Library and Information Services, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Wednesday 23 January 2013

Librarians as Curators

If you thought a curator was a museum person in an overall, think again.  Very much thought goes into curating these days.  Indeed, the word is used in the wider sense for a thoughtful assembly of related items.

So, someone disenchanted with a particular dictionary definition of curation, posted her own definition of what it means these days:-
Jessica Backus
Jessica Backus, a disenchanted M-W reader, commented:Would love for Merriam-Webster to address this: Not only does “curation” refer to concrete practices of digital curation, or a human making a selection [...], “curation” has become the word par excellence to describe a thoughtful selection of inspiration in today’s unwieldy and diverse cultural and media landscape. (From 'Perigrinating the Web' blog.)
 
So you see, by this definition, librarians curate their collections. I like it!

2 comments:

Charity Dove said...

Inspired by your post and my quest to convert my 12K word Collection Development Policy into a one page manifesto, I found this: http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/programmes/good-curatorship/1535-the-manifesto-for-good-curatorship

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Whittaker Library said...

Into my Diigo account it goes! (http://www.diigo.com/user/karenmca) Thank you - you've found a very useful piece on curation.