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This paper aims to investigate the role of documentary editions in supporting the development of historical collections in libraries, their function as evidential and informational objects and considerations for their evaluation in collection development. Framed as objects possessing bibliographic and archival characteristics, attention is given to the evaluative challenges these objects present during collection development.

This paper provides an archival and bibliographic analysis of documentary editions through examining and discussing their archival and bibliographic elements. Consideration is given to how these elements are expressed as information and evidence, how they operate as scholarly and archive-like objects and how they acquire value as collected objects. This approach clarifies the informational and evidential characteristics of these works, offering a framework for their evaluation in libraries.

Documentary editions possess archival and bibliographic characteristics, requiring that evaluators critique the scholarly value and archival integrity of their content. This has implications for the curation of archival objects in library collections, where library and archival expertise can support a more nuanced assessment of these works.

The blurred documentary character of these works has been identified by scholars (Cox, 1991). This paper presents evaluative considerations. Here, these characteristics are clarified, and an approach for evaluating these works is offered.

The Birmingham Black Radio Museum (BBRM) is a community museum and archives located in Birmingham, Alabama (USA) dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of Black radio. The BBRM fulfills this mission through educational programming, providing access to physical and digital materials and supporting emerging curatorial professionals. Through a reflective analysis of the BBRM, the authors discuss the relationship between preservation, public programming and professional outreach, the partnerships that enable these functions and how conceptions of community responsibility have informed the organization’s management strategy. The BBRM provides a context for isolating the factors which inform the emergence of community memory institutions, the challenges associated with managing decentralized information environments and considers how mentorship can operate as a form of capacity building. An examination of the BBRM provides a view of one institution’s approach to engaging community partners and audiences in achieving its primary goal of documentary preservation.

This analysis is informed by historical, case study and autoethnographic methods. Emphasis is placed on examining BBRM’s historical origins, primary functions and community mandates. Specific attention is given to examining operations, resources and strategies. Commentary and discussion are grounded by the professional experiences of BBRM staff and collaborators.

The operations of the BBRM, and the experiences reported by BBRM staff, are similar to those documented by findings in the community archives and museums literatures. Community mandates and institutional identify have strongly informed the BBRM’s mandates, strategies for engaging the public and establishment of strategic partnerships.

This reflective analysis documents the operations of one specific community memory institution. Though the experiences documented in this paper are common to many community archives and museums, this study contributes an additional data point, further contributing to the body of evidence necessary to support a more nuanced understanding of the role and function of community memory institutions and their management.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the emergence of digital reformatting as a technique for preserving information within the cultural heritage preservation community by reviewing historical trends in modern preservation research.

This paper analyzes secondary sources, reviews and historical texts to identify trends in the intellectual and technological histories of preservation research, beginning with the first applications of the scientific method to combating book decay in the early nineteenth to the emergence of digitization techniques in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

This paper identifies five major historical periods in the development of preservation knowledge: the early experimental era; era of microfilm experimentation; era of professionalization; era of digital library research; and the era of digital reformatting and mass digitization; and identifies three major trends in its development: empirical inquiry, standardization and centralization.

Findings reflect broad trends in the field of preservation, primarily in a United States context and are limited to the modern era of preservation research.

This paper's broad historical overview provides a reference for preservation professionals and students in library science or archives programs. Identifying historical trends enables practitioners to critically examine their own preservation techniques and make better decisions when adopting and using new preservation technologies.

This paper provides a unique perspective on the history of preservation knowledge that synthesizes existing historical research in order to identify periods and trends that enable a clearer understanding of digital reformatting in its historical emergence.

TO many of us it is a matter for regret that we are not able to keep ourselves so closely in touch with library affairs in other parts of the world as we would wish. With American happenings we are, of course, fairly well acquainted, but Colonial effort has not received the attention which is its due. In many places in the Empire methods are, in certain ways, in advance of ours—in more than one country the legislation has been more enlightened than it was in England until quite recently—and everywhere the experience of keen progressive librarians facing their own particular problems must prove of interest and value to those in the home country. Therefore we believe that by devoting this issue to a discussion of some phases of Colonial librarianship we are but answering the large demand for such information.

Reviews Leadhills Library, Britain’s first subscription library and also the first subscription library in Britain to have a working‐class base. It originated the ideology of mutual improvement as applied to libraries in Scotland, which has clear links with the social philosophy of the period and formed an organizational model for others to follow. Its book selection policy was both progressive and independent and much of its early stock still survives in situ in a building which has probably been occupied since the late eighteenth century. It functioned actively as a library from 1741 until the mid‐1960s and is still available for use today. The surviving stock, catalogued in 1985, totals about 2,500 volumes.

This study aims to explore how network visualization provides opportunities for learners to explore data literacy concepts using locally and personally relevant data.

The researchers designed six locally relevant network visualization activities to support students’ data reasoning practices toward understanding aggregate patterns in data. Cultural historical activity theory (Engeström, 1999) guides the analysis to identify how network visualization activities mediate students’ emerging understanding of aggregate data sets.

Pre/posttest findings indicate that this implementation positively impacted students’ understanding of network visualization concepts, as they were able to identify and interpret key relationships from novel networks. Interaction analysis (Jordan and Henderson, 1995) of video data revealed nuances of how activities mediated students’ improved ability to interpret network data. Some challenges noted in other studies, such as students’ tendency to focus on familiar concepts, are also noted as teachers supported conversations to help students move beyond them.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study the authors are aware of that supported elementary students in exploring data literacy through network visualization. The authors discuss how network visualizations and locally/personally meaningful data provide opportunities for learning data literacy concepts across the curriculum.