Into the New Millennium: A Tale of Transformation

Abstract

At the American Library Association’s 2006 annual meeting in New Orleans, I was one of three panelists who participated in the Rare Books & Manuscripts Section’s conference program entitled “Re-imagineering Special Collections: Building Designs and Considerations for the 21st Century.”1 While I was reasonably comfortable with my understanding of Walt Disney Imagineering (from which our program title was taken),2 it was difficult to imagine that, in Special Collections at the University of Houston Libraries, we had come up with anything so novel or different (let alone newly imagined or creative) to be called “imagineering.” To me, imagineering means ground-breaking innovation . . .