Unit 12 Value!

This is my post for Unit 12, the final unit of IRLS Applied Technology. I was struck during the reading concerning (technology) project planning this week by the difficulty of measuring what I have heard some economists refer to as "economic opportunity" cost (see Unit 8 blog post for more on this). That is, weighing into your calculations the cost of the opportunities occluded by implementing one plan path as opposed to another. In the reading for this Unit I was pleased to see librarians taking opportunity cost seriously in regards to digital collections. This seems especially important in light of the overwhelming need and the equally overwhelming lack of funding and resources to "get everything online" as fast and as best as we can. It should only take a couple decades or centuries or ... ?

In one article I read this week, I was impressed by the attempts to measure such intangibles as "significance" of a given collection of materials in an archive, though I know librarians and archivists do this all the time I had know idea the study of such processes could be refined so. The idea that planning must be transparent within a library setting and especially as concerns technology coincides nicely with my new understanding of open source protocols for development and implementation and why that is such a successful model, or why democracy is such a stable political system as opposed to others.

My own planning within this course has faltered of late and I am in the unusual position (for me) of playing catch up and I am afraid I am not so good at this. But, as we do in institutional and personal settings, we make plans and then--in the fog of life--we begin again and push forward.