INFO 5400, Collection Development Policy
The purpose of this assignment was to understand the plethora of policy that must be created and followed for collection development at any library. This assignment was turned in as a Word doc on August 1, 2021; it has been posted here as a PDF.
This was by far the largest assignment I’ve had to do on my own in library school, coming in at more than 100 pages. While the content I had to create was primarily limited to a length of 20 pages, the appendices of demographic tables (mostly pulled from other assignments or reports) and policies for both Fondren Library and Southern Methodist University created a fun labyrinth of citations and cross references to continually edit and update. It allowed be consider all of the sections one creating a collection development policy would need to include while becoming very familiar with the policies for Fondren.
Points covered in the assignment relate to several of the competencies for information resources, especially the acquisition and disposition of resources (2B), collection management (2C), and collection maintenance (2D).
INFO 5400, Needs Assessment and Gap Assignment
The purposes of these assignments were to do a complete needs assessment and suggest purchases for a chosen library based on gaps in the collection. The needs assessment was turned in as a Word doc on June 28, 2021, the gap assignment on July 11, 2021. They have both been posted here as PDFs:
- Needs Assessment
- Gap Assignment (suggested titles were tracked in this spreadsheet)
These assignments allowed us to explore the process of doing a needs assessment of a library, whether of one section, its services, or its collections as a whole, along with that of selecting new titles for a library. For the needs assessment, I chose to evaluate whether patrons of SMU Libraries have problems accessing electronic resources; the gap assignment focused on expanding diverse titles on cultural intelligence and anti-racism. Given the short summer term, the assessment was not as thorough as it would be during a true needs assessment, but allowed us to consider all the parameters and steps necessary to do one. And while our purchasing at Fondren Library is often driven by purchasing profiles, this fit the project-based way we often fill gaps in the collections.
These assignments directly related to competence 2B, particularly the evaluation of and selection for collections.
INFO 5740, Digital Library Prototype
The purpose of this assignment was to create a prototype for a digital library using Omeka. The URL for my website was submitted for review on July 1, 2020.
This assignment allowed me to explore the intricacies of an open-source software like Omeka. While I have worked with WordPress for more than 10 years now, I had never used this software before. I approached this project with my experience in marketing and content management in my back pocket, and my about page on the site notes that my goal was to share photographs for use in marketing. The framework is from a marketing perspective, but the organization of and metadata for my resources was strictly rooted in librarianship. I also particularly enjoyed learning how to use the plug in StoryMapJS to create a map of the locations of my photographs.
The limitations of the free version of the software (500 MG of storage space) forced me to carefully consider the inclusion of each resource. How did each resource relate to the mission of this library? How large should each collection be? And how did they all interrelate in ways that would be useful to others?
Because of these considerations as I built the website, while it certainly relates to ALA’s technical competences in 4A and 4B, I felt this project correlated more strongly to the competences related to information resources, particularly 2B, the acquisition and disposition of resources, 2C, the management of various collections, and 2D, the maintenance of collections.
INFO 5200, Information Organization System
The purpose of this enormous project was to learn and apply the principles of information organization to a hypothetical collection. It was created in four sections over the entire semester; this 40-page Word doc was turned in on April 26, 2020.
While the main purpose of this assignment was to contemplate the organization of resources, competency three, I had to consider what types of resources to include before they were organized. This is explained in section 1.1 of the document, Collection and information objects, which details the selection of resources for the collection.
This consideration relates directly to competence 2B, the evaluation and selection of resources.