Unbundling practice: the unbundling of big deal journal packages as an information practice

Purpose The purpose of this article is to introduce a theoretical framework and approach for studying the evaluation and decision-making practices through which academic librarians attempt to reduce the cost of electronic journal subscriptions – an organizational practice known as the unbundling of big deal journal packages. Design/methodology/approach The article presents a literature-based conceptual analysis of several fields to delineate the elements of the practice of unbundling of big deal journal packages. Beyond analysing the prior literature, the discussion is supported by empirical findings from a pilot study on the topic conducted by two of the article\u27s authors. Findings The main finding of the article is that the unbundling of big deal packages is a case of what sociologist refers to as decision-making in a social context. By reviewing previous studies, the article identifies the social and material elements constitutive of this practice. This, in turn, allows to develop questions and concepts for future research on the topic and to position it as an area of inquiry within the field of information behaviour/practices. Originality/value The article is the first attempt to conceptualize the unbundling of big deal journal packages by highlighting its phenomenological status as a type of information practice. In addition, the article proposes a research approach for studying this type of information practice by drawing on insights from the information behaviour/practice literature and enriching them through practice theory contributions in organizational studies and sociology

The Digital Curation of Broadcasting Archives at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Curation Culture and Evaluative Practice

Digital curation scholarship has become interested in how technical and computational processes and systems intersect with human and social factors in digital curation practices across curation domains. This dissertation contributes to this knowledge by examining the digital curation of broadcasting news archives, a considerable but underexplored curation domain. The study is based on participant observation and interview data collected at the news archive of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The data is analyzed using a practice theory approach that combines social, material, and cultural theoretical perspectives. Specifically, the dissertation examines how archivists at the CBC evaluate and enrich information in the context of their daily work, and it describes the institutional, organizational, and technological elements constitutive of this context. The analysis reveals how the CBC’s transformation from analogue to digital infrastructure has redefined the organizational roles and the boundaries of expertise at the news archive. It further reveals how the CBC’s institutional identity sets the goals of digital curation and how digital broadcasting systems are adapted to reflect preestablished procedural and symbolic traditions of work. Lastly, the dissertation examines the constitutive rules and heuristics of evaluation at the news archive and finds that evaluative practices are consequential during all stages of the curation lifecycle but are particularly salient at the stages of acquisition (when value is established), cataloguing (when value is enriched), and reuse (when value is negotiated to fit into a new context). Based on these findings two arguments are formulated. It is argued, first, that aside from being supported by socio-technical systems, digital curation practices are also supported by cultural systems. These cultural systems sustain collective action and situated cognition by providing vocabularies of motives and strategies for action. They are shaped by normative institutional frameworks, transmitted through material artifacts, and refracted through subjective interpretations. Second, it is argued that evaluative practices are an integral part of digital curation and a prerequisite for enhancing the value of data and digital materials. They are interwoven with social and cultural processes, used in adaptive ways, and difficult to formalize, as such they will vary across curation domains and practice contexts.Ph.D