Collection Development: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Collection Development Policy

An Inconvenient Truth: Collection Development and How it is Really Influenced

Guarding against collective amnesia? Making significance problematic: an exploration of issues
Library Trends, Summer, 2007 by Annemaree Lloyd

ABSTRACT
A nation's collective consciousness relies on the traces of memory collected by institutions such as libraries, archives, and museums. Such institutions have a responsibility to preserve documents and objects that reflect individual and collective endeavors and that have had an impact on culture and society at national, regional, and local levels. Institutions need to assess documents and objects against criteria that, in effect, "name" these items as significant. Most institutions claim that this process is objective, failing to acknowledge that it is underpinned by ideological, political, economic, cultural, and social influences. The position adopted in this paper is that the process of naming a document or object as significant will always reflect the directions and consciousness of a society's dominant groups, and that this will shape interpretations and narratives of the past. Thus the voices of a community's minority or special interest groups will be silenced. This paper suggests that neither the concept of significance nor the process of assessing significance is benign; both should be seen as areas of tension and contestation.

This is a very interesting paper on policy development and the haves and have nots. I would love to hear other opinions on the topic.

Any thoughts?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1387