Collections

"This dessert is timeless." - Kara Haspel Lind

As the only library collection devoted exclusively to cupcake-related resources, Cupcakes Galore! will be an important resource for students of the culinary arts, as well as anthropology scholars interested in the current cupcake phenomenon.

The Cupcakes Galore! project aims to provide a resource that will serve multiple audiences. Cupcakes Galore! will be useful for current users of cupcake recipes, including our students as well as the general public. The collection will also help future users who are seeking either cupcake recipes or information about cupcakes as a cultural phenomenon.

In order to achieve this goal, SWEETS must expand its collection of cupcake cookbooks and other cupcake-related resources. We will build upon our existing collection of physical cookbooks, focusing on English-language books that discuss cupcakes exclusively, as well as books with a lengthy or otherwise notable section about cupcakes. In order to archive these cupcake cookbooks, we will scan the book in its entirety. For cookbooks with cupcake recipes or sections, the relevant pages, as well as the title page, table of contents, and so on, will be scanned.

We will launch the project with digital versions of 100 of our most frequently circulated cupcake cookbooks. As the project develops, we will need to build our collection of these specialized cookbooks. Eventually, Cupcakes Galore! aims to collect physical copies of every English-language cupcake cookbook published from 2005 on. There are relatively few cookbooks with earlier publication dates, and many are long out-of-print and difficult to locate. However, we will make an effort to obtain copies of as many of these earlier works as possible. We will also maintain and digitize our collection of older cupcake cookbooks.

In addition to digital copies of physical cookbooks, the collection will also include born-digital sources of cupcake recipes. This part of the collection creates another set of challenges. We will focus primarily on cupcake blogs, but will also consider blogs written by cupcake bakeries, as well as individual entries from other cooking and baking blogs. The selected blogs and entries will be archived as described here. The goal will be to maintain access to these resources, many of which are hosted by free webhosts, such as Blogger and Wordpress, which may become inaccessible in the future.

As with our physical collection, our decisions about which blogs to archive will be based on their popularity and importance. We will make these determinations based on tools such as Technorati and Bloglines, which give an impression of the number of followers, comments, etc. We will also make sure to include special-interest cupcake blogs, such as those that focus on vegan baking, decorative cupcakes, or recipes with unusual ingredients.

Throughout the process of archiving digital copies of these cookbooks and born-digital resources, we will work to obtain copyright permissions to share the digital collection. With permission from the copyright holder, these archives will be available in their entirety to our current students. The general public will be able to view bibliographic information for these resources, as well as the cover image and select pages from the book, much like Amazon's book previews. For born-digital resources, the public will have access to our bibliographic records, as well as a link to the website, provided it still exists.

We would also like to create a service through which scholars and students from other institutions would be able to use our collection. This may be through a subscription service, depending on the wishes of the majority of rightsholders. Any cost associated with the subscription would go only to cover the costs of building and maintaining the collection, including payments to rightsholders, as applicable. Because many of these scholars will be more interested in the cupcake cookbook as an artifact of the cupcake phenomenon, the focus of that subscription service may be on the accompanying materials (introductions, chapter openings, and so on) rather than on the recipes themselves.

It will be important to work with rightsholders to provide greater public access to our collection in the future. In the long run, we hope to open the entire collection to the public, with or without a subscription, so that everyone can benefit from Cupcakes Galore!'s extensive collection.

We would also like to showcase a "cupcake of the day" on our front page. Once we have determined which rightsholders are willing to participate, we will place a recipe for and (if available) photograph of a particular cupcake, spotlighting the recipe and the source. We hope that this will increase public interest in our collection.

Resources

Della Cava, Marco R. "Cupcake Bakeries Cater to the Kid in Us." USA Today, 30 Oct. 2007. Web. 20 Nov. 2009.

DiGregorio, Sarah. "Death to Cupcakes." The Village Voice, 13 July 2009. Web. 19 Nov. 2009.

Lenzer, Suzanne. "A Late-Adopter to the Cupcake Phenomenon." The New York Times, 8 June 2009. Web. 20 Nov. 2009.