Collection Definition in Federated Digital Resource Development

Abstract

), Ellen M. Knutson (eknutson@uiuc.edu), Michael Twidale (twidale@uiuc.edu), Oksana Zavalina (zavalina@uiuc.edu)As part of a federation project providing integrated access to over 170 digital collections, we are studying how collections can best be represented to meet the needs of service providers and diverse user communities. This paper reports on recent results from that project on how digital resource developers conceive of and define their collections. Based on content analysis of collection registry records, survey and interview data, and focus groups, we identify collection definition trends including a broadening of target audiences, elaboration of subject representation, and a lack of clearly defined selection criteria. Our findings reveal high variability and ambiguity in the collection construct. We discuss how the concept of collection is being continuously defined through the processes of digital resource development and federation and how rapidly changing conceptualizations are likely to impact adoption, tailoring, and development of digital collections and their use.

The HathiTrust Research Center Workset Ontology: A Descriptive Framework for Non-Consumptive Research Collections

“…That scholars actively undertake collection development activities as a normal method for furthering their research seems incontrovertible [3,8,10,11,12]. While the preceding authors all speak in terms of research collections, it is also clear from their accounts that a great deal of curatorial effort is produced by scholars as they assemble their research collections.…”

“…1 Previous work describing the kinds of relationships that obtain between collections and the things gathered into them relied on the binary predicate isGatheredInto(x,y) as the key property that supplies a collection's identity conditions [14,15]. It is described at length in Wickett et al [16] While there are many relevant themes that interweave throughout the various accounts, two particular themes emerge from among them [3,8,10,11,12].…”

Enabling long-term oceanographic research: Changing data practices, information management strategies and informatics

“…In this example, data management grows to a community model addressing both local and global information management responsibilities. 4 data from one or more sources for a particular purpose, faces difficulties such as fluidity of digital representations, differences of purpose and diversity or lack of collection membership criteria (Lynch, 2002;Palmer et al, 2006). For example, should a dataset related to a collection in time be included if collected from nearby but outside the designated study area for that collection?…”

Ncore

“…There is much literature in which the term's meaning is assumed to be understood, yet in those instances where a "collection" is defined, it is not always defined consistently, nor do these definitions always share the same characteristics [10,20,25].…”