ALA Competency 3: Organization of Recorded Knowledge & Information
INFO 5200: Information Organization Project - Completed May 2020
The goal of this project was to create an information organization system for a hypothetical collection that we came up with. The project lasted the entire semester and required us to turn in four separate drafts in which we incrementally worked on different aspects of the project. By the end of fourth draft, we had complete organization systems for our hypothetical collections which would allow us to handle any potential objects that could fit into the collection.
As I reflect on this project, I realize that really did enjoy working on it. It was quite tough at times just in terms of workload, but I really enjoyed the problem solving that I had to do to create a workable organization system. It was very helpful for my professional development because it gave me some great insights into what it takes to develop an information organization system from scratch. I now have a greater appreciation for the work that it takes to setup a library and makes collections accessible. The work that I did for this project has given me the confidence to know that I can develop an information organization system from scratch if I need to in the future. I believe this assignment fits well into this core competency because it shows that I understand the principles of information organization and how to develop useful metadata and cataloging rules.
INFO 5090: Polykarp Kusch Collection Finding Aid - Completed March 21, 2022
For the practicum, I volunteered in the University Archives at the University of Texas at Dallas. My practicum supervisor at the Archives, Dr. Thomas Allen, gave me a collection to process from beginning to end so that I could get experience with doing that kind of work. The collection I was assigned to was the Polykarp Kusch Collection. Dr. Kusch was a Nobel Laureate and professor of physics at UTD from 1975 till his retirement from teaching in 1982. The final deliverable for the project was a finding aid that I created using ArchivesSpace.
I really liked working on this project. That being said, although it was very interesting at times, sometimes it could be a bit of a drag. The part that took the most time was the weeding of the collection. I had to look through a lot of folders and piles of paper and remove all the materials that were not essential to the collection. The archive does practice MPLP, but there were sensitive materials from former students interspersed with actually relevant materials in the collection so I had to find those and remove them so that they could be properly disposed of. Once I finished weeding the collection, I had to come up with a useful intellectual arrangement for it. This was also sort of challenging because the collection could be split up in many different ways. Eventually I settled on an arrangement that I thought would work well, though. This project fits into this core competency because it shows that I understand the principles of archival arrangement and description. It also shows that I can process a collection from beginning to end and make it accessible to an end-user.