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Site-specific research or access to materials?



A purely hypothetical situation, totally unrelated to
my current employment situation (wink, wink) ?

For anyone working with researchers in a non-library
historical setting (historic home, for example): our
institution is undergoing some major space-planning
exercises. Our collections, once processed (the major
one will be completed in 2004 or 2005), will never,
ever fit within the quirky, awkwardly built historic
enviro of the site (major construction/rehab will be
unpleasant and possibly illegal).  Our current user
base is significant and could easily, if promoted
strongly, increase substantially; in fact, there could
be some really sexy programming, exhibit work.
However, there is strong resisitance to moving the
collections and research space to another location for
logisitcal and (for want of a bettter word) spiritual
reasons.

Logistically, offsite storage and/or a separate
research facility makes for more handling of documents
(for the former) and an "out-of-site,
are-you-outta-yer-mind?" situation for the latter
(which I get).

At the other end, some strong opponents to moving off
site have cited the value that researchers get in
coming to the place where these documents were created
and the "ambiance" of the place (and, given the
subject matter of the site and the collections, design
and "place" are big issues). This may play out
anecdotally, but the strongest opponent may have a
less-than-totally-accurate skew on the situation
(i.e., I think that more people would be happy to have
access to documents, maybe at the expense of
"ambiance").

Have others dealt with this situation? I stop and
think of all the academic collections in which a
researcher is just clam-happy sitting at a very
sterile, if well-appointed, research room able to look
at the papers of famous Jane Smith, even if far from
the one-room writing studio she first drafted her
greatest works. But maybe I'm not being flexible
enough around the "user's experience".

Any ideas? Any research that anyone knows of with data
in either direction?

Thanks in advance,

Anthony




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