A virtual reading room (VRR) is a mechanism to provide access to digital archival materials that are protected by copyright and that we do not have permission to display on an open, public website. The goal is to reproduce the experience of a physical reading room with one basic difference: removing the geographical limitations. Emory's virtual reading room for mediated remote access to collections is intended to protect creators’ intellectual property and respect their desires while democratizing access and more seamlessly enabling use of archives split between Emory and other institutions or separated from their communities of origin.
The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University has received a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a technical and policy framework for a virtual reading room. The primary focus is literary manuscript collections, specifically the papers of Irish poets.
Goals
The primary goal of the proposed work during this two-year grant period is to plan, pilot, protoype, and assess a virtual reading room that enables shared virtual access to copyrighted materials held by Emory, as a model that solves the current limitations of access to shared collections.
To accomplish this, we will:
Develop and deepen partnerships with key repositories in Ireland, including the National Library of Ireland and Queens University Belfast.
Establish an approach for uniting split collections.
Identify tactics to build capacity within Emory Libraries for large-scale manuscript digitization and for the operationalization of digital access in a sustainable manner.
Develop a deeper understanding of user needs and experience to ensure the virtual reading room model meets researchers’ needs, including researchers using computational methods to interact with collections and metadata.
Pilot and test a functional prototype drawing upon Emory’s extensive Irish poetry collections, specifically, the Seamus Heaney papers, which are divided between Rose Library and the National Library of Ireland.
Assess the pilot, generate recommendations to guide further implementation or future technology development at Emory or beyond, and share these findings with relevant professional communities.