We've been engaged in this specific thing at our libraries for the last
several months in an effort to do some needed pruning. I asked around
code4lib prior to this project and didn't find much so I'll be interested
to hear from others. Here's what we came up with for a general definition
of a database as a starting point:
"Databases are search engines for curated scholarly information such as:
*Journals and articles
*Newspapers
*Data sets
*eBooks"
We had a few others we've batted around but that's what we're settling on
for now. Anything we pay a license for as the libraries is automatically
added - the question is what free resources are added. To that end we've
introduced Open Access status for our free resources. So, the free stuff we
list as databases is deemed open access or we do something else with it. We
happen to have an open access librarian (new position) who is guiding this
review process and we've created a form for staff to fill out if they want
new items added and our OA librarian will review. In this review process
(and it's still very new) we will be looking at things like legal issues
(i.e., SciHub), size/importance, and then whether or not it matches that
definition. Still early days, so this may all change!
A decision tree document would be great, we may end up making something
like this I think. I do know (nudge Dre) that NCSU has a decision tree kind
of document for general web publishing, fwiw.
-Charlie Morris
Penn State University Libraries
On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 11:13 AM, Charles Ed Hill <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> Just wondering if anybody has some sort of policy or decision tree for what
> does and doesn't get added to any kind of centralized library database
> list, i.e. what, if any, freely available resources do you list. We've been
> having some discussions internally and I was curious what others have found
> makes sense/if there's any consensus.
>
> For reference, we are a mid-sized (~5,000 FTE) state academic institution.
>
> Thanks everyone!
> Ed Hill
> Systems and Digital Services Librarian
> Westfield State University
>
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