Weeding your repository

We will readily weed a book collection because it is seen as a normal function. However, can we weed an institutional repository? If someone created this information which related to our institution, and it contains information that "might" be useful, can we throw it out? What if the information is electronic and is seemingly taking up "no" space?

Actually, this topic came up recently when talking to Peter Verheyen. We both acknowledged that one might weed a digital collection, deciding what to keep long-term and what to throw away. If you think of your digital assets like the books you acquire, it is only natural to think that some may only be useful for the short-term. You might even create digital assets that you intend to use and keep for a limited period of time.

Even those who blazing the trail of digital preservation acknowledge that not all things may be preserved equally. But when we think of an institutional digital repository, can we envision weeding it?

In fact, the materials should be reviewed before entering the repository and those with low value should be culled, as well as duplicates. As materials enter the repository, there should be a clear expectation for the length of time they will be kept, with the recognition that not all items will be kept the same length of time. (For example, some academic course materials might only be kept for four years, while course catalogues might be kept indefinitely.) When the deletion dates arise, you might decide to review what will be deleted (perhaps only by category) to ensure that the material is not needed.

By the way, this type of weeding is no different than what occurs with document retention schedules that are created (and used) in many organizations. [Many refer to document retention schedules as document deletion schedules, since the schedule tell you what to retain as well as what to throw away.]

Weeding is a necessary evil. It serves a purpose. It ensure that we keep what is valuable and let go of those things that are no longer of value. Could weeding delete something that we'll want later? Maybe. But in order to keep our repositories useful, it is a risk we'll have to take.

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Technorati tags: institutional repository, knowledge management, km, information management

Institutional repositories

When you think about the information your organization needs to have access to -- and those materials that your users want to access - what do you think of? Likely your answer will depend on where you sit in the organization. You might, for example, think of the materials that are in the archives. If you work in the "communications" department, you might think of current and historic press releases, annual reports, and other documents that talk about the institution. If you're in human resources (personnel), you might want access to current and old employee manuals, employee files, union contracts and other documents that are important to how the institution relates to those that work for it. And if your a user (consumer), you might want information from the institution that tells you about its products and services, its history and its financial standing.

In many institutions, the documents above may be in different files (paper or electronic) and perhaps even stored in different buildings (or locations). The danger is that as those materials will be maintained in separate systems rather than combined -- in some manner -- into an institutional repository.

One definition of an institutional repository is "an online locus for collecting and preserving -- in digital form -- the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution." While an institutional repository is focused on collecting and preserving, many organizations -- especially for-profit organizations -- have been looking into knowledge management. According to Colquhoun-John Ferguson & Scott Goldie, "Knowledge management is...[an] area which has introduced a methodology for the planned capture and re-use of organisational knowledge."

Re-use. It is a simple word, but what are your expectations of reuse? Mine are that I can take something that I created before, modify it and save it as a new version. Yours might be that you can continue to modify the same document, save it with the same name, and have the IR/KM do version control for you. Someone else might want to continue to refer to the same document, until it is replaced with a new version, and then wants that old version to be archived (but not deleted) so that it is part of the institution's history.

As I look at institutional repositories online (e.g., Georgia State University), I know that my view of them is broader than how they are currently being defined, at least in academia. But should we limit what an institutional repository is? Can it be -- function as -- a knowledge management system? Maybe like many other things, the definition is in the eye of the beholder. In my eyes, the institutional repository should be a place for the entire institution. What do you think?

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Technorati tags: institutional repository, knowledge management, KM, information management