Renovations are both exciting and terrifying, offering an opportunity to modernize legacy practices, policies, and platforms during a moment of great change. UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center is currently preparing for a building renovation, slated to run from fall 2026 to fall 2028, and two years in interim housing.
This upcoming renovation creates many challenges, chief among them findability. How will our users find us in our interim location? How will we deliver services, including digitization, in-person research access, and instruction, spread out across multiple buildings? How will this construction work impact our current efforts to foster novel outreach? How will we secure and retrofit interim spaces for patron use, collection storage, and staff processing workspace? How might we maintain current acquisition levels and practices? Post-renovation, how will we reassemble our onsite storage? Will we even be able to find all of our collections again? Will people be able to “Find It Here” when “it” and “here” are ephemeral and constantly changing?
Join three archivists working in all aspects of the university’s special collections, from manuscripts to print collections and technical services to public services, for a series of four short presentations covering their strategies for the collection move and the continuity of services through the renovation period. The session will offer tips, tricks, and practical workflows for anyone preparing for a renovation at their institution regardless of size.
Speakers Megan Mummey, University of Kentucky Libraries (Session Chair) Colleen Barratt, University of Kentucky Libraries Sarah Coblentz, University of Kentucky Libraries
