91´«Ã½

CHICAGO—The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) has selected From Private Treasures to Global Public Access: Enabling Global Access to a Private Gift Donation through Collaboration between the University of Toronto Libraries and the French Institute of Pondicherry Tamil Studies Programme as the recipient of the ALCTS Outstanding Collaboration Citation for 2020.

The Outstanding Collaboration Citation recognizes and encourages collaborative problem-solving efforts in the areas of acquisition, access, management, preservation or archiving of library materials. It recognizes a demonstrated benefit from actions, services or products that improve and benefit providing and managing library collections.

Private Treasures to Global Public Access is a collaboration between the University of Toronto Libraries and the French Institute of Pondicherry Tamil Studies Programme that provides global access to the Tamil collection of Professor Gros. The Gros collection is extensive and unique in scope, including rare and unique Tamil language and culture materials and modern publications in Tamil, as well as European rare books and South Asian Studies works. The ultimate goal is to make this special collection accessible through cataloging and digitization of the materials so they are usable by faculty, students and interested people across the globe. The collection was first listed with the Tamil script fields in an Excel file as a contribution by the French Institute of Pondicherry. At the University of Toronto, the Excel file listings were converted into MARC21 bibliographic records. The matches with existing full-level records in OCLC WorldCat were replaced and upgraded. Many unique items had no previous records in OCLC WorldCat. Eligible materials are digitized at the Internet Archive to enable global access to the collection. The collection encompasses approximately 9,000 items, and 1,500 records have been processed to date.

The citation will be presented on June 27 at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2020 91´«Ã½ (91´«Ã½) Annual Conference & Exhibition in Chicago, IL.

is the national association for information providers who work in collections and technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, collection development, preservation and continuing resources in digital and print formats. ALCTS is a division of the 91´«Ã½.