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The purpose of this paper is to provide a new and useful formulation of relevance.

This paper is formulated as a conceptual argument. It makes the case for the utility of considering relevance to be function of use in creative processes.

There are several corollaries to formulating relevance as a function of use. These include the idea that objects by themselves cannot be relevant since use assumes interaction; the affordances of objects and how they are perceived can affect what becomes relevant but are not in themselves relevant; relevance is not an essential characteristic of objects; relevance is transient; potential relevance (what might be relevant in the future) can be distinguished from what is relevant in use and from what has been relevant in the past.

The paper shows that its new formulation of relevance brings improved conceptual and terminological clarity to the discourse about relevance in information science. It demonstrates that how relevance is articulated conceptually is important as its conceptualization can affect the ways that users are able to make use of information systems and, by extension, how information systems can facilitate or disable the co-production of creative outcomes. The paper also usefully expands investigative opportunities by suggesting relevance and creativity are interrelated.

This paper describes a model for integrating publicly available private information concerning textual heritage on the websites of South Korean antiquarian booksellers into the information management systems of the National Library of South Korea (NLK).

A method for formalizing the coproduction of heritage knowledge is presented, using the NLK and textual heritage as a case study.

An investigation of the systems and services of the NLK, interviews with South Korean antiquarian booksellers and the researchers' ability to design a system (including an application profile) that will facilitate the integration of data curated by antiquarian booksellers into the systems of the NLK suggest that it is possible to formalize the coproduction of heritage knowledge.

Although this case study is limited to describing the information management procedures of a small number of online South Korean antiquarian booksellers and a single national library, its findings have broad implications. Through discussion of a specific case, the paper identifies a large class of resources that, if acquired, circulated and conserved by public libraries, is likely to enhance the public good provided by public libraries. It also provides an example of how public libraries can better meet their obligations as service and memory institutions by building systems that enable the coproduction of heritage resources by documenting and conserving records related to heritage transactions.

The paper demonstrates that it is possible to create a formal system for coproducing heritage information.

The ability of public libraries to coproduce heritage information is likely to increase the public good provided by public libraries and to make heritage resources more accessible.

This paper presents a novel model enabling the curation of publicly available private information about antiquarian texts by a national library to aid cultural understanding and the preservation of documents describing historical texts.