LBSC 671 - Creating Information Infrastructures
Spring 2014 - Section 0101
Assignment P2 - Selection a Setting and a Collection

Over the course of the semester, each student will focus most of their assignments on a collection and a setting of their choice. The purpose of this assignment is for each student to make an initial selection of a collection and a setting.

A setting is the "institutional" setting of a collection. In other words, who is responsible for it, why do they have it, to whom do they wish to provide access, and what will those users do with it. Some familiar settings include libraries (public, academic, special), archives (government, commercial), and schools. Other settings might include families, clubs, churches, historical societies, or the open Internet. And surely you can think of others.

A collection is, just as the name says, some stuff. Not just a random bunch of stuff, but some stuff that has some coherence, some reason for being thought of together, some "meaning" in the setting. Some examples include the book collection in a school library, the journal collection in Maryland's engineering library, the scientific papers published by a research lab, or the family histories of members of a church. Note that the collection has meaning in the setting, so we rarely find it useful to think of the collection without simultaneously thinking about the setting.

The key to getting this assignment right is to select a setting and a collection that you actually care about. It matters not whether you select a large collection or a small one, or a traditional setting or a novel one. But it does matter that the setting actually has a need for some information infrastructure -- some way of organizing, accessing, and supporting the use of the collection in the setting.

As a running example that I will use throughout the course, the setting I will be using is NASA (the organization that flew people to the Moon) and the collection I will be using is the records of the Apollo 15 mission (which is thought of by some as one of the most audacious missions of exploration ever conducted). I have selected this not because it is a particularly good example -- hundreds of other examples would be equally good -- but because I actually am interested in the Apollo missions, and I am actually working (in my research) on organizing some of the records of those missions. So when I spend time on this, I am spending time on something that I personally care about. That's what you should be doing -- your goal in this assignment is to select a setting and a collection that, when you work on it, will capture your interest and make the class "fun" (or, at least, satisfying).

Another goal of this project is to begin the process of sharing what you are learning with your classmates. To do this, we will use a wiki that your classmates will be able to see. You can get to your Wiki by clicking on "Pages" on the left navigation bar on ELMS. Label your assignment with your name and the fact that this is P2 (since many of your future assignments will share the same Wiki page). Don't forget to click the "Save Changes" button when you're done!

Your answer should have three parts:

1. Some background on what it is you are interested in doing and why
2. A concise description of the setting. It is sufficient to describe a specific institution (e.g., a specific archive, not archives generally) or some similar level of definition (e.g., family records for a specific family.
3. A description of the content. Don't get carried away, but also don't just say "books" or something like that. Tell me enough about the content so that I can get a sense for what might be involved in organizing it.

An example of a complete submission for this assignment is available.

Questions are always welcome!