INFO 289 ePortfolio – Dr. Patricia Franks
SJSU School of Information / Fall 2015
Patricia Ayame Thomson
Competency F
Use the basic concepts and principles related to the selection, evaluation, organization, and preservation of physical and digital information items
Introduction
Since the advent of technology, there is an abundance of information available on the Internet. In order for information professionals to provide relevant, accurate, and current physical and digital resources to the community, it is important to possess the ability to select, evaluate, organize, and preserve information items. These four principles and concepts are the fundamental criteria of collection management. As a result, it is imperative for information professionals to be knowledgeable about the core principles of selection, evaluation, organization, and preservation of library items. I will define the four principles below.
Selection
The selection process requires the information professional to select the best quality library items for the least amount of money. Staying within the budget, the selection process includes considerations such as potential relevance to the community, timeliness, attention from reviewers and critiques, authority and qualification of the author, various formats in communicating the content, scarcity in the subject matter of the published materials, and ideas that represent a wide variety of perspectives.
Evaluation
In order to select the library items for acquisition, the information professional must evaluate the items under consideration. Essentially, evaluation means to make a judgment about the number, amount, and/or value of library items. One way to appraise library items for selection is to look at scholarly reviews in the trade papers and the latest booklist recommendations. A thorough evaluation of library items is necessary for information professionals to make the best judgments about which items to acquire and maintain for the library.
Organization
Effective organization of physical items within the library walls, as well as digital resources on the library’s catalog and website is extremely important. The primary purpose of organizing library items is to make them easily accessible to patrons. Physical space is always a valuable commodity in the library. Another purpose of organization in a physical library is to create as much space as possible for new incoming library materials, as well as room for patrons to sit.
Conservation which is weeding and discarding of library items is also a necessary part of the information organization to make room for new library resources. The criteria for weeding and discarding library items depend on the condition, relevance, and circulation records. In addition, the primary classifications systems generally used in libraries are the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system and the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) system.
Preservation
Rubin (2010) states that preservation of human and historical records are one of the oldest practices of libraries (p. 367). In the age of technology, preservation of information items can be in both physical and digital formats. For example, physical items can range from original artwork, newspaper clippings, historical records, ancient documents, first folios, and other rare items stored in archival libraries. Also, original items are being reformatted and digitized into various formats for the purposes of electronic preservation.
Furthermore, the preservation and conservation unit deals with various techniques and duties such as developing and administering the library’s preservation policy, protecting the items from potential harm, creating and implementing disaster plans, deacidifying archival items, repairing and restoring damaged items, and storing materials in an optimal environment. Rubin (2010) also states that preservation is often associated with old and deteriorating items. However, “concern for preservation begins with the proper handling of newly acquired materials as well as aging ones. The better the preservation techniques that are used from the start, the longer the material is likely to survive” (Rubin, 2010, p. 368). I believe my comprehension and description above about preservation will aid me in applying the principles in the future.
Three Artifacts as Evidence to Fulfill Competency F
I respectfully present three artifacts as evidence to fulfill the requirements of Competency F.
First Artifact
Collection Map Slide Presentation
LIBR 266 – Collection Management
The first artifact presented is from Dr. Loertscher’s course LIBR 266—Collection Management for the San José State University, School of Library and Information Science program. By completing the assignment to create a collection map, the semester-long process gave me a thorough understanding about collection management process including the core principles of selection, evaluation, and organization.
For Dr. Loertscher’s assignment, I created two five-minute slide presentations of collection maps on the Google Presentation program. The first part of the slide presentation is an environmental scan of the City of Santa Monica including statistical information about the various demographics in the community. The demographic breakdown of the City of Santa Monica includes age, race, income-level, education, businesses, and percentages of families, non-families, homeowners, and renters. Creating a visual representation of the environmental scan helped me better understand the information needs of the community.
In the second-half of the slide presentation, I represented in graphs the Santa Monica Main Public Library’s circulation statistics, number of tourists, and number of increased membership. Additionally, I created collection maps for each of the collections in the library including fiction, nonfiction, children’s, reference, special collection, DVDs, music CD’s, periodicals, audio books, and downloadable eBooks. To demonstrate my understanding about the concepts of collection management, I also included slides about weeding based on the criteria of condition, relevance, and circulation records.
In hindsight, the difficulty of the assignment was converting the mathematical and statistical information from the environmental scan and various library collections into visual representations. The primary intention of converting the statistic information into visual aids was so members of the library board, stockholders, city council, friends of the library, and patrons can literally get a picture of the width and depth of each collection maintained at the Santa Monica Main Public Library.
Although it was an extremely challenging project, due to the fact that I had to learn to create slide presentations on Google Presentations and simultaneously convert the statistics into visual graphs, I am pleased with the results. I believe the slide presentation demonstrates my understanding, ability, and knowledge about the three principles of selection, evaluation, and organization.
Second Artifact
Collection Develop Policy
LIBR 266 – Collection Management
The second artifact presented is from Dr. Loertscher’s course LIBR 266—Collection Management from the San José State University, School of Library and Information Science. For the assignment, we had to write an essay discussing and comparing a variety of collection development policies from various libraries and decide on one that we liked the most. I discovered that the collection policy of an information organization should be broad and flexible enough to keep up with the ever-changing technological advances and formats. In addition, information professionals also have the responsibility of keeping up with the changing demographics in the community to meet their specific information needs.
Based on what I learned from the assignment, collection development policies vary slightly with each library, but the fundamental concepts of selection and evaluation remain the same whether the library item is physical or electronic. For the above reasons, I believe this essay serves as evidence of my competency about selection and evaluation.
Third Artifact
Preservation of Digital and Physical Information Items
LIBR 204 – Organization and Management
The third artifact presented is from Professor Brian Reynolds’ course, LIBR 204—Library Organizations and Management from the San José State University, School of Library and Information Science. The assignment discusses the difficulties and challenges of preserving physical and digital items in the future of librarianship. Due to the ever-changing face of technology, questions emerge such as the best way to preserve library items and who should make the determination about which items are worth keeping. The essay addresses many solutions and methods for preservation.
Creating space for physical items in the library and keeping up-to-date with the changing electronic formats are also discussed in the essay. For example, we examined internet archives, such as the Gutenberg Project at the Library of Congress and the Universal Library Project led by Carnegie Mellon University who are attempting to preserve all physical books in digital formats.
In addition, my current internship at the American Film Institute catalog department is in the process of creating an authoritative database of all the movies ever made in the United States. I am participating as a researcher at the Margaret Herrick—Motion Picture, Arts, and Sciences Archival Library. Along with my internship experience, I present this artifact to demonstrate my knowledge about the concept of preservation of physical and digital information items.
Conclusion: Knowledge about Collection Management
In addition to the above three artifacts above, I believe I learned a lot about collection management in Dr. Loertscher’s LIBR 266—Collection Management course. Based on the professor’s assignments along with the three artifacts, I am now able to successfully select, evaluate, organize, and preserve both physical and digital information items for information organizations. Finally, I learned that collection management involves constant maintenance of library items including the cyclical process of evaluation, selection, acquisition, organization, preservation, mending, and weeding. Based on the knowledge about the fundamental concepts of collection management, I believe I have fulfilled my requirements for Competency F.