Quick & Clean Cataloging Project
With generous support from the Mellon Foundation, the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has undertaken a large retrospective conversion and cataloging project that has dramatically improved access to our extraordinary collections. At the start of the project in the summer of 2006, we had 70,000 uncataloged rare and even unique items in our collections. To date we have cataloged over 50,000 titles.
We are bringing the "Hidden Collections" at the University of Illinois Rare Book & Manuscript Library to light, making previously inaccessible books available to students and scholars around the world.
Best of all, we have found a way to provide excellent cataloging records for rare books, doing the work in-house and at a reasonable cost. Our catalogers adhere to very high standards, yet also process the books expeditiously, making the project incredibly economical. Based on our statistics, we have determined that the cost of making these previously “hidden” items accessible through our "Quick and Clean" cataloging project is less than $12 per title. Few libraries can claim to catalog even new acquisitions—much less rare books—at such low overhead.
With this website, we hope to share the knowledge and expertise we have gained from this project so that other institutions might also begin to uncover and make accessible their own hidden treasures.
