UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
SCHOOL OF INFORMATION RESOURCES AND LIBRARY SCIENCE
DIGITAL LIBRARY OF INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGYCOLLECTION DEVELOPMENT INTERNSHIP REPORT
FALL 2005
Student: Daniela SolomonInternship Supervisor: Jeanne Richardson, ASU Collection Development Team Leader;
Email: jeanne.richardson@asu.eduThe Internet offers an easy way for any kind of publication to reach the potential reader. However, budgetary constraints and an increased demand for information access have led universities and non-profit organizations to create institutional repositories and/or open archives. Self-archiving is the deposit of a digital object in a publicly accessible website. Self-archiving ensures quicker dissemination of information, at a far less cost than commercial publication prices. One recognized drawback of self-archived collections, however, is the assurance of quality content, requiring the need to develop collection policies and/or a peer-review process for these collections.
My internship plan has included:
- To create a collection development policy for DLIST
- To create a pathfinder for the cataloging subject.
- To locate available digital resources for cataloging subject and create preliminary metadata for them.
- To achieve a better understanding of the structure, organization, and development of Digital Collections and Open Archives.
- To develop skills in the use of HTML and metadata, as well as to develop practical skills in information evaluation and management.
1. DLIST Collection Development Policy
DLIST is a inter-institutiona, interdisciplinary open archive that collects digital documents in the domains of Library and Information Science and Information Technology. DLIST also includes an open aggregator service DL-Harvest that harvests metadata from ArXiV, E-LIS, OCLC Research and others.
Although DLIST started in 2002 and actually includes 538 documents, no clear collection development policy exists, hence developing such a policy was the main goal of my internship. After reviewing the literature concerned with collection development and policies in general and analyzing the specific issues of collection development relative to electronic media, the Internet, and open archives, I have created the following collection policy:
DLIST Collection Development Policy
The next task of my internship was to evaluate the DLIST collection from the perspective of this newly created collection policy. As of October 2005, DLIST collection included 490 documents. The results of my evaluation are listed in the following table:
pdf documents HTML documents Word documents Power Point documents Text Rich documents Conference papers 53 25 2 3 2 Articles 149 35 12 - - Presentations 22 2 6 46 - Books/Books chapters 13 1 - - - Preprints 9 - 2 - - Reports 34 6 4 - 1 Posters 6 - - - - Thesis 9 - 2 - - Bibliographies 3 3 1 - - Tutorials 3 5 - - - Library Instruction materials - 2 1 - - Guides 4 5 4 - - Datasets 1 1 - - - Others 9 6 2 - - The evaluation has confirmed that all archived documents are from within the specified topics and that all archived documents are of accepted formats, although not all of the accepted document formats are included. Also, the documents types are within the specified types, but again not all accepted documents types are included. The archived documents are classified and, for the most part, conform to the DLIST classification system. In a few cases discrepancies were observed between the documents actual and chosen subject headings. The last observation is the unequal development of the collection, with many documents submitted for specific subjects, and very few or no documents submitted for other topics.
TOP2. Pathfinder for the cataloging subject.
Internet offers an extremely large quantity of information on any topic and trying to organize and evaluate that information is a difficult job. The difficulty comes also from the specific features of information on the web as perishability, quality, trustworthiness, format, and location.
The pathfinder may be found here.
TOP3. Available digital resources for cataloging subject.
While searching and evaluating documents for the cataloging subject pathfinder, I came across some electronic documents that might be of interest for the DLIST collection. The list of documents about Cataloging subject and some surrogate metadata records may be found here. Another important issue relative to self-archiving is Intellectual Property Rights. The authors/copyright owners would have to either submit the documents themselves or grant DLIST submission rights.
One of the recognized issues with the open archives is difficulty in filling them in with works. This can be done by promoting the repository and persuading authors to submit their documents into the archive. DLIST offers the copyright research and deposit service to authors. However, since DLIST, in addition to authors and DLIST staff, also allows registered users to submit documents, it is necessary that the submitter to obtain the copyright owners permission for archiving. Therefore, I have created a sample letter for archiving permission request:
[Date]
Dear [title, recipient name]:
I am [sender name], and I write to seek your permission to archive a paper youve written in the Digital Library of Information Science and Technology (DLIST) repository. DLIST is a cross-institutional interdisciplinary open archive repository specializing in Library and Information Science and Information Technology, based at the School of Information Resources and Library Science, University of Arizona in partnership with the Arizona Health Sciences Center. The primary purpose of DLIST is to serve as the venue of an LIS global scholarly communication consortium.
DLIST would like to archive your paper/website
..,
retrieved online at
...If you are willing to grant DLIST permission to archive the above-mentioned work of authorship, please reply to this email, changing the subject line to License Granted and typing your name and current title at the point indicated below, which will serve as your digital signature.
Your reply will serve as a grant of license to DLIST which shall include the permission to store the above-mentioned work of authorship electronically, to preserve said work of authorship in perpetuity (including document format conversion and media migration as needed), and to make said work of authorship permanently and publicly available online without charge. Your reply will also represent your declaration that said work of authorship is your own intellectual property, as DLIST will rely on your representation and assumes no liability for any breach of copyright.
If you are not the copyright holder for the above-mentioned work of authorship, I would appreciate any contact information you can give me regarding the proper party(ies), including current address(es).
I thank you in advance for your courtesies extended, and hope that you will assent to DLIST including your work of authorship in its archive. If you require any additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely,
[sender name]
Declaration of Ownership and Grant of License
I hereby state that I am the copyright owner of the work of authorship mentioned above and that I grant DLIST the right to store said work of authorship electronically, to preserve said work of authorship in perpetuity (including document format conversion and media migration as needed), and to make said work of authorship permanently and publicly available online without charge.
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_______________________________
Name
_______________________________
Title
_______________________________
Electronic Signature (by typing your full name here you are signifying your intent that this serve as an electronic signature authenticating the grant of license above.)
_______________________________ Date4. Digital Collections and Open Archives.
Digital collections have started to develop as special projects of different institutions that considered digitalization as a solution to increase accessibility and usage of special collections. The developments of Internet and different digital technology have enlarged the types of digital documents to be collected. See here.
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5. HTML Competencies
Since my internship was an online internship, all the work had to be posted on the Internet which means that I had to design many web sites. These web pages may be seen on my webpage.
TOPConclusion
The Collection Development Internship was of great value for me because I gained new knowledge on collection development, digital libraries, open archives and harvesting, and I learned many useful skills in information evaluation and web design. I have gained knowledge on Metadata Rights and licensing, and practical experience in the use of an appropriate language that will prevent possible copyright issues in the future. I also have been introduced to the debatable issues surrounding collection and preservation of digital documents.
I have enjoyed the practical experience offered by this internship and I feel that the internship offered me a great opportunity to enhance the knowledge I gained through the SIRLS program and to be better prepared for the career I preparing for.
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Fall, 2005