Use Case Description – What happens?
Activity – Provide institutions opportunity to expose their special collections in a wider and popular context with a strong ‘discoverability profile’; this should be contrasted with the difficulty of surfacing a small collection in isolation within the web discovery ecosystem
Volumes – The aggregation will be of variable volume; at the bottom end, a special collection can be enhanced by aggregation with just one other related discovery entry point (e.g. A war letters archive with the Imperial War Museum)
Actors – Special collection owners seeking partners; major collections owners ‘advertising’ the possibilities
Data involved – Across the spectrum from full metadata to collection level records only
Workflows – (a) Original cataloguing or record improvement may be required; (b) initial data load; (c) incremental update, typically infrequent as special collections do not grow rapidly, except in scientific field
Current Examples – Several of the JISC Infrastructure for Resource Discovery projects including OpenART
Intended Benefits – What is the business case?
Data Owner – Opportunity for the special collection owner
Aggregator – Creates opportunity (potentially low cost) for the aggregator to develop themed entry points or facets
End User – Surfaces unique resources through a platform with a strong discoverability profile
