Collect or Curate?

Mitchell, Ruth

Mardis, Marcia A. (2015). Collect or curate? Open education resources and the future of the school library catalog. School Library Monthly, 31(4), 29-31.

With more and more Open Education Resources (OER) available, there is a need for teacher librarians to curate information for students and teachers.  In addition, school librarians can curate the information to provide access to up-to-date and accurate information.  According the American Association of School Librarians, “the digital content has probably become just as important as the print materials; the increasing reliance on OERs will only increase the need for the development of a strategy for onsite curation of existing and locally created material”. Mardis and her associates created Web2MARC software that creates a MARC record from the URL’s webpage that can be downloaded to the school’s library catalog. In addition, it matches the resource to CCSS and NGSS. According to the article, "the school library catalog can be a vehicle for promoting interdisciplinary connections".

Using Web2MARC sounds like an easy way to add "connections" and standards to the school library catalog for all users.