And a brilliant example of “practice-in-theory” is reflective practitioner par excellence Thomas Mann, the reference maven and fearless gadfly of the Library of Congress. His most recent paper, “What is Distinctive about the Library of Congress in Both its Collections and its Means of Access to Them And The Reasons LC Needs to Maintain Classified Shelving of Books Onsite, And A Way to Deal Effectively with the Problem of ‘Books on the Floor’” can be found at the Library of Congress Professional Guild website. While it’s not formally “published,” it most certainly is “diffusing” rapidly throughout the community of practice!
We’re doing a little bit with SourceForge in LIS 5433 right now, which led in a roundabout way over to HackNMod, (don’t ask!!), which led me to RemaininPlay, a collection of “obsolete” commercial games that have been turned into freeware by their copyright holders. Very cool! Now I can bring back happy memories of 1989 by playing Micropolis, (if I can scrounge up an appropriate platform, which is part of the reason why this is a “thinking about collections” post. Is this open source version of SimCity truer to the original than the current commercial versions? All kinds of preservation issues here. Let the sims begin!)
In the rather unlikely event that anyone is curious about what will be covered in the “Digital Collections” course (KM/LIS 5990) this coming spring, here’s a short version of the syllabus:
COURSE TITLE: KM/LIS 5990 DIGITAL COLLECTIONS
Catalog Course Description: 3 hours. Introduction to the creation and development of digital collections and to the technical requirements for storage and dissemination of digital materials. Topics will include creation, development, organization, maintenance, and use of digital collections. Students will explore a variety of techniques and technologies for digitizing materials, evaluate the strengths and limitations of current efforts in creating, collecting and organizing digital materials, and explore the different opportunities and challenges of digital libraries, repositories, and archives.
Interpretation of Course Description: This is a survey course that introduces students to theories and practices relating to digital collections of different kinds. Assigned readings will explore major issues and current trends in creating and maintaining digital collections. A key part of the semester will involve designing a digital collection for a specific audience or institution and implementing the preliminary stages of the proposed collection.
Audience (level, environment/setting): General elective; advanced; appropriate for both KM and MLIS students. Offered even-numbered Springs. Online format.
Expectations: Students should be able to use D2L, including accessing news and contents, participating in discussion boards, and submitting assignments through folders; and produce documents that are professional in appearance using word processing software. Students are encouraged to be familiar with the use of scanning software, digital photography, and relevant metadata tools prior to entering this class. Use of specific collection management software (e.g., OMEKA, ContentDM) will be introduced during the semester.
Textbook: None (the ones that are affordable are out of date, and the ones that are up to date are not affordable!) but there will be a significant number of readings every week. Consider yourself warned!
Topics:
• Historical background of collections
• Contemporary convergence of collecting institutions
• Contemporary digital collection examples
• Collection philosophies
• Collection preservation issues
• Collection best practices
• Usability and retrieval
• Collection economics
• Collection copyright issues
• Text in collections: special problems
• Images in collections: special problems
• Multimedia in collections: special problems
• Data curation
• The future of collections
• Competencies relevant for digital collections librarian and similar positions.
Opportunities for utilizing relevant real-world skills and technology:
Students will use a variety of technologies and software to build sample collections.
Am currently reading Holocaust historian Timothy Ryback’s brilliant Hitler’s Private Library (about Hitler’s own collection of books, now located, somewhat surprisingly, in the Library of Congress), and coincidentally have just came across Melville’s Marginalia, a remarkable collection of books from Herman Melville’s own personal library, now located (also rather surprisingly) in Boise.
This is, of course, another source of knowledge that we’re unlikely to have about authors (though it seems wrong to class both Hitler and Melville in that “ideal” category, it’s all too accurate, considering how influential their writings have been in very different ways) in the future, given current trends toward e-books and the associated loss of what we might call “core memory” in another context….
Ah, the Computer History Museum! But, where’s HAL?
Well, I wasn’t even thinking about collections this morning, until this magically appeared in my inbox!
“The International Shark Attack File contains about 2700 individual investigations of shark attacks world-wide and is housed in two five-drawer file cabinets.”
You can’t get access to these files unless you’re a recognized researcher. This is a good thing, I think. Not all collections have to be “open.”
I thought I was done with my little collection of those who are “theorizing the collection,” but I can’t resist another take on it, this one from IBMer James W. Cortada. Dr. Cortada is well known for his historical work on the evolution of computing in American organizations, especially The Digital Hand trilogy, but I didn’t realize that he was actually a bit of a collection theorist until I saw his “Save the Books” in Perspectives, the American Historical Association’s newsletter.
He’s right about the endless weeding of this type of material in most libraries (“obsolete” computer manuals, for instance, are a mainstay of library booksales around the country) but wrong, I think, in thinking that this is a library issue: it’s an archival one, and companies like IBM (who gutted their own corporate libraries over the past decades, as I can attest) need to contribute to this type of collection, both in terms of material and support.
And who better to promote such an effort than Dr. Cortada himself?
Okay, grades have now been transmitted to the SLIS office for the just-ended “Digital Collections” class and I can finally reveal the name of the project I personally liked the best this semester. Even though we had a number of really interesting and impressive projects, both on OMEKA and elsewhere, my secret favorite was Maureen’s flannel boards project. Every time I think of flannel boards as a digital collection complete with metadata, I just have to smile. (Gee, I’d love to see that one at OLA this spring!)
Even though Digital Collections is finishing up, I still can’t seem to stop thinking about collections. For instance, the ever-growing digital collection of all the chess games ever played, and a piece by Edward Tenner in this month’s The Atlantic on the reasons why chess masters are becoming ever younger. This would be an interesting angle on digital literacy to explore…..
