Description: This paper discusses assessing descriptive substance in free-text collection-level metadata. Abstract: Collection-level metadata has the potential to provide important information about the features and purpose of individual collections. This paper reports on a content analysis of collection records in an aggregation of cultural heritage collections. The findings show that the free-text Description field often provides more accurate and complete representation of subjects and object types than the specified fields. Properties such as importance, uniqueness, comprehensiveness, provenance, and creator are articulated, as well as other vital contextual information about the intentions of a collector and the value of a collection, as a whole, for scholarly users. The results demonstrate that the semantically rich free-text Description field is essential to understanding the context of collections in large aggregations and can serve as a source of data for enhancing and customizing controlled vocabularies.

Description: This paper discusses building contextual mass in digital aggregations for scholarly use. Abstract: At present there are no established collection development methods for building large-scale digital aggregations. However, to realize the potential of the collective base of digital content and advance scholarship, aggregations must do more than provide search of sizable bodies of content. Informed by empirical understanding of scholarly information practices, the IMLS Digital Collections and Content project developed an aggregation strategy for building Opening History, one of the largest digital cultural heritage aggregations in the country. The strategy applied policy-driven collecting based on the principle of contextual mass, and conspectus-style evaluation of collection-level metadata to identify strong subject areas within the aggregation. Analysis of density, interconnectedness, diversity, and small/large collection complementary determined subject concentrations and thematic strengths to be prioritized for future collection development and used as organizational structures for browsing and visualization. The approach models how scholars build their own personal research collections, as they follow leads from collection to collection across institutions near and far, and adds value that cannot be achieved through conventional retrieval and browsing at the item-level.

Description: These papers are a compilation presented at a conference on bibliographic control of Afro-American literature. The papers discuss issues in cataloging and archiving African-American literature including relevant subject headings, sources of texts, and collection development. Index starts on page 293.

Description: These papers offer discussions and conclusions regarding a conference on bibliographic control of Afro-American literature. The text includes a summary of the reasons for the conference, a report from a conference evaluator, and evaluation forms, as well as minutes and letters regarding the proceedings.

Description: This poster discusses teaching tools, applications, and infrastructure for digital curation through the use of a virtual lab. With an increased demand for digital curation, data management, archiving, and preservation the library and information science community has begun offering new education and training in these fields. A trend in this education is the use of online virtual labs to offer students hands-on experience with the tools and methodologies inherent to these fields. At the University of North Texas (UNT), the authors are also developing a four course education program in digital curation and data management including a course called 'Tools, Applications, and Infrastructure for Digital Curation' that employs a virtual lab component. This poster discusses the first offering of the course; several challenges that the authors faced; and the new strategies developed to address these issues and improve the course and virtual lab for the next offering.