“Active and Vital Resources”: A Thematic Analysis of Congressional Collection Policies
This article describes the process of updating and broadening the collection policy of the Ohio Public Policy Archives (OPPA) at The Ohio State University Libraries to include a more diverse representation of policy and policy making on the national level. The author conducted a thematic analysis of peer congressional collecting policies to determine whether a notable difference exists between language describing the acquisition of congressional collections and language describing the acquisition of public policy collections. The thematic analysis highlights new areas of focus and reinforces the research value of congressional collections. OPPA's updated collection policy built on the identified themes to further illuminate the research value of congressional collections while also making room for the addition of new perspectives on the U.S. policy-making process.ABSTRACT
Contributor Notes
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carly Dearborn is assistant professor and the public policy archivist at The Ohio State University Libraries. She manages the Ohio Public Policy Archives and is responsible for promoting and expanding the archives through out-reach, instruction, and reference services. Dearborn also provides support to the members of the Ohio delegation to the U.S. Congress on access and preservation of their records. Prior to her arrival at Ohio State, she was the digital preservation and electronic records archivist at Purdue University. She has a master's degree in information science from the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor's degree from the University of South Dakota.