BUILDING SUSTAINABLE COLLECTIONS OF FREE WEB RESOURCES

1
BUILDING SUSTAINABLE COLLECTIONS OF FREE WEB
RESOURCES

• Louis A. Pitschmann

2
NOT ONLY

• Why select free Web resources?
• Why describe free Web resources?

1
3
BUT ALSO,

• STRATEGIC ISSUES HOW BUILDING COLLECTIONS OF
  FREE WEB RESOURCES INFLUENCES EXISTING PRIORITIES
• Human resources
• Access (short and long term)
• Maintenance
• Archiving

2
4
AS WELL AS

• Models for sustainability

3
5
DEFINITION OF TERMS

• Free Web Resource creator and/or host site
  require no compensation for full access to
  content.
• Sustainable maintained over time ongoing
  program, not a temporary project.
• Sustainable collections of free Web resources are
  not free.

4
6
WHY SELECT AND CATALOG FREE WEB SITES?

• Unique Content
• Inadequacies of using standard search engines
• Overwhelming number of results
• Inability to restrict search to specific
  intellectual level
• Relevance factors are not qualitative
• Difficulty in retrieving specialized sites
• Lack of vertical mining

5
7
WHY SELECT...? (CONT.)

• Benefits of human selection and description
• (i.e. human filtering)
• Improved identification and retrieval
• Consistent grouping of related sites
• Predetermined quality criteria
• Content tailored to characteristics of the
  collection

6
8
WHY SPECIALIZED SELECTION CRITERIA ARE APPROPRIATE

• Analog selection criteria alone are inadequate.
• Web resources lack
• editorial review process.
• vetting process.
• physical structure of analog publication.
• formal review (usually).

7
9
WHY SPECIALIZED SELECTION CRITERIA ARE
APPROPRIATE (CONT.)

• Quality is not immediately discernible.
• Authorship
• Authority
• Currency
• Organization of content

8
10
HUMAN REOURCE

• First, identify the desired outcome.
• Then select appropriate staffing model.
• No one model prevails.
• Individual or team?
• Department, team, institution, or consortium?
• Voluntary or paid?
• New duties or expanded duties?
• All models will impact existing priorities,
  workflow,
• and budgets.

9
11
LOOKING FORWARD

• Build on proven models.
• Cooperative Collection Development
• Preprint Archives
• Open Archives Initiatives
• Existing Subject Gateways

10
12
LOOKING FORWARD (CONT.)

• Look beyond North America.
• Manage new priorities in new way.
• Acknowledge that new priorities replace and
• reprioritize existing priorities.
• Librarians should define metadata standards.
• Expect information creators to provide all
  metadata.

11