Draft Collection Development Policy for the Topic Hub
1/22/01

[comments should be directed to Crispin Stutzman (cstutzman@pprc.org)]

Adopted 4/24/01

Table of Contents (to be used on the web-version)

Introduction
Why Develop and Publish a Collection Development Policy?
Audience
What is a Scope Policy?
Draft Scope Policy

1. Information Coverage
1.1 Subject Matter
1.2 Acceptable Sources
1.3 Acceptable Information Format
1.4 Acceptable Levels of Difficulty
1.5 Acceptable Types of Resources
1.6 Advertising
2. Access Issues
2.1 Technology
2.2 Cost
2.3 Registration
2.4 Copyright
3. Resource Description
3.1 Metadata

Quality Selection Criteria

Introduction

This collection development policy is intended to help the P2Rx centers develop topic hubs and includes definitions of:

· the scope of the collection, and
· the quality selection criteria.

TOP

Why Develop and Publish a Collection Development Policy for the Topic Hub?
There are a number of reasons to create a collection policy, and to readily share it with both authors and users of the topic hub:

· It helps users to appreciate that the service is selective and quality controlled.
· It helps users to understand the level of quality of information they will find.
· It helps those authoring the topic hub to be consistent in their selection and to maintain the quality of the collection.
· It can be used to train new staff and contributors.
· It ensures consistency in collections that are developed by a distributed team.

TOP

Audience
The primary intended audience for the topic hub is the technical assistance provider (or environmental assistance provider) that has direct relationships with the private and public sectors to deliver timely and accurate information about compliance, waste reduction, and other environmental topics. The Advanced Technology Environmental Education Center (ATEEC) has published a sample list of environmental service providers job titles at http://www.ateec.org/DEF-TABL.HTML.

TOP

What is a Scope Policy?
A scope statement will typically outline:

· The subject areas covered by the topic hub
· The types of resources covered by the topic hub (i.e. do we include print material?)

The scope policy states what is and what is not to be included in the topic hub. The criteria of this policy are the first filter through which the resources pass, and so are the most general criteria. They will tend to involve black and white decisions - either a resource falls within the scope or it does not. Resources falling outside the scope will be rejected, and those falling within it will go on through the rest of quality selection process, and be evaluated in the light of the rest of the quality criteria.

reminders to topic hub authors:
· Be Clear About Your Purpose
· A high quality Internet resource is one that satisfies the information needs of the user.
· The most important thing to consider in choosing the scope criteria for a service will be the aims of the service and the target audience.

TOP

Draft Scope Policy

1. Information Coverage

1.1 Subject Matter

The Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx) topic hubs will select information of relevance and support the needs of environmental service providers and the clients particularly as they work in the area of pollution prevention.

The EPA's official definition of pollution prevention means "source reduction" as defined in the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, but also includes other practices that reduce or eliminate the creation of pollutants through (1) increased efficiency in the use of raw materials, energy, water, or other resources, or (2) protection of natural resources by conservation.

The scope of the publications included in the P2Rx topic hubs include:

Topic Overview & Background - demographic industry information useful to policy makers, grant writers, trade groups, researchers, journalists, and others.

Operations - descriptions of typical material inputs, processes used, and wastes produced and checklists to help assess best management practices for a typical operation.

Reasons to Change Current Behavior - links to fact sheets, checklists, service providers and other resources to help answer regulatory questions. These apply to the waste generated in typical operations.

Pollution Prevention Opportunities - information about alternatives to reduce waste in the input and process portion of the operations. Information includes case studies, success stories, waste reduction guides, and technical assistance provider contacts.

Where to Go For Help - information such as lists of vendors, consultants, trade associations, and others who provide services to this industry, or who offer expertise to the community discussed in a particular hub.

A list of subjects currently covered by the P2Rx topics hubs is:

· Lithographic printing
· Procurement
· Here we can place our list of completed hubs

TOP

1.2 Acceptable Sources

Information from academic, government, commercial, trade and industry, non-profit and private sources are all acceptable provided that they fall under the acceptable subject matter criteria and quality criteria.

1.3 Acceptable Information Format

While on-line resources offer unparalleled convenience, some resources available only in hard-copy remain valuable. If it is not feasible to add a hard-copy resource to the web (because of copyright, size, etc.), the Sector Topic Hubs will provide a means to find and access this material.

If a hard-copy resource is being considered for inclusion in a hub, use the following criteria to evaluate it:

1) Does the resource meet the same criteria for quality, reliability, usability, and pertinence to the topic as those established for on-line resources?

2) Can the resource become web-based? (Is it a convenient length? Is it restricted by copyright? Would the author agree to conversion to a web format? Could it reside at the author’s site or on a P2Rx Center’s site?) Documents that are eligible for web publishing should be published and included in the hub as on-line documents.

3) Does the resource duplicate or complement existing web-based information? If available on-line resources provide the same information contained in a hard-copy resource, there is no need to include the hard-copy resource in the collection.

4) Can the resource be easily obtained either through the national interlibrary loan system; a government document clearinghouse; or by a direct request to the producer? If a valuable hard-copy resource is not in the interlibrary loan system and not reliably available from the publisher, the topic hub author must take responsibility for adding the resource to the interlibrary loan system before including it in the hub.

TOP

1.4 Acceptable Levels of Difficulty

The content of the resources should be at a level suitable for higher education. Information that is scholarly rather than popular is the preferred choice. (this point requires discussion/probably reworking and rewording.)

TOP

1.5 Acceptable Types of Resources

Resources should be readily available. Most will be available on the Internet. Some P2Rx centers may decide to include print resources in specific topic hubs where few resources are available online for that topic.

Information intended for use only by an individual or local group is unacceptable. Resources consisting entirely of links to other resources will be rejected unless there is substantial value added information by means of annotations, etc.

Resources may be of many different types:

Article/report
Audio/video
Case study/success story
Fact sheet/checklist
Manual/handbook/curriculum
List
Periodical
Calendar
Software/electronic tool
Web site
Chapter
Proceedings
Other resources

TOP

1.6 Advertising

Resources that consist solely or mainly of advertising will be excluded from the topic hub.

TOP

2. Access Issues

2.1 Technology

Resources using advanced WWW technology (Java applications, frames, etc.) will be considered but users will be given appropriate warning in the catalogue record that the resource is dependent on suitable technology.

TOP

2.2 Cost

Commercial or fee based resources will be considered but appropriate information on cost must be provided to the user in the catalogue record.

TOP

2.3 Registration

Resources which require the user to register before use will be considered but appropriate information on registration must be provided to the user in the catalogue record.

TOP

2.4 Copyright

Only items where P2Rx has obtained copyright permission (if necessary) will be selected to be linked to the topic hub.

TOP

3. Resource Description

3.1 Metadata

There should be sufficient information within the resource to create a catalogue record. The minimum amount of information would be a title, URL and originating organization or organization responsible for the resource.

This document is the scope policy for the Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange Topic Hub. Any resources that fall outside the scope criteria of this document should be automatically rejected. Resources within the scope of the document will be assessed according to quality selection criteria.

TOP

Quality Selection Criteria

1. Content

a. Detecting Validity
b. Detecting Accuracy
c. Detecting Completeness
d. Detecting Coverage and Comprehensiveness

2. Authority

a. Detecting the Authority and Reputation of the Source

3. Information maintenance

4. Presentation

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

1. Content
When evaluating websites, we want to include sites with high-quality content. To evaluate the quality of a site's content, we should ask these questions:

· What is the scope of the content?
· Does the content scope match that of each well-defined hub?
· Who is the intended audience?
· What is its purpose?
· Is it up to date?
· Is it accurate (as far as we can determine)?

f the content of a site appears valid, accurate, complete & comprehensive it is suitable for inclusion in the hub. If it fails on one or more of these categories, the author should probably reject it.

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

a. Detecting Validity
Questions to ask:
· Does the resource appear to be honest and genuine?
· Has the information already been filtered by a third party?
· Is the resource available in another format? (i.e. a book or CD-ROM)
· Is the information well researched?
· Is any bias made clear and is it of an acceptable level?

Clues to look for:
· References and bibliographies
· A statement of the source of the information
· A statement of the aims and objectives of the site
· Mention of any quality checks the information has passed through
· A URL which supports claims in the content

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

b. Detecting Accuracy
Questions to ask:
· Has the information been checked by a third party (i.e. publisher, editor or peer reviewer)?
· Where doubt about accuracy exists can the information content be cross-checked with a reliable source?
· Is the provider of the information likely to be well motivated to provide accurate information?

Clues to look for:
· Typographical errors
· Spelling mistakes and bad grammar
· Bibliographies and references

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

c. Detecting Completeness
Questions:
· Is the resource available in full and not "under construction"?
· Is the resource available in full text (rather than bibliographic or descriptive information only)?
· Are there any dead links or empty files?
· Is there any missing information?
· Does the information available agree with the promises made?
· Check to see if information is available in full or if abstracts, titles or "tasters" only are given

Clues:
· Any scope statement for the site
· The contents page
· Grayed out (not yet live) links
· Site maps

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

d. Detecting Coverage and Comprehensiveness
Questions to ask:
· Does the information go into sufficient depth?
· Does the resource cover the subject matter adequately?
· Are there any obvious gaps in the information?

Clues to look for:
· A contents page
· An index

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

2. Authority
The Web is a peculiarly democratic medium, allowing many people to make information available to the world. We need to try to ascertain the authority of web site creators within the subject area. Questions we consider include:

· Who is the author (this is crucial, in that we should rarely select anonymous pages)?
· Is the author likely to be authoritative (as far as we can tell)?
· Does the site use formats for encoding information to facilitate/tailor information retrieval, such as PICS, RDF, and metadata vocabularies?

Sites included in the hub should be created by an authoritative source. If the site fails in this regard, the topic hub author should probably reject it.

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

a. Detecting the Authority and Reputation of the Source
Questions to ask:
· Who is the author?
· Who has published it on the Internet?
· How reputable are the author and publisher?
· How reputable is the origin of any data or information?
· Can cross-checks be made to verify that the author and publishers stated are genuine?

Clues to look for:
· Author and publisher details
· Details of the origin of any data or information
· Contact details such as email and postal addresses for the author and publisher
· Email addresses which support claims of authorship

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

3. Information maintenance
This criterion relates to content in the crucial category of whether the site is "alive"; that is, whether it is maintained/updated on a regular basis. If we look at a site that hasn't been touched in a year and it isn't specifically designated an archive, we would not be likely to select it for inclusion.

It is important to check links at a site randomly. If some or most of them don't work, don't select the site for inclusion. It is crucial that the links at the site (not to mention the site itself) can be reached.

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

a. Detecting Information Integrity
Questions to ask:
· Is the information durable in nature?
· Is there adequate maintenance of the information content?

Clues to look for:
· Creation dates
· Last updated dates
· A statement about the frequency of update
· Archived information

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

b. Detecting Site Integrity
Questions to ask:
· Is the site current and up to date?
· Is the site proven to be or expected to be durable in nature?
· Is the site adequately administered and maintained?

Clues to look for:
· Links are still active
· Last revision date of pages
· Version numbers
· Email contact address for the person responsible for maintaining the site

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP

4. Presentation
As browser and HTML advances allow greater flexibility in the creation of web pages, we should evaluate sites on the basis of utilitarian concerns; while flashy design is not necessarily a drawback, users must be able to make effective use of the site. Questions we consider include:

· How is the site organized?
· Is it easy to navigate?
· Does it depend on graphics, and if so does the provider maintain a separate, text-only version?
· Will the pages take an inordinately long time to load on machines with slow connections?
· Do users need specific helper applications to take full advantage of the site (we inform readers of such requirements)?
· Does the site deliver content in a well-organized fashion?
· Is the site pleasant to look at, stylistically and graphically?

Back to P2Rx Administrative Information

Quality Selection Criteria TOC or TOP