Next Gen “Scholars” and Digital Collections: Taking Advantage of Opportunities

Taking the “long view,” this presentation will demonstrate the ways in which the authors have taken opportunities to reach out to digital natives and future scholars to make libraries, digital collections, and rare books relevant, useful, and fun to younger generations. Capitalizing on several recent opportunities to collaborate with teachers from two local private schools we were able to bring facsimiles, rare books, medieval manuscripts, and digital collections to bear on curriculums in Latin, history, and literature for junior high and high school students in the Waco school district. In the process, we were able to demonstrate how the revolution in printing is being replayed in today’s digital age, explore changes in scholarly communication from manuscript to print culture, and show them how to find digital surrogates of rare books on the web for further study outside the library. We also discussed Baylor Libraries’ digitization program and digital collections and the roles librarians continue to play in making these materials accessible.