Competency Statement: Use the basic concepts and principles related to the selection, evaluation, organization, and preservation of physical and digital information items.

Introduction

Without proper curation and maintenance, it is easy to overlook the value and discontinue the support of a collection and the organization that houses it. This competency describes the responsibilities necessary to steward a long-term collection of value by promoting its potential discovery and use while also addressing the uncertainties of finite limitations and hazards that information organizations may confront during the lifespan of their collections.

Selection

Selection is involved in acquiring new materials, updating materials, and weeding out materials, and is influenced by the collection budget and resource licensing.

When selecting items for a collection, materials must be curated for relevance to meet the information needs of the user community. This could include materials for research, work, or everyday life seeking activities. With limited budgets, information professionals may choose to prioritize patron requests and do more research before acquiring materials. For example, book reviews, catalogs, and readers’ advisory lists are tools that can inform selection decisions still under consideration. In addition, given the choice of a physical or electronic format, compromises may need to be made to stay within budget limits. The path from digital distribution rights from publishers to lending rights of a single e-book can be expensive for libraries (Gross, 2021). On the other hand, electronic subscriptions can provide access to an array of reference materials that would be more costly to purchase singly in their physical format.

As collections continue to develop and accumulate materials, housekeeping is essential. Neglecting to monitor or do the occasional review and deselection of materials risks burying more valuable resources under irrelevant and out-of-date materials or unnecessarily paying for unused digital licenses and subscriptions. Selecting physical materials to replace and let go of can save shelf space, saves time from shelving finding that resource, and in general makes a collection look more appealing (Larson, 2012).

Evaluation

Beyond financial, legal, time and space-saving criteria for selection or deselection, other criteria are necessary to develop and weed a collection that delivers quality and reliable information. Reference, non-fiction, or research material of quality have suitable breadth of scope, trusted authority of sources, high accuracy of information, latest currency of information, and sensible arrangement of material (Cassell & Hiremath, 2018). These criteria assure users that the information is reliable and comes from reputable sources who are experts and trailblazers in their field.

Appropriateness and utility of a resource must also be considered. For example, a public library serves all age groups, education levels, and abilities and must consider materials for varied reading levels and media formats. In addition, evaluating to approve materials of interest and personal development, such as self-reflection, empathy, life-long learning, and enjoyment, communicates to users that libraries can be an empowering resource.

Continually assessing the collection and tracking usage is also necessary to keep a library manageable and allows users to spend less time looking for a resource.

Organization

A collection needs to be organized so that its materials can be found. Libraries with large diverse collections that organize their materials by subject headings can use classification schemes to store, locate, and browse physical materials. Dewey Decimal Classification, used by public libraries, is highly effective with its universal and easy to understand numerical notation. The Library of Congress Classification shares its scheme with the National Library of Medicine classification and is widely adopted by academic libraries (Chan, 1994). Both are hierarchical, allowing intuitive browsing of general topics to faceted levels of specificity, and expandable, a necessary feature to accommodate undiscovered knowledge. By sharing the same classification scheme, libraries can save time copy-cataloging materials and modifying for their library as needed.

Digital collections are much more accommodating and flexible in the way they are organized, so conducting user research to understand search preferences and expectations can fill any gaps in the metadata and search interface design.

Preservation

The innovations of today depend on discoveries from the past and preservation provides reliable access to historical knowledge that enables creation of new research, services, and products (Skinner, 2022). Conservation efforts are especially necessary for deteriorating artifacts, such as audiovisual content, which has been recorded on numerous media formats. Preservation plans include considerations such as having “specific steps for care and handling… making multiple copies… and careful monitoring to ensure deterioration is identified and rectified regularly” (Skinner, 2022, p. 450). Audiovisual content and digital content share the same concerns: obsolescence due to lack of equipment to read or play them, media failure due to system failures or natural disasters, and security threats such as theft, alteration, or deletion (Skinner, 2022). As information and content continue heading toward digitization or born-digital, the Digital Preservation Outreach & Education Network (DPOE-N, n.d.) is a resource that provides professional development and training to help combat uncertainty in digital preservation, beginning their mission with six training modules: identifying the digital content inventory, selecting content for preservation, selecting long-term storage media, implementing protection of content from hazards, implementing management of the archive, and implementing provisions for long-term, responsible, usable, and legal access to the archive (Skinner, 2022).

Evidence 

The evidence I chose to present to demonstrate this competency include an INFO 200 information resource survey for a chosen community, an INFO 284 discussion about digital curation, and an INFO 284 group proposal for a digital curation project. 

Evidence #1– INFO 200 – Information Communities – Information resource survey

In this artifact, I surveyed research and community-based resources for my chosen community of indie game developers. I evaluated their currency, scope, authority, appropriateness, and other factors such as its design, biases and gaps, and value. I concluded that research-based resources are authoritative and reliable for information about current innovation and further development of game technology and tools, whereas community-based resources provide information on affordable ways to develop games. Both challenge this community of practice to evolve game development and content by honing high production value or creative design. Based on the needs of that community, I would prioritize selecting materials to meet those goals.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to evaluate and select resources for quality and reliability for a specific user community.

Evidence #2 – INFO 284 – Digital curation – Introduction to digital curation discussion

I discussed my understanding of digital curation and emphasized the importance of managing data “from the point of its creation”, supporting it with an anecdote about the consequences and knowledge loss suffered from the lack of documentation explaining the intentions and technical design of the codebase of a work project. I also discussed the origins of digital curation involving the management of research data driving the need for reliable preservation, but also shared my fears around the reliance on limited resources in providing access to knowledge.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to understand the importance of preservation practices to provide access to knowledge and foreseeing the uncertainty that challenges the work. 

Evidence #3– INFO 284 – Digital curation – Project proposal

In the Data Curation course, my group of three submitted a proposal to curate a digital collection of anti-war protests held after the events of October 7^th. Knowing that there would be no lack of protest evidence to collect, I suggested during the planning stages that we narrow our criteria to collect footage of protests if there was dated information and names of organizations announcing it prior to the event, such as through a flyer or blog post. I explained that this would significantly reduced the size of our collection, making it more manageable, and provide us with actual dates and groups tied to an announcement and video, making our information more reliable for our designated community of researchers of this topic. My team members agreed with this, and split our tasks to different sections of the proposal. I provided the background statement, and reviewed the other parts that my teammates wrote to make sure that our selection criteria was emphasized before giving my approval to submit. 

This evidence demonstrates my ability to understand the importance of selection and evaluation of collection items that serve the designated community.

Conclusion

As culture, technology, and society changes, I recognize that I may encounter new and evolving information organizations and be asked to manage their collections. It is reassuring for me to have resources, such as reader’s advisories, book reviews, the Library of Congress, the Digital Preservation Outreach & Education Network, and other organizations to learn, share, and adopt current best practices, standards, and guidelines to make relevant and historic knowledge accessible and effectively filtered to meet the needs of a user community, while keeping within the financial and legal boundaries of the information organization and its users. With this competency, I can control the overwhelming influx of information, transforming scattered refuse into a valuable collection that is manageable and meaningful, ensuring the longevity of the information community. 

References

Cassell, K. A. & Hiremath, U. (2018). Reference and information services: An introduction (4th Ed.). ALA-Neal Schuman. 

Chan, L. M. (1994). Cataloging and classification: An introduction (2^nd Ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Gross, D. A. (2021, September 2). The surprisingly big business of library e-books. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/an-app-called-libby-and-the-surprisingly-big-business-of-library-e-booksLinks to an external site.

Larson, J. (2012). CREW: A weeding manual for modern libraries. Texas State Library Archives Commission. http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crewLinks to an external site.

DPOE-N. (n.d.). Digital Preservation Outreach & Education Network. Pratt Institute School of Information. https://www.dpoe.network/

Skinner, K. (2022). Curation and preservation. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (3rd Ed., pp. 436-463). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.