ALA Competency 2: Information Resources
INFO 5740, Digital Library Prototype
The purpose of this assignment was to create a prototype for a digital library using Omeka. The URL for my website was submitted for review on July 1, 2020.
This assignment allowed me to explore the intricacies of an open-source software like Omeka. While I have worked with WordPress for more than 10 years now, I had never used this software before. I approached this project with my experience in marketing and content management in my back pocket, and my about page on the site notes that my goal was to share photographs for use in marketing. The framework is from a marketing perspective, but the organization of and metadata for my resources was strictly rooted in librarianship. I also particularly enjoyed learning how to use the plug in StoryMapJS to create a map of the locations of my photographs.
The limitations of the free version of the software (500 MG of storage space) forced me to carefully consider the inclusion of each resource. How did each resource relate to the mission of this library? How large should each collection be? And how did they all interrelate in ways that would be useful to others?
Because of these considerations as I built the website, while it certainly relates to ALA's technical competences in 4A and 4B, I felt this project correlated more strongly to the competences related to information resources, particularly 2B, the acquisition and disposition of resources, 2C, the management of various collections, and 2D, the maintenance of collections.
INFO 5200, Information Organization System
The purpose of this enormous project was to learn and apply the principles of information organization to a hypothetical collection. It was created in four sections over the entire semester; this 40-page Word doc was turned in on April 26, 2020.
While the main purpose of this assignment was to contemplate the organization of resources, competency three, I had to consider what types of resources to include before they were organized. This is explained in section 1.1 of the document, Collection and information objects, which details the selection of resources for the collection.
This consideration relates directly to competence 2B, the evaluation and selection of resources.