repositories for the rest of us: Scope creep

2008/03/12: Scope creep

I need to define the scope of this blog. Since I'm not a repository rat at MPOW, calling this blog repositories for the rest of us seems a bit bungling. I considered changing the title but decided to keep it. I am still interested in repositories. Shift happens. Shift will continue to happen. There is no point in changing the blog title every time my career takes a turn.

The common theme of my professional life has been the intersection of people and digital collections. I have always worked with digital repositories. I still do.The title is malleable enough to handle the vagaries of my career path. Please consider the "repositories for the" portion of the title to be referring to repositories in the broadest of senses. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, when "repository" is used as a noun it means, "a vessel, receptacle, chamber, etc., in which things are or may be placed, deposited, or stored" (2nd ed.1989).

Repositories are containers, physical and virtual, in which you put things, stuff, and junk. Repositories is a general enough term for a blog that writes about library and information science stuff.

The "...rest of us" within the blog title is a bit more difficult to justify. The phrase implies that there is some select group out there classed differently than "us." Who is the "us" in "...the rest of us?" Does having an "us" in the title necessarily mean there has to be a "them" to which "us" is compared and contrasted? Is there a binary opposition? I don't think it's that simple.

When I began this blog about a year ago I was a repository rat in the second wave of institutions creating IRs. The "...rest of us" meant non-ARL institutions building repositories without big grants or dedicated repository staff. The "them" were early adopters. Now I'm proud to say that I work for "them." The "us" vs. "them" dichotomy doesn't work for me anymore. What group does this blog purport to serve now? Who do repositories exist for, if not for "us?"

I write to get stuff out of my head. To make ideas tangible. To say what I think. There's lots going in the universe of libraries and librarianship. This blog is my effort to make sense of things I'm working on career-wise. My last blogging effort had more of a purpose -- to provide facts about RFID in Libraries and my opinions regarding implementations. I don't think I've really found a purpose or a voice for this blog yet. I know it's going to evolve over time. I haven't been writing as much as I would like since starting the new gig. I have been overwhelmed (but in a good way!) with my first management level position.

I don't know who "...the rest of us" are. It could be pretty much anybody. It could be those of us who seek explanation or instruction in how repositories function. It could be those of us who want to find, identify, select, and obtain information resources from repositories which were not created specifically for us. "Scholarly communication" seems to refer only to the communication between scholars. The Internet is making academia more accessible to layman scholars. Maybe "...the rest of us" is those of us who want to participate in learned discourse although we are not tenured faculty. I do know that "...the rest of us" are folks who support the "Open" movements (access, data, source).

"...rest of us" is vague and uncertain. Librarianship is vague and uncertain so "...rest of us" can stay. I like alliteration anyway.

Labels: metadata, scope