal opinion? I get the sense that although there are fuzzy bondaries, they tend to be outside the public/academic scope. Could you give me some idea of what ALA does not cover that leads to a need for a SPecial Libraries Association? And would you classify something like the Newark Jazz Institute as a SPecial Library. The Jazz Institute contains records, audio and video tapes, books, museum objects, and manuscript collections with a sole focus on jazz. From what i read on the National SLA site and your student site, the jazz institute does fit into this category, but i always had the impression that Special Libraries had more to do with providing information to it's parent structure rather than providing information to the public? Maybe I am way off.
Any information you could provide if you get some time to reply would be great.
Althea E. Miller
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 13:17:08 -0500
Hi Althea,
There is no cost to join RUSLA, but must be a student or alumni of Rutgers School of Communication, Information and Library Studies.
Special libraries are hard to define. In my personal opinion there is no clear cut line for what is and isn't a special library. It's probably better to think of library organizations as representing sets of libraries and librarians. Sometimes the circles of the sets overlap. And usually there are concentrations in the center of those sets, a central tendency, if you will, that shapes the main focus of the associations.
By the way, you should know that you are not the only one who is confused about this. SLA has been debating a name change for years in an effort to clarify their identity and mission.
So, special libraries *tend* to be libraries in private, non-profit, and government organizations which serve the information needs of those organizations rather than the information needs of the general public. The motto of the SLA used to be "Putting Knowledge to Work". That expresses well the mission of most libraries which call themselves special libraries, and also the tendency for special libraries to be corporate libraries, often associated with a company's research and development groups. All corporate libraries (or information centers, as they are more often called in the corporate world), are considered to be special libraries within the library community; this is SLA's central tendency.
I think of library associations as one way that librarians meet their own information needs. Its clear to me, at least, that the ALA central tendency is to meet the information (and lobbying) needs of public libraries. If you look at their division structure, you will see a focus not on subject areas so much as policy and service areas (e.g., youth services, freedom of speech). On the other hand, division structure in SLA revolves around subjects: e.g., business; biological sciences; environment and resource management; museums, art and humanities. The largest number of SLA divisions are within business and science/technology areas. Note that ALA and SLA are the largest library associations, but there are many more (for example, for academic libraries, medical libraries, archives and special collections) each meeting the needs of information professionals working in specialized environments.
While I was at the SLA national conference in Philadelphia this summer, I saw clearly the information exchange which occurred in workshops. For instance, in one sponsored by the environment and resource management, librarians shared their efforts to standardized taxonomies of ocean life to create databases that can track population changes in species groups. Much more popular were workshops on knowledge management and competitive intelligence, attended mostly by info professionals working in corporate settings. This is consistent with the central tendency within SLA to be toward corporate libraries and librarians.
A librarian would want to join SLA, then, to stay up on the latest advances and trends in library and information services in the type of organization where he or she works. In particular, many librarians in special libraries work solo or in small libraries, and SLA provides a national community of other librarians working in similar situations with similar problems. Sandra Kitt, who was solo librarian for many years in the physics and astronomy library of the Museum of Natural History, told us in a colloquium last semester that she relied on SLA members whenever she came across a cataloging problem or any other issue that was providing a challenge for her.
Another difference between ALA and SLA is that members of the SLA tend to have academic and/or work backgrounds in the specialties of the organization where they work. Members of the ALA are more likely to be generalists with academic backgrounds in the humanities.
Finally, ALA and SLA differ in their policies on the issue of freedom of information. ALA has defined public access as a core value. On the other hand, corporate information professionals often have to sign non-disclosure statements, and so can be sued if they publicly disseminate company information. If you look at the SLA's mission and philosophy, you will see that there are clear ethical standards, but that freedom of information is not mentioned.
It is on the edges of SLA's "organizational set" that its boundaries overlap with other associations' boundaries and confusion develops. For example, the program planning chair of SLA's Environment and Resource Management division, Dorothy Alibrando, is Librarian, Information Resources Center, of the New Jersey State Library Branch P.O. Box 409 Trenton, NJ 08625-0409 609-984-2249(voice);609-292-3298 (fax) dalibran@dep.state.nj.us. This is a public setting; she is providing the public as well as governmental organizations with information.
In *general*, the SLA Museum, Arts, and Humanities division members work in libraries which support museums and the organizations. For instance, the library of the Museum of Natural History is clearly a special library. It isn't open to the public, and it supports the Museum. But there are public libraries, especially in NYC, which are special libraries AND open to the public (e.g., the New York Academy of Medicine, (a medical library); the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center; the Science, Industry, and Business Library (SIBL)). John Ganly, the director of SIBL and a SCILS instructor, has been a national officer in the SLA business division. These are all research libraries, and although open to the public, limit access to their collections. For example, many items in the collections do not circulate. Users of the collections tend to be professionals who don't have access to a university or corporate library.
The Institute of Jazz Studies, an academic library in a public university, is similar to this last group of libraries. ISJ does not do outreach for its collections; they don't want them to deteriorate with casual public use. However, they are open to the public by appointment. Users tend to be other researchers and/or radio show hosts. Radio hosts (professionals) on WBGO and other stations use the ISJ collection in putting together their shows. Moreover, the staff at ISJ does a weekly show on the jazz radio station WBGO called "Jazz from the Archives"; they are subject specialists in jazz music and history. So I would say that the ISJ is on the fuzzy boundary (or within the overlapping sets) of an academic library, a special collection and archive, and a special library; and that the librarians who work there are special librarians, archivists, and academic librarians.
Please e-mail me back and let me know if this helped. Your question comes up a lot, and I am thinking of saving or reworking this response to go up on our Web site or in our handbook for officers. I am also going to copy it to our officers for feedback.
Polly Beam
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.