Thematic Research Collections are, among other things:


1.     Necessarily electronic (because of the cost of 2, 3, 8)
2.     Constituted of heterogeneous datatypes (multimedia)
3.     Extensive but thematically coherent
4.     Structured but open-ended
5.     Designed to support research
6.     Authored (and usually multi-author)
7.     Interdisciplinary
8.     Collections of digital primary resources (and they
        are themselves second-generation digital resources).

Examples:    Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture
                    The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library
                    The William Blake Archive