A field report on archives and special collections
Bridging Capacity and Care explores how archivists and librarians balance care, ethics, and capacity in an evolving field shaped by digital transformation and shifting resources.
Understanding stewardship in a time of transformation
What does it mean to be a good steward of archives when faced with constrained resources, digital transformation, and increased ethical complexity?
Bridging Capacity and Care: A Field Report on Archives and Special Collections is grounded in the lived experiences of archivists and librarians faced with that question everyday.
Drawing on over a year of research—including site visits, interviews, and observational sessions with more than 280 library and archival experts across 24 institutions on two continents—the report captures evolving pressures, aspirations, and resilience, from enduring backlogs, to the promise of post-custodial models.
Special collections and archives have a rare capacity to bridge the past and present. They are not merely custodians of the past; they are active participants in shaping the future of scholarship.
Shared realities and long-term responsibilities
Archivist and special collections professionals across institutions share common challenges and a deep commitment to care. Key takeaways from the report include:
- Stewardship today is a balancing act: Navigating ethical responsibilities, institutional pressures, and limited resources, often all at once.
- Backlogs are more than a processing issue: They shape scholarship by determining what can be discovered, taught, and researched.
- Metadata is the foundation and the bottleneck: Description work is essential to access but constrained by time, staffing, and outdated systems.
- Labor is both visible and invisible: The intellectual, emotional, and technical work of stewardship is often undervalued or unrecognized.
- Community-centered work is reshaping the field: From reparative description to post-custodial models that redefine ethical practice.
- The archival community is redefining success: Moving from traditional metrics to values like collaboration, equity, and long-term impact.
Turning insights into solutions
Bridging Capacity and Care directly informed the creation of JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services, an initiative designed to address the real systemic challenges surfaced by practitioners across the field.
From metadata bottlenecks and digital fragmentation to the need for scalable, community-driven tools, the service was shaped in partnership with archivists and librarians, and grounded in care, collaboration, and sustainability.
A community shaping the future
Join the growing network of archivists, librarians, and researchers who are redefining digital stewardship with JSTOR. Together, we’re building the tools, insights, and shared practices that make collections more discoverable, accessible, and enduring for everyone who relies on them.
The latest from JSTOR Digital Stewardship
North Carolina State University becomes part of JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services charter program
North Carolina State University has joined JSTOR’s Digital Stewardship Services charter program, partnering to advance AI-assisted tools like JSTOR Seeklight and accelerate the processing and discovery of unique digital archival collections.
JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services promotional toolkit
Access ready-to-use messaging, social media assets, and training resources to help your institution promote its participation in JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services and engage your campus community.
RMIT joins JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services charter program
JSTOR welcomes RMIT University as the first Australian institution to join the Tier 3 charter program of JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services. RMIT will pilot JSTOR Seeklight to explore AI-supported workflows, beginning with an architecture slide collection of more than 2,000 images.
Sustainable books models and digital stewardship at Charleston 2025
At this year’s Charleston Conference, JSTOR hosted two lunch events. Highlights included updates on Path to Open, Publisher Collections, and JSTOR Seeklight’s growing role in AI-assisted metadata generation.
Exploring what’s next: Your transition from Forum to JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services
Reviewing the updated transition timeline and dual access period, outline what to expect as you begin working in JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services, and provide a detailed walkthrough of the platform.
Reclaim flexibility: Modern solutions for digital collection stewardship
In this webinar, Rachel Walton (Rollins College) and Olivia Inglin (University of Puget Sound) share their transitions from legacy systems to JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services
Moving beyond DIY: Scalable digital stewardship solutions for distinctive collections
In this webinar, Zachary Johnson (Vanderbilt University) and Michael Fitzgerald (University of the District of Columbia) share how they transitioned from in-house systems to JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services, offering insights into infrastructure, decision-making, and team impact.
JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services Tier 1 Training
You will learn how to create, add to, and edit a JSTOR collection, as well as understand your collection usage dashboard. This webinar is appropriate for Stewardship Tier 1 users who are using the collection loader tool to create and edit JSTOR collections.
JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services charter program surpasses 30 participating institutions
Over 30 institutions worldwide have joined the JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services Tier 3 charter program, forming a values-led community shaping the future of AI-assisted collections processing through collaboration, innovation, and shared expertise.
Interested in connecting the report’s insights to your work?
Our team can help you apply insights from Bridging Capacity and Care to strengthen discovery, preservation, and access through JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services.
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Looking to solve common collections management challenges?
Connect with our team to learn more about JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services.
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