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This article sets out to describe the challenges and opportunities created by the presentation of a number of special collections to the library service of Waterford Institute of Technology. It aims to focus on the work done with the collections to date and plans for the future.

This case study reports on the collections presented to WIT Library Service and the approach taken to their conservation and display. It also discusses the ongoing issues involved in special collections management in a modern academic library setting.

The paper concludes that there is a delicate balancing act involved in accepting and managing special collections in contemporary academic libraries. Key factors to consider are expense, staff time and skills, and potential benefits to the library and its users.

The project is still in development. The study provides a view on one medium‐sized academic library's experience of handling special collections.

This account is likely to be useful for organisations in a similar position, faced with similar challenges of comparable scale.

The paper offers practical insights for libraries in similar positions.

WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new constitution, it is the first in which all the sections will be actively engaged. From a membership of eight hundred in 1927 we are, in 1930, within measurable distance of a membership of three thousand; and, although we have not reached that figure by a few hundreds—and those few will be the most difficult to obtain quickly—this is a really memorable achievement. There are certain necessary results of the Association's expansion. In the former days it was possible for every member, if he desired, to attend all the meetings; today parallel meetings are necessary in order to represent all interests, and members must make a selection amongst the good things offered. Large meetings are not entirely desirable; discussion of any effective sort is impossible in them; and the speakers are usually those who always speak, and who possess more nerve than the rest of us. This does not mean that they are not worth a hearing. Nevertheless, seeing that at least 1,000 will be at Cambridge, small sectional meetings in which no one who has anything to say need be afraid of saying it, are an ideal to which we are forced by the growth of our numbers.