Presented at the 2014 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia, PA on January 26th, 2014 (Library of Congress booth) by Maureen McCormick Harlow and Jaime McCurry of the 2013-14 National Digital Stewardship Residency Program in Washington, D.C.

1. Mind the [Digital] Gap
Using Web Collections to Fill Collecting Gaps at the Folger Shakespeare Library
and the National Library of Medicine
Maureen McCormick Harlow, National Library of Medicine
Jaime McCurry, Folger Shakespeare Library

2. Agenda
Maureen & Jaime: Who We Are
The Value of Thematic Collections
Using Thematic Collections to Fill Gaps
Participation & Outreach

3. Jaime & Maureen
Folger
Shakespeare
Library
National
Library of
Medicine

4. The Value of Thematic Collections

5. The Value of Thematic Collections

6. But…
…how can you possibly collect comprehensively
on all of those things?

7. But…
…how can you possibly collect comprehensively
on all of those things?
You Can’t!!

8. Using Thematic Collections to Fill
Collecting Gaps

9. Using Thematic Collections to Fill
Collecting Gaps

10. NDSR@NLM: The Project
Build and Maintain a thematic Web collection:
“Disorders of the Developing and Aging Brain: Autism and
Alzheimer’s on the Web”
64 Seeds evenly split, covering 6-7 perspectives:
–
–
–
–
–
–
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Current Understanding
Caretakers (first-person resources, primarily blogs of caretakers)
Patients/Sufferers (also first-person, also primarily blogs)
Research
Causes
Treatment
Prevention (for Alzheimer’s only)

11. NDSR@NLM: The Model
Thematic Collections as “Two Sides of the Same Coin”:
Teen pregnancy and infertility
Diabetes Type 1 and Diabetes Type 2
Scoliosis and Osteoarthritis
Eating disorders and obesity
Diagnoses made during development and in old age.

12. NDSR@FSL: The Project
1) Test and document local workflows for web archive
collection creation, collection expansion, and collection
quality control:
• Folger Shakespeare Library Websites and Social Media
• Shakespeare Festivals and Theatrical Companies
2) Create a new collection including adding seeds and
metadata, running crawls, and performing post-crawl
Quality Assurance routines

13. NDSR@FSL: Looking Back
The Folger represents less than 13% of institutions conducting
Web Archiving projects
As per the 2012 NDSA Web Archiving Survey Results
Shakespeare Festivals and Theatrical Companies
• Print directories could not keep up
– 40 North American festivals in 1983* to over 300 websites currently in
the Folger collection
• Collection compliments Folger organization and user interests
– Active Theatre program and loyal audience
*Goodland, Katharine, and John O’Connor. A Director of Shakespeare in
Performance 1970-1990. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

14. NDSR@FSL: Participation and
Outreach
STAKEHOLDERS
COMMUNITY
INVOLVEMENT
Collection
Development
Committee
STAKEHOLDERS
Open
Discussion
Web Archiving
Community,
“Thematic”
Community
OUR AUDIENCE
Open
Discussion
PROJECT
INVOLVEMENT
Collaboration

15. NDSR@FSL: Moving Forward…
Shakespeare in the
Media
Prominent (Modern)
Shakespearean Actors
and Actresses

16. Maureen & Jaime
Web Archives!