In June, I attended the Social Sciences Librarian Bootcamp at Harvard Business School. The first part of the camp was dedicated to panels of faculty and graduate students discussing current research projects they have been working on and how library resources and staff helped them along the way. I didn’t think anything surprising came out of the panel discussions: some researchers used archival resources, some find the library useful for data management issues, and some used librarians’ expertise to track down hard-to-find resources needed for their projects. I found the presentation of their papers to be extremely interesting, especially the faculty panel on the theme of food. But this was more for the subject material than for how libraries and librarians contributed to the research.
After lunch, the sessions began. The first session I attended was one on the Boston Census Research Data Center. There are 18 RDCs in the country, and these RDCs charge a fee for scholars to come in and use the census data that is not released publicly. HBS pays the lab fees for all faculty, staff, and students at Harvard. Researchers can submit proposals for their research, stating what data they would like to see and why their research cannot be done with only the publicly available material. To begin the proposal process, researchers can contact the closest RDC. For us, the Boston one is currently the closest location, but Yale will be establishing an RDC next year. The website is www.census.gov/ces/main/contact.html.
The presenter gave several examples of research that had been completed using data at the RDC. These include the effect on property values in neighborhoods near plants; what firms export where; the decision of firms to go public; and the effect of social networks on hiring and work patterns.
The second session I attended was one on the historical collections at HBS. This was particularly interesting to me as the history librarian. The records at HBS document business history from the late 1300s-today. The collections consist of a print collection, the HBS Archives, the manuscript collection, and the Polaroid Collection.
The manuscript collection is where you can find much of the most unique material. This collection includes over 1500 series from the 14th century to the present. Many records related to colonial and early republican business records in New England are housed here, including a vast amount of material related to 19th-century whaling. One of the graduate students (a PhD candidate at Yale) in the morning’s panel had used the R. G. Dun credit reports extensively for her dissertation on credit history. These reports are the most commonly used material in the HBS historical collections.
The Polaroid Collection is a new acquisition and is the largest collection at HBS. This collection includes administrative records, patent history, research and development records, photographs, prototype photos, advertisement photos, and an AV component. It is not yet fully accessible as the staff are still processing this very large collection.
The Social Sciences Librarians Bootcamp is a conference that I find worthwhile. There is plenty of opportunities to learn about resources that are out there, especially the freely accessible ones. Also, it is a great place to network with other librarians in the greater Boston area who are dealing with many of the same issues we are at UConn. I would recommend this conference to anyone interested.
