[DCRM-L] FW: [alcts-eforum] Summary of day one Hidden Collections

[Dooley,Jackie]

Following on my earlier posting, a very brief summary of today's traffic in
the ALCTS e-forum. There were at least 50 messages exchanged, so the summary
is the tip of the iceberg.

Regarding special collections, there were a couple relatively grumpy posts
about how hard it can be to work with special collections departments to get
our stuff cataloged, quickly followed by more measured voices on the
importance of constructive collaboration.

Jackie

-- 
Jackie Dooley
Consulting Archivist
OCLC Research and the RLG Partnership


------ Forwarded Message
From: "Jackson, Mildred" <mljackson at ua.edu>
Reply-To: <alcts-eforum at ala.org>
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 16:59:57 -0600
To: "alcts-eforum at ala.org" <alcts-eforum at ala.org>
Subject: [alcts-eforum] Summary of day one Hidden Collections

Hi,
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the discussion on day one of the
ALCTS e-forum about hidden collections.  It has been a lively, and even
humorous, discussion.  We will continue tomorrow.
Here is a brief discussion of the points from today:

We began with a list of possible definitions or categories of hidden
collections.  

The discussion seemed to focus on two areas - special collections, where we
traditionally think about hidden collections, and serials, specifically
e-journal access.  Government documents also received attention midway
through the day.   
Discussion points included:  what is the sufficient amount of metadata to
locate a collection?  How can we draw various tools together to provide
access to collections? (ex. Access db, excel spreadsheets, EADs, etc.)
Control over collections, and determining the way users find collections.
There was still quite a bit of focus on the catalog as a discovery tool.  We
know from research that this is not the first place students tend to go to
look for material so where or how do we make collections visible to the
Google generation?   Steve Shadle asked the following question: "Does this
resource appear in my library's default search as presented on the library's
home page(whatever form that takes)?  If it doesn't appear in that search,
then it is hidden to some degree."  Perhaps we can begin discussion with
that question tomorrow.  (or anything else that comes to mind!)

Thanks for your participation.

Millie 

Mildred L. Jackson, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Collections
The University of Alabama Libraries
Box 870266
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0266
phone: (205)348-5008
fax: (205)348-8833
mljackson at ua.edu 



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