Competency F

“Each graduate of the Master of Library and Information Science program is able to... use the basic concepts and principles related to the selection, evaluation, organization, and preservation of physical and digital information items.”

Introduction

Libraries and library collections have been around for thousands of years, and are almost as old as civilization itself.  The advent of writing and its increased use for bookkeeping, inventories, receipts, marriage documents, and other important documents meant that at some point those collections would need to be managed. One of the earliest known managed library collections, dating to somewhere around 2000 B.C., was found in ancient Nippur (current day Iraq). The “collections” for this library consisted of several clay cuneiform tablets along with a group of tablets that served as a catalog and listed items in the collection (Casson2002).   By the 3rd century B.C., Aristotle’s personal library was reputed to be so large that it was said that he taught the kings of Egypt how to set up a library. And whatever system Aristotle used to manage his collection of scrolls, the most famous library in ancient history, the Library of Alexandria brought the world the first usable method for organizing vast collections of documents, the alphabetical order. After that, libraries became all the rage for rulers around the ancient world.  By the time the Roman Empire hit the world stage, the idea of public libraries came into being and  Rome had several, typically containing works of both Greek and Latin. Until the 2nd century A.D., library holdings were scrolls written on papyrus or, sometimes, on parchment. At this point the Romans came up with the codex, an invention that looked very much like modern-day books. The introduction of the codex was quite possibly as disruptive to the 2nd century society as was the printing press in the 15th century and digital information in the 20th. Each innovation led to an increase in the amount of available information which, in turn, required new ways of managing the ever-increasing numbers in library collections.

Librarians today must deal with the largest collections of information available to humanity in human history. Not only must they select, evaluate, organize, and preserve this data they must be able to perform all four functions for both physical and digital information items. Collection management is about how we, as librarians, create and maintain collections effectively from the introduction of new materials until the retirement of those materials. This competency is about the four important aspects of collections management and the following sections cover each functional area along with the differences in approaches needed for both physical and digital collections.

Selection

Selecting materials for collections development starts with understanding the community the collection will serve. Because it is impossible for a single library to contain every book, document, video and audio recording, not to mention digital materials, the organization must have a means for determining what materials should be collected. It makes no sense to collect materials that have no relevance to the community in which the organization is embedded. Common ways to make sure the collection is relevant to the community is by doing a needs assessment, an environmental scan, and market research.

A needs assessment is a method that can help a library to create a collection development plan. There are basically four types of needs: normative, which is what an “expert” would say is needed; a felt need is a need that comes from the community but may only represent a small (but perhaps loud) part of the entire community; an expressed need is a need that is expressed but may not actually be a real need, so should be thoroughly investigated before accepting it as a need; comparative needs are based on bench-marking similar organizations for comparison of materials (Evans, 2008). Focusing on the needs of the community helps with relevant collection development when a balance between each type of needs is achieved.

As part of the needs assessment, data such as demographic data on the user community, historical data, economic data, and geographic information, as well as information on other social, educational, cultural, and recreational organizations embedded in the community may be collected. This gives the library an overall picture of the lives of everyone in the community, not just the people who use the library on a regular basis. Understanding the needs of everyone, even those who may have never stepped into the library may help to develop services and products to also meet the needs of those specific people when they do come in for help.

An environmental scan can also produce very helpful information for determining what materials to procure for the organization. An environmental scan can pick up the reasons for using/not using certain materials, the way in which products and services are actually used, how and where products and services are accessed by the patrons (on-line, in the library itself, etc.), what people think about the products and services, what services that are not currently offered that would patrons want, and how much would they be willing to pay (in terms of time, effort, etc.) to have access to that service or product (Evans and Saponaro, 2012). In an era when services and products change so rapidly, the environmental scan, especially a focus on what is on the horizon, also help to keep the collection ahead of the curve and from becoming obsolete.

Collection Management Policy

Once a good picture of the community needs is available, a good collection management policy can be developed and must be in place before the actual selection of materials should go forward. The policy is useful for many reasons including the communication of the nature and scope of the collection, the collection priorities, organizational priorities, the setting of standards for inclusion and exclusion in the collection, reducing individual biases, ensuring a degree of consistency over time, help in weeding and evaluating the collection, assessing the collection development program, and as an informational tool for anyone who wants to understand the collection policy (Evans and Sapanaro, 2012, chapter 4). And, depending the type of information organization or library (for example academic, public, school) collection management policies may differ, but should always contain at least the following: a linking of the policy to the information organization’s mission and long-term plans, a summary of the community, goals for the collection, who can select materials, requirements for selecting specific materials such as criteria on user needs and wants, relationships between the organization and branches or other related organizations in terms of collection building, the role of gifts and donations, the manner in which the collection will be assessed and materials removed, and the handling of complaints regarding the collection and/or policy.

Collections development policies should also explicitly cover electronic resources as the size of digital collections rise. There are some issues that may occur with electronic resources that don’t apply to the physical world of books and other documents. For example, decisions on whether to retain print versions of electronic resources, policies on remote access to digital collections, additional costs such as hardware & software for support of electronic resources, location of resources and cost of maintaining Internet or other network links, negotiation of licenses for use of some of the material, preservation issues such as obsolescence of supporting hardware, cancellation issues, and training for the use of new electronic resources are some of the areas that should be covered (Gregory2011, chapter 3).

Selection Decisions

Obviously, the types of items to be selected will greatly depend on the collection development policy. The user community, which is defined in the policy can greatly reduce the set of items that would normally be considered. For example, a K-6 grade school library would have very little reason to look at young-adult selections for their collections.  Evans and Sapanaro (2012, chapter 4) have identified 12 steps in the selection decision process. These steps apply equally to both physical items (books/documents/video/audio recordings) and digital collections. The steps follow a sequential order for determining what to select and include:

1. The institutional setting (e.g. academic, school, public, etc.)

2. User interests and needs

3. Associated available resources for identifying potential items

4. The current items in the collection

5. The known gaps in the collection

6. The depth and breadth of the subjects based on the collections policy

7. Language of the material in the collection and local interest

8. A quality evaluation of potential acquisitions

9. The cost/usage assessment

10. Available funds

11. Availability of potential items in other places (e.g. inter-library loan)

12. The setting of priorities for the items identified for acquisition.

Obviously, selecting materials for collection development is more of an art than a science, even with a policy in place. Experience and familiarity with the existing collection is an important determiner in the quality of the collection.

Special Consideration for Digital Collections

Selecting resources for digital collections is different from selecting resources for physical collections. While physical space may not be an issue, digital resources do take up computer storage both for content as well as links to that content. The initial cost for a digital objects may be less than the print equivalent, but cost of maintaining current links to the object should be considered in the overall cost, especially if the resource is continually moving around and being updated, for example in the library’s catalog.  Purchasing decisions for electronic resources can occur for much larger digital collections than for physical print collections. This is due to digital resource aggregators that provide large databases of digital objects. Care must be taken to avoid duplication of digital resources in these instances since it is possible for two different aggregators to provide the same or very similar information objects. Additionally, some digital resources may be created and maintained by library staff which is not very common with print materials. Finally, archiving and preservation of digital resources can be very complex depending on the platforms required for viewing of the materials. In the worst case, many generations of hardware and software platforms made need to be maintained for older versions of digital data.

The best collections consistently meet the needs and interests of the user community. Part of meeting those expectations include the assessing of new document and data formats. Disher (2015) suggests taking a more “demand-driven” philosophy and elevate user-demand to the top of the selection criteria. While there is probably no “perfect” collection out there, calculated risks can pay off and risk-taking is quite possibility one of the attributes of a good collection developer (Evans, 2008).

Evaluation

It is important to evaluate the collections on a continuing basis. There are many reasons why an evaluation might be performed by the information organization including the identification of gaps in the collections, removal of items that are no longer relevant, and the determination of the true coverage of the collection, just to name a few. In general there are four broad areas of concern that can lead to an evaluation including collection development needs, budgetary needs, local institutional needs, and extra-organizational needs (Evans and Sapanaro, 2012, chapter 6). Examples of collection development needs include identifying gaps, providing data for weeding activities, determining necessary changes to the development policy, and how the community uses the collection.  A budgetary need might include what is required to strengthen weak areas or address gaps. Local institution needs include things like determining whether a collection is outdated, whether the level of duplication of materials is warranted, and if the collection is comparable to other organizations serving similar populations. Finally, extra-organizational needs might include data for grant opportunities and funding agencies.

Once a decision to evaluation has been made, there are a few different ways to implement it.  Checking inventory against standard bibliographies and catalogs for comparison purposes may help to get an idea of where the gaps are and the relevance of the materials in the current collection. Use of comparative statistics across organizations can help with determining whether the collection is being used as might be expected. It might also be possible to conclude whether items in the collection are useful to the community by looking at circulation records or running surveys to get patron perceptions.  Other data that can be looked at to tell whether a collection is useful is inter-library loan statistics and bibliometric studies (i.e. by verifying the collections include highly cited works).

As part of the evaluation process, weeding, or the de-selection of materials is an important activity. The justifications for weeding are many, but the most important are to keep the collection relevant to the community. Community needs and wants will change over time and the collection must reflect that as well. There is always limited space and to enhance the appeal of the collection, older, perhaps heavily used items should be replaced.  Removing little used items also save the time of patrons and librarians because they no longer need to be dealt with when browsing or searching for other items. Also, some collections, especially those classified as non-fiction, become not just irrelevant, but may actually contain mistakes or cultural inaccuracies that have been proven wrong in later works.  Finally, the introduction of new technologies and formats may necessitate the removal items to accommodate these items.

Special Consideration for Digital Collections

Evaluation of digital resources is actually pretty tricky when compared to evaluation of physical items that sit on shelves. Many times the statistics provided by the information service provider do not map to useful information for the library. For example, it may not be clear what is meant by “usage”. If I search for an item and read the abstract, only to reject it’s relevance to my goals, did I actually use the material?  What is the difference between rejecting the material after reading the abstract and browsing a shelf of books, but never checking them out? In one case material may be recorded as having been used, while in the other, no data is recorded whatsoever.  There seems to enough interest in the idea of generating useful statistics on electronic material usage that several consortium and guideline groups have stepped into try and create standards for evaluating electronic resources, such as Project COUNTER (COUNTER, 2016).

Organization

Obviously, the collections found in most information organizations, unless extremely small, must have some form of organization, otherwise nothing could be located. Most libraries use a classification system that allows materials that are similar to each other in content to be physically located together. The main classification systems are Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress and together with shelf arrangement, organization of the collections can help users to find materials rather quickly.

Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)

The Dewey decimal classification scheme has been in use since 1876 and is the most widely used classification system. It is called the Dewey Decimal system because it was first proposed by Melvin Dewey and it places an order on materials using a logical sequence of numbers.  There are ten main classes that are based on traditional academic areas such as philosophy or religion that are supposed to cover the universe of knowledge. Within each main classes, subclasses are subsequently assigned a range of numbers in a way that easily allows the addition of new subclasses just by increasing the number of digits on the classification. The classification has been revised several times over the years, but the main problem is that the main classes reflect a European and North American culture and 19th century biases (Rubin, 2010, chapter 4).

Library of Congress Classification (LCC)

This classification system grew out of the need to classify materials at the Library of Congress. Apparently, the DDC influenced the development of LCC but instead of 10 classes that supposedly encompass all knowledge, LCC uses 26 classes, each designated by a letter of the alphabet. Subclasses are designated with additional letters and then integers for further specificity.

Shelf Arrangement

Most libraries organize their physical collections using a variety of classification systems. They might use DDC for non-fiction and alphabetical by author name for fiction.  Library collections should have related materials shelved together in physical proximity. Unless the collection is shelved purely alphabetically (say by author) it makes sense to shelve materials based on numerical classification (DDC) or alphanumerical classification (LCC) hierarchically from broader to narrower classifications or topics (Rubin, 2010, chapter 4). This makes it much easier to locate materials just by following the numbers.

Controlled Vocabularies

The last important aspect of organization of collections in libraries is the controlled vocabulary. Without some way of assigning a classification to material in the collection, the other organizational methodologies would be almost pointless. Controlled vocabularies are really just lists of approved terms that is controlled by some authority, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Terms in a controlled vocabulary have very precise definitions that are “unambiguous and non-redundant” (Rubin, 2010, chapter 4). Controlled vocabularies allow the consistent assignment and use of definitions for locating materials in the library. These vocabularies can help to reduce problems with synonymic and homographic terms. It can help for identifying hierarchical and associative relationships. Without a controlled vocabulary of some kind, patrons would not be able to map their own information needs to the collection in the library.

The Library Catalog

The library catalog is the patron-facing tool for an information organization’s collection. It is what the users go to in order to find the information they need. Whether it is physical, like an old card catalog or electronic, it should support several different ways of presenting information to the user. The user should be able to search on author, on specific subject headings or topic, to retrieve data of relevance they had no idea existed prior to the search. Records of holdings should follow well established standards like the Anglo –American Cataloging Rules for bibliographic descriptions so that users can quickly find the materials they need no matter what those materials are or where they are physically located.

Special Consideration for Digital Collections

One of the main advantages of digital information is that in theory, entire texts should be searchable for keywords, terms, and even entire sentences. This “Google” approach to finding information is highly appealing to information seekers, as it requires little, if any, understanding of how to use catalogs and other information tools. Serious users may understand how to find the correct subject headings or classification numbers, but many users just want to type a few words and get something back. In addition, the development of standards like MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) has allowed libraries to be able to share bibliographic information so that search can now extend beyond the walls of the physical library, so the universe of available materials may be much larger than the physical organization can hold.

Preservation

The final issue for collections development is preservation. Preservation can be defined as “the steps taken to ensure the long-term accessibility and usability of content – including (but not restricted to) activities that prevent content from deteriorating (Skinner, 2015). One of the main functions of libraries is to preserve our cultural heritage for future generations. It is not just rhetoric to say that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Every piece of information found in the library is part of history and it could be argued that nothing should ever be thrown away. However, in addition to the preservation of our cultural heritage, we might want to preserve our investment in the library’s collections.  There is a good chance that a great deal of money was spent in acquiring the materials, so it just makes sense to help those materials last as long as possible.  And, depending on the collections themselves and what is known about the longevity of the material, special handling procedures may need to be implemented. For example, older film used chemicals that deteriorate the photos over time under normal conditions, but the rate of deterioration can be slowed by methods such as storage in cold temperatures.  As with the photos, books and other materials may need to be preserved using environmental control processes such as regulation of temperature, humidity, and exposure to certain types of light.

Another issue that falls into the preservation category is disaster preparedness (Evans and Sapanaro, 2012). In a time where climate change is affecting the weather and making the possibility of a disaster, like tornadoes or floods more probable, a disaster preparedness and recovery plan should be developed based on the probabilities of an event occurring. What to preserve should be spelled out in the disaster preparedness plan because it may not be possible to save everything.  Having the plan in place can make the difference between saving the investment in collections and losing everything.

The size of many collections makes the preservation of all objects pretty much an impossible task. It then becomes important for the librarian to understand the value of the objects in the collection in order to decide what should be preserved. Focus should be on the preservation of cultural heritage as well as items that will be of historical interest later. While these decisions may at times be somewhat subjective, environmental scans and understanding what is on the horizon and help with making better informed decisions.

Special Consideration for Digital Collections

Preserving digital objects has some aspects to consider that are different from the preservation of print resource objects. First of all, every digital object has some sort of hardware and software associated with it so that it is usable by humans. As everyone knows, computer technology has changed at a rate unseen in human information history. A computer that was in common use just 10 years ago is no longer sold or supported, and is so obsolete, even if you wanted to fix it when a part broke, the part would not be available anywhere. I have 100 educational computer games I bought over the years for my kids when they were little that are worthless today because no one uses an X86 or Windows 1998 computer anymore. Many of those games have fallen “out of print” so you can’t even buy newer versions of them that will run on more recent equipment. My investment in VHS tapes has not fared much better.

For libraries, this is a continuous nightmare. There are two ways to deal with obsolesce of equipment and both are costly. The first is to simply maintain the original equipment. I don’t believe anyone seriously plays “Pong” anymore as the graphics are extremely simplistic to us now, but for historians tracking the history of video games, Pong would be very important. It originally ran on an Atari console, the last of which probably sits at the Smithsonian, unused. Today there is no support for this system that was manufactured in the late 1970s or early 1980s. For libraries and museums to preserve this game would require a simulation of the original Atari system and this is the second approach to preserving digital assets.  Writing software that acts like a system other than the one it is running on is called “emulation” and is done quite often. However, it is expensive as it requires an expert computer programmer to implement.

What to preserve becomes a more difficult task for librarians when it comes to digital objects. This is because of the sheer volume of material. Things as common and everyday as email may be important in the future. How do we determine whether to preserve assets that may have been available on one platform but is upgraded to a new platform? How do we determine which formats of data need to be preserved? What about social media platforms the library may be using for communication with their users? Should posts be preserved? What about other virtual environments like Second Life and the communication and events that occur virtually? All these are questions that come with the territory of digital resources. And because it is impossible to preserve everything, decisions must be made and plans developed for covering the preservation of important digital assets.

For librarians, the selection, evaluation, organization, and preservation of both physical and digital collections is important to understand if we are going to make sure libraries and other information organizations remain relevant to the community in which they are embedded. Without the thoughtful development of a collections policy and the subsequent selection of materials, patrons may discover that they have no use for the library and go elsewhere. If we are not constantly evaluating our collections, we run the risk of missing important gaps and selecting material no one cares about. Similarly, if the material is not organized and find-able in a way that is easy for the user, the collections may never be of use to anyone. Finally, it is our duty to preserve as much of our cultural heritage as possible for future generations and this requires us to be very cognizant of what constitutes material that may be of importance in the future.   

Coursework & Work Experience

I have taken a few courses in which I learned about this competency. In INFO-200 we covered the techniques and issues surrounding the organization of information, including classification systems, controlled vocabularies, and the library catalog. One piece of evidence I have chosen is a discussion thread in which I argue against the assertion that the main source of information in a library is contained in books. I chose this evidence because I believe it demonstrates my understanding of the complexity of the issues surrounding classification of collection objects. In INFO-247, Vocabulary design, I worked with a group to design a vocabulary for a specific website. This prepared me for working with existing vocabularies as well as creating my own organization of terms for assignment to collection items. Much of the coursework experience I have had that is related to this competency is through work I’ve done on collecting, archiving and preserving materials in virtual worlds. In INFO-298, I undertook to create an entirely new structure in which to house the collection of slides and audio recordings from four different virtual conferences and develop a plan for the inclusion of materials from future conferences. This experience helped me to understand what it means to prepare materials for collection in both virtual and physical settings. In INFO-294, I undertook an internship as the Estate Manager for VCARA during the spring of 2015. In this capacity, I not only continued to work on the conference collection, but created another virtual venue in which educators from outside VCARA could bring exhibits in for a temporary display. As part of that effort, I developed a policy for the use of the virtual building.  In addition, I worked on the preservation of both virtual objects and events within VCARA by creating machinima (videos of in-world activities) of virtual builds and invited colloquia talks on the VCARA Island. The evidence I am submitting from both INFO-298 and INFO-294 were chosen because it demonstrates my ability to develop collections and policies.

Evidence

The first piece of evidence is called “LIS200 - Week_5_Disscusions_Scrubbed.pdf” and it can be found on the evidence page. At the bottom of page 1 and continuing on through pages 2 and 3 are two discussions related to the organization of information piece of this competency. In the first, I argue against the idea that books are the main source of information for information seekers. While this was written almost 6 years ago, the argument is even more salient as the amount of electronic resources have soared in use by libraries, in some cases becoming 50% of the holdings of some libraries. In another post, which shows up in the middle of page 2, I argue that classification is a difficult problem and the raise of folksonomies have shown that people don’t necessarily classify information the same way that librarians do. I suggest it may be possible to do a mashup of both types of classifications to help users find more relevant information in libraries. This evidence shows my knowledge about organization as well as my ability to synthesize new ideas from different sources.

The next piece of evidence can also be found on the evidence page and is titled, “Preserving Virtual Worlds Educational Events using Social Media_V2.pptx”.  This is a PowerPoint Presentation about work I presented at the Archiving’ 15 conference. This presentation focused on our methods for preserving educational artifacts that exist in virtual worlds as well as events, like semester-long courses that occur there.  I make the connection to the preservation of video games and then show why virtual worlds differ from them. I go on to demonstrate the preservation methods we used including videos of events, videos of objects created in-world, and the preservation of social media site postings and images. I discuss the issues involved in preserving such a vast amount of data and describe a plan I developed to preserve the most important data from these classes and other events.

Using a documentation and preservation scaffold consisting of a school-sponsored blog, centralized social media in the form of a single user control point and a plan for server storage space, I was able to show how much of the data from the classes and other events could be documented or preserved. I believe this evidence shows my understanding of the issues involved in preserving virtual data and my ability to plan for preservation.

“LIBR-298_Final_Report_V2.docx” on the evidence page, consists of a document describing my accomplishments for INFO-298. This includes the fact that “I created a multi-story structure by replicating the original single floor structure and building stairs and ground between stories. I was able to organize each year’s posters and audio files either by moving them or recreating missing items.  The current state of the VCARA conference building is now stable. Several documents have been created for the purpose of making it easier to add objects and keep track of them moving forward.” I believe this shows my knowledge and capabilities for collection development, especially since the organization of this collection has been used at for the last 3 years as well.

The final piece of evidence for this competency is called “Vans_Final_Report_PF_5-4-15_Graded_V2.docx” and is the last entry on the evidence page. This is the final report I submitted for my INFO-294 course, which I took in the spring of 2015. As can be seen on page 10 of this document, one of my learning objectives for the internship was to “analyze and evaluate appropriate resources for inclusion in the traveling exhibit museum (U-See-Um), including processes for determining the appropriateness of a temporary exhibit, promotion, and attracting exhibit creators.”  As part of meeting that objective I created the policy for use of the traveling exhibit museum. While this is not specifically a collections management policy for a specific collection, it is more like a ‘Meta-Collections” management policy because it spelled out very specifically what types of exhibits would be allowed as well as how the venue could be used. There was another learning objective related to this competency which was that of the “Understanding of Museum/Exhibit Users”. I was able to address this learning objective by evaluating how other libraries and museums in Second Life collected and displayed virtual materials. This evidence shows my ability to evaluate virtual collections such as those that exist in 3D virtual worlds. ­­­­

Conclusions

I am confident that I have necessary knowledge and skills for collections development. While I have never worked in a collections development capacity in a physical library, the experience I have developing virtual collections in 3D worlds included all the necessary steps of user needs assessment, selection of materials appropriate for the collection, evaluation of other related collections as well as continued evaluation of the collections I’ve developed, policy creation, organization of information, and the preservation of materials.  Each of these steps can be translated to the development of physical collections as well. The main difference is in cost calculations. For virtual worlds, the main cost is in terms of something called “prims” which is the basic element everything is built on and which are limited in each space supported by Second Life and other Open Simulator-based worlds. This means that cost, in terms of number of prims must be taken into consideration when developing these types of virtual collections. Therefore, I would argue that my ability to develop collections with prim-limit constraints would translate to cost constraints in the physical world. The evidence I have presented shows that I have knowledge and the ability to build relevant collections in both virtual and physical environments.

References

Casson, L. (2002). Libraries in the ancient world. Yale University Press. New Haven, CT.

COUNTER. (2016). Project Counter. Retrieved from: http://www.projectcounter.org/index.html, Accessed March 18, 2016.

Disher, W.T. (2015). Managing collections. In: Information Services Today: An introduction, Hirsh, S., ed.  Pp. 242-249. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD.

Evans, G. E. and Sapanaro, M.Z. (2012). Collection management basics, 6th edition. Libraries Unlimited, Santa Barbara, CA.

Evans, G.E. (2008). Reflections on creating information service collections. In The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts, Haycock, K. and Sheldon, B.E. eds. Pp. 87-97. Libraries Unlimited, Westport. CT.

Gregory, V.L. (2011). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections: An introduction. Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. New York, NY.

Hunt, D. and Grossman, D. (2013). The librarian’s skillbook: 51 essential career skills for information professionals. Deborah Hunt and David Grossman, San Bernardino, CA.

Rubin, R.E. (2010). Foundations of library and information science, 3rd edition. Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. New York, NY.

Skinner, K. (2015). Analog and digital curation and preservation. In: Information Services Today: An introduction, Hirsh, S., ed.  Pp. 334-344. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD.