"Good" Digital Collections

Tech Talks Presentation by Daniel Gelaw Alemneh, January 27, 2010

Introduction

A collection is a group of resources organized around a theme or topic or some criteria that can be articulated. The digital environment has now introduced new resource types, new partners, and new user expectations into the current information landscape. Improvements in network capacity and capability drive more powerful data output and enable individuals, scholars, communities and networks to establish contacts, exchange data, and share knowledge in various formats regardless of temporal and spatial restrictions and the types of devices used.

Digital collection development has moved from being an additional activity to a core service in many libraries. In fact, collaboration, social networking, and information resource management are merging, forcing changes to existing collection development policies and strategies. In its networked role, the library will continue to support research and dissemination to the extent that it is tightly networked into the increasing cluster of inter-institutional collaborations that enable the creation and use of diverse scholarly content.

In this Tech Talk, Daniel Alemneh discusses the principles that apply to "good" digital collections and analyzes how objects, metadata, and the user interface together create the users' experience of a collection.

Full Presentation

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"Good" Digital Collections (PDF)

About the Author:  Daniel Gelaw Alemneh is a metadata management specialist for the UNT Libraries' Digital Projects Unit.