Collection Development: Exercises
Analyze Digital Collection Exercise
One the best methods to understand the impact of collection development decisions is to analyze an existing digital collection. Below are several websites that might be considered as digital libraries. Select one of the sites or one of your own and analyze it for the following elements:
- Scope and mission
- Intended audience(s)
- Flexibility of formats
- Quality
- Accuracy
- Completeness
- Authority
- Update
- Copyright./licensing information
- Other
Based upon your observations, prepare a brief paper (500-1000 words) that describes briefly the elements listed above for the collection chosen, and then describe how well (or how poorly) this site meets your expectations for digital libraries. Explain your answer.
See Sample Collections for a listing of existing digital collections to use.