Organizational & Service Relationships on the LAM Program

Quick facts

Total projects: 1

Problem statement: Libraries, archives, and museums coexist in a variety of organizational settings and face increasing pressure to provide more integrated access to their collections. Universities have a vested interest in being able to share their holdings of unique and rare materials from their various archives, museums, and special collections in a unified way with the campus community of researchers and learners, individual institutions such as the Minnesota Historical Society and, the Center for Jewish History (sites of our 2005 Partner Forum on libraries, archives, museums) house cultural materials, bibliographic and archival collections. What data and service relationships exist between the cross-domain units? How do they respond to economic and end-user pressures for greater integration? Once models for collaboration within the microcosm of an institutional setting have been identified, they can also be applied to the macrocosm of the cultural heritage community as a whole.

Objective: Bring about greater collaboration among libraries, archives and museums by surfacing models for sharing data, services and expertise.

Impact: By highlighting opportunities and surfacing model collaborations, the activities within this program will be a catalyst for increased collaboration among libraries, archives, and museums in institutional settings and beyond. Shared data, services, technological infrastructure, staff, and expertise will unlock greater productivity within institutions, as well as create online research environments more aligned with users’ expectations.

Further Work: If the face-to-face visits at five partner institutions surface significant findings, broaden the discussion to the entire community through an RLG Programs Forum.

Project

• Survey organizational/service relationship between libraries, archives, and museums among partners

Related resources

• The LAM hits the road – hangingtogether post about two early LAM workshops.
• LAMS – A work in progress – hangingtogether post about analyzing LAM environments to improve integration and collaboration.
• Organizational and Service Relationships on the LAM – hangingtogether post about the convergence and collaboration of LAMS in the campus environment.
• Libraries, archives, and museums hanging together??! – hangingtogether post about the challenges and opportunities of LAM collaboration.