The Open Collections Program
- Published:
- Briefs, Case Studies, Papers, Reports
- Author(s) and Contributors:
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Author(s): Thomas Michalak Christine Madsen Megan Hurst
- Source(s) and Collection(s):
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Sources(s): Community
- ParentTopics:
Abstract
The goal of the Open Collections Program (OCP) of Harvard Harvard's library and museum collections for purposes of teaching, learning, and research — both at Harvard and around the world. The OCP believes that a topic-based approach to building digital collections creates broader and deeper collections thereby increasing relevance for a broad and diverse audience (teachers, scholars, students, and the generally curious). Materials are selected from across many collections at Harvard University for their relevance to a broad topic area and assembled into a multi-faceted and coherent digital collection. While this process is more laborious than selecting materials based on physical proximity of volumes on a shelf, or pre-existing collection groupings, the resulting digital collections become more pertinent to a broad spectrum of users.