Break the rules!
a game to get us in the mood for deviance
One shared theme in our readings this week involves the potential advantages (and
disadvantages) of trying to conceptualize design products and processes in new ways. The Crew
and Sims and Goswamy readings both describe exhibition designs that focus on ideas, and how
objects might advance those ideas, as opposed to a more typical focus on the objects themselves.
The Sengers, et al, reading discussed a design approach that attempts to identify and invert
potentially problematic values and assumptions. In design examples discussed in these articles,
the designers, perhaps paradoxically, hoped to satisfy users, or their audience, by challenging
their expectations.
In this activity, we will embrace such goals and attempt to challenge our ideas of the designers’
role, the users’ role, and the role played by information institutions, such as libraries, archives,
and museums. We will also challenge our ideas of what collections are and how collections are
structured, described, and made accessible. With our minds thus engaged, we can commence our
first class project with vigor and intensity!
Your mission
You have before you a set of 17 information resources related to cooking. You will figure out
how to use a subset of these items to tell a story, any story you like, just as Crew and Sims and
Goswamy did in formulating exhibitions. In determining how to tell your story through
information artifacts, you will also, in the manner of Sengers, et al, attempt to invert the
institutional value that casts librarians, archivists, and other information professionals as impartial
providers who are morally required to convey any information that users request. You will
conceptualize some mechanism as part of your collection design plan that invites your audience
to reflect upon the benefits and perils of this value as encapsulated in most information systems.
(It wouldn’t be a fun game if it wasn’t challenging!)
You have the following tasks before you:
1. Briefly examine each item in the collection.
Take about a minute for each.
2. Select at least two items to form the kernel of your story.
For example, you might select the Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines as
examples of magazines that do not include advertising. Or you might select the Elizabeth
David and the Simon Hopkinson books as examples of cookbooks with literary merit.
(You can certainly select more than two items; you could see what you might do with all
of them, even. But at least two.)
3. Articulate the idea that will motivate your proposed collection (the items that you
selected plus a group of others that you describe in a general way).
For example, you might contend that it is impossible for publications that accept
advertising to avoid compromising editorial principles. You might propose a collection to
support this that collects materials written for magazines that don’t accept advertising, on
all subjects. Or you might claim that recipe writing can be as evocative and entertaining
as a novel, and propose a collection of cookbooks for pleasure reading.
INF 385 U, Digital Media Collections
Spring 2010
4. Determine how you will use the resources in your proposed collection to advance your
ideas, question institutional assumptions, and inspire users toward critical reflection
(eek!).
In the first case, you might actually decide to create two collections: one with items from
publications that refuse advertising and a “mirror” collection with items on the same
subjects from more typical magazines with ads. When users search either collection, they
could be presented with the preferred, non-advertising material first. They could also be
given the option to see the other material, with a warning that it might be tainted through
its association with commerce. As a feedback mechanism, users who do access the
“tainted” material could be asked to compare its quality to the non-“tainted” material.
For the second case, you might envision a separate room in a physical library for your
Epicure’s Retreat collection. Inside, there are plush armchairs with ottomans, cozy
slippers, a crackling fire...perhaps even tea and cookies, I mean, why not? Signage invites
readers to linger over some tasty yarns. Cookbooks with a literary bent are grouped into
genre fiction categories: romance, mystery, travel, adventure. Readers are invited to sign
a guestbook and compare a cookbook to the last novel they enjoyed (if you like Barbara
Pym’s comedies of manners set in 1950s Britain, you’ll like Elizabeth David...). Readers
can flip through and see others’ entries, thus finding cookbooks that complement the
experiences of fiction they might also have read.
5. Write a few paragraphs to document the position you want to express, your proposed
resource selection criteria, and other design elements that will bring your collection and
its ideas to life (descriptive practices, access mechanisms, and so on).
These won’t be graded, but I will collect them at the end of the class. You can use
longhand or type and print at one of the lab computers (that is, if you don’t mind paying
for the printing, sigh).
After documenting our plans, we will share them in groups of four. Group members should ask
questions and provide constructive comments that might propel ideas in different directions. (If
your thoughts change, you can add to your written description; don’t alter your initial plan,
though. That way, your progression is also documented.)
Finally, we will come together as a class and discuss our experiences in the context of the
readings. Do the strategies and opinions of Goswamy, Crew and Sims, and Sengers et al seem
productive for the context of building a digital media collection? What works and what doesn’t?
Time guidelines
 20 minutes to browse the provided resources.
 25 minutes to devise and document a plan.
 15 minutes to share in groups.
 25 minutes to discuss as a class.
INF 385 U, Digital Media Collections
Spring 2010