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Showing posts from December, 2016

The Workload Iceberg for Digital Collections and Initiatives

In the last few weeks, I was asked to write a small paragraph explaining my area to others in the library.  I was happy to do this, as many people say they don’t know what my people do.  It’s sometimes hard to explain to others what we do without going into overtly technical topics and terms.  If we have done our job right, we’re practically invisible, which is the way it should be.  Anyway, writing the description made me realize why there is often a mis-match between what we do and what people think we do.  I’ll let you read the description yourself.  I’ve underlined the important bit. “Digital Resources is primarily an Open Access publisher.  We publish both born digital items (produced by students or faculty), and we scan to publish or republish old items. We curate digital collections through the whole digital life-cycle. Our work is a bit different from other departments because the more work we finish; the more work we create in having to maintain the collections. We’re no

A Thought on "An Emergent Theory of Digital Library Metadata" Alemu, G. and Stevens, B. 2015- ISBN: 978-0-08-100385-5

I've been reading "An Emergent Theory of Digital Library Metadata: Enrich then filter".  I'm about 1/3rd of the way through, and so far I am convinced that libraries need to make it easier for patrons to add or suggest changes to metadata.  I'm convinced enough that I will add the functionally to my list of future directions for the collections I manage.  However, in light of the recent national conversation about fake news, I do question whether or not communities can effectively actively police incorrect content.  Wikipedia is used an example of how crowd generated information can work, but Wikipedia is also often the first search result in almost any search, meaning that it not only has a high chance to be seen, but also a high chance to be edited if it's wrong.  People online love correcting others. The problem I see about applying that model to library metadata is that there is almost no way for library data to be as popular as Wikipedia, so it will hav

Bureau of Indian Affairs- Digital Collection

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is one of the oldest Bureaus in the United States.  It was established in 1824 by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun . While the history of the organization has been controversial, their records are open to the public.  This collection brings together letters distributed from the Bureau of Indian Affairs starting in 1832 and going on into 1966. View the rest of the collection:  http://bit.ly/2h0hKvW