Assessment:Cultural Assessment

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DLF Cultural Assessment Working Group

This sub-group of the DLF Assessment Interest Group (DLF AIG) was formed in February 2016 to discuss ways by which we may assess our digital collections and their cultural impact. Members of the DLF AIG for Cultural Assessment aim to first identify institutional data and practices that may be relevant to building a robust understanding of “cultural assessment.” Then, the group will investigate and attempt to surface underlying assumptions within our data and practices to help the community better understand the social structures that both influence our work and result from it. Ideally, the group will develop helpful and nuanced rubrics for institutional measurement and analysis of cultural biases and assumptions. The DLF AIG Cultural Assessment group intends to raise awareness of cultural bias and institutional “blind spots,” as well as recommend a set of data points, to create more inclusive cultures within DLF member organizations.

We will explore whether and how cultural biases/assumptions are embedded in:

  • materials we have available in physical collections - special collections, institutional archives;
  • in librarians’ and archivists’ selections of what to digitize;
  • in the requests their patrons and communities make for content;
  • in choices about levels of digitization and preservation;
  • in metadata-creation/descriptive activities;
  • and in decisions about how/when/whether we publicize collections and make them discoverable.

with the understanding that biases and assumptions have concrete impact on digital library collections and services.

Current Projects:

The Cultural Assessment group is moving away from the 5 subgroups in order to pursue an environmental scan of the use of metrics in Cultural Assessment, and how the group might apply metrics to practices that collectively inhabit digital collection creation (see previous projects for an idea on practices).

Details on process and timeline, forthcoming.

  • There is a possible collaboration here with several of the DLF Assessment Working Groups.

Get Involved

Meeting Schedule

The Cultural Assessment Group will meet every two weeks beginning January 2017. The first meeting of the new year has yet to be determined. Stay tuned.

Social Media

Join our Google group or contact group chair Hannah dash s dash Kettler at uiowa dot edu.



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