“Use the basic concepts and principles related to the selection, evaluation, organization, and preservation of physical and digital items and collections”
Introduction
Librarians are typically thought of as custodians of a collection of physical items, perhaps a selection of books or magazines. Yet nowadays, “collections of objects” doesn’t describe only physical objects like books, but digital items as well. Management of both digital and physical collections involves four key concepts: the selection of the items to include and retain; evaluation of the current state of the collection; an understanding of the collection’s organization; and a consideration of how the collection will be preserved.
The process of selecting new items to include involves research and careful consideration. The current collection’s items need to be examined for any holes to fill, such as updating out-of-date publications like travel books. This might also include adding books on new topics in growing fields, such as math and technology. Additionally, recently published items in general can be considered for selection, perhaps according to recent user trends. In some libraries, users have the option of requesting that the library purchase new or unowned items for the collection.
Evaluation of collection items must involve balancing the usefulness of the item against its physical requirements. Digital objects are not nearly as affected by this constraint, yet book stacks get crowded as new items are added. Crowded collections need to be weeded, meaning that the least-used objects are pulled from the shelves to free up needed physical space and allow for new growth. For example, when I was a library aide in high school I assisted with the yearly inventory process. In addition to ten key input, I learned that these type of weeding policies are essential for a healthy system. Referencing a list of books that had not been check out in the last five years, we pulled them for donation or marked them down as lost if they never showed up.
In the digital realm, collections exist in memory space. This means that crowding almost never happens, and if it does the solution is merely to acquire more memory storage space. However, in both physical and digital collections, redundancies must be weeded out in order to promote efficient organization of both storage and search.
Organization of the collection depends on the component parts of the collection. If the collection is primarily physical items, than more traditional methods like indexes, catalogs, and finding guides can be used as well as OPAC or database systems. Digital collections require careful organization in order to be useful at all, as they may have no physical component to aid the user in her search. Databases, OPAC systems and specialized, collection management software are some major methods designed for the of organizing of digital objects. OPAC systems allow users to browse or perform keyword searches, and all these methods list the item and relevant information, including its physical location (if it exists). For the most part however, collection management of both physical and digital items involves having a record of what objects are in the collection and how to access them.
Preservation of physical objects in a collection differs from preservation of digital objects. Both types of collections need to be protected from natural disasters such as floods and fires. Digital collections really require their own electronic servers, separate from utility and services hardware, and industry best practices dictates that collection back-up servers reside in multiple places. The physical collection and any storage areas need to be monitored and secure, as physical objects are especially vulnerable to theft, mold, insects, and the ravages of time. Digital collections also feel the effects of time, with DVD and CD storage media sporting only an estimated one hundred years of shelf life before decomposing. Digital items must also handle the issue of constantly changing software and hardware technology, and sometimes entire collections must be converted or upgraded in order to maintain access to their content. A current example is how few floppy disk media readers still exist, limiting retrieval of these objects; hopefully any data of value to their collections was migrated to another digital format long ago. Detailed technical metadata associated with digital objects will help in preservation, as this facilitates translation to newer information formats. Clearly, digital objects have slightly different concerns than the long-identified vulnerabilities of physical objects.
Evidence
A paper called Virtual Visit from LIBR 268 is my first piece of evidence. This assignment tasked us with evaluating the website portal of a digital collection. I visited the World of the Child, Two Hundred Years of Children’s Books from the University of Delaware. I thoroughly examined and discussed the different parts of the collection, which included a variety of different types of objects. I was impressed with the age of the objects in the collection, some from before 1850, but underwhelmed by their site’s overall organization of the collection as well as its inconsistent metadata and picture quality.
My second piece of evidence is a discussion post called Two Tales from LIBR 268. In this post, I compared two different versions of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, one published in 1979, the other published in 2009. I examined and evaluated, then decided which of the two was the better adaptation and selection. I selected the 1979 version based primarily on the fact that it has more textual details than the newer version.
My third piece is a discussion post called All in the Family from LIBR 268. For this assignment I was tasked to find and evaluate three children’s books depicting family life from three different decades. I acquired books from the 1960s, the 1980s and one from the 2000s. I found the representation of the 1960s and 1980s books to be the most similar, with a nuclear family structure depicted in both narratives. However, the 1960s and 2000s books had the best writing and characterizations.
Conclusion
Effective management of physical and digital collections requires practicing several core concepts, such as selection of new resources, evaluation and organization of existing resources, and proper preservation of the objects. There are some technical and logistical differences between the requirements of both object types, and as it is common to find collections that contain both types of objects, information professionals must be well-versed in the fundamentals as well as the emerging aspects of these core principles.