Collection Scope and Policy Statement

Goals of FABERC

The Fire and Building Educational Resource Collection (FABERC) will serve as an information system dedicated to the collection, categorization, enhancement, and distribution of materials that will enlighten a broad audience in topics related to fire. FABERC will function both as an aggregator and resource gateway for the fire science community and as a repository for collections of fire-related pedagogical content. This focus combines two broad concepts in fire science: Research and Education. Research in fire science and fire-related building topics can have a more immediate and broad impact than in many, more conventional, fields. Data and models developed at universities, think tanks, and government agencies are applied almost immediately by practitioners in the field on ongoing projects. Indeed, the call for more and better access to data and information has been raised in multiple fora exploring the needs of the community.

Education can be broadly defined as the process of learning, researching and teaching information in either formal or informal settings for the purpose of improving understanding. Education also includes making assessments of the understanding gained through learning, researching and teaching. Connecting together Fire Science and education as an entity greater than the sum of its parts is a primary FABERC vision.

Fire Science is a community encompassing many disciplines, interests, and professions: from researchers and consultants to government officials to instructors and students of all ages. The field's multidisciplinary base ensures that educators and researchers in more traditional disciplines also have need for fire-based content.

FABERC supports Fire Science education along numerous dimensions by: Developing collections of high-quality materials for instruction at all levels and covering all aspects of Fire Science.

Providing access to Fire Science data sets and imagery, including the tools and interfaces that enable their effective use
Creating discovery and providing distribution systems to efficiently find and use materials accessible in FABERC
Providing support services to help users most effectively create and use materials accessible in FABERC
Facilitating communication networks to support interactions and collaborations across all interests of Fire Science education

Scope of FABERC

To support FABERC as an information system, the FABERC collection provides access to Fire Science education materials with particular emphasis on interdisciplinary areas. The collection offers access to materials that bring Fire Science into the classroom or learning site, and that demonstrate the application of science to solving real world problems. The collection favors access to materials that convey linkages and connections: the general with the specific, theory with evidence, global with local. All aspects of Fire Science are included in the scope of the collection. FABERC users include educators, learners and researchers, at all educational levels, in both formal and informal education settings.

As an information system, FABERC does not hold materials itself; FABERC provides access to materials by aggregating, organizing and disseminating information about them through discovery and delivery systems. This information is called metadata ("data about data"). FABERC holds this metadata in the form of digital records. These records are organized into groups called collections. Searching over the metadata records provides the access to the Fire Science education materials residing across the Internet.

Target Audience

The audience includes practicing fire engineers, architects and building code officials; fire service personnel, including those in fire marshals' offices who work with code enforcement and investigation; researchers developing materials systems for furniture, interior finishes, FRP composites, etc.; and high school science teachers, undergraduate and graduate professors, and students interested in fire. Although the fire science community is the primary audience for the materials in FABERC, fire is a topic that fascinates and affects the general public. The creation of a portal for fire science offers, therefore, both tangible and intangible potential benefits to society at large.

Collection Policy

The collection policy favors materials that meet the goals of FABERC and that are well-documented, easy to use, and fully operational. Furthermore, these items must provide motivation for learners, be pedagogically effective and scientifically accurate, and foster mastery of significant understandings or skills. FABERC provides access to a broad range of materials for fire science, including:

Educational materials - case studies, homework exercises, tutorials, guided inquiry sets, lesson plans, syllabi, classroom activities, curricula, modules, field trips, problem sets
Assessment and pedagogical materials - exams, quizzes, questionnaires, self-assessments, learning and teaching techniques and educational research, etc
Research materials - journal articles, summaries, abstracts, arguments, theses, policies, indices, etc.
Data - Fire Science data (imagery, numeric values,)
Annotations - comments, reviews, teaching tips, ideas for use
Collections - collections of educational materials, annotations and news and opportunities organized around a topic or theme
News and opportunities - information on grants, conferences, workshops, professional development, opportunities, etc.
Tools - software or applications for interacting, accessing, manipulating or viewing, calculators and converters, models and simulations
Generic objects of value - frequently asked questions (FAQs), name-value pairs like glossary terms

The format of the materials can be text, audio, animation, video, graphical (drawings and diagrams), tabular, visual (including photographic), virtual or real. This collection policy applies to both individual resources and to collections of resources.

Quality Assurance

There are two quality assurance issues: resource (materials) quality and metadata quality. The quality of the resource materials accessible in FABERC varies because individual collections set their own selection criteria above and beyond the minimum FABERC criteria set forth in the FABERC Accessioning and Deaccessioning Policy. Each collection, therefore, may have different gradations that identify a quality resource. These variations are acceptable because the FABERC community is broad and varied, although user comments about the quality of resources accessible in FABERC are encouraged to ensure that the needs of the user community are met. Metadata quality also varies depending on the generation method and the intensity of review to which a metadata record is subjected prior to inclusion in FABERC. At a minimum, each metadata record is expected to meet the requirements of the FABERC Accessioning and Deaccessioning Policy and the quality aspects described in the FABERC Metadata Best Practices document. To ensure these requirements are met, the FABERC Program Center (FPC) will work with collection builders to help them use FABERC metadata formats correctly and to convert their own metadata into the appropriate format. The individual collection builders must develop selection criteria, reasonable quality assurance mechanisms, and scope statements that describe the scope, purpose and quality of their collections.

Collections that are indexed by FABERC are subjected to intermittent quality checks to verify item accessibility and to ensure that the collection is appropriate for inclusion in FABERC. Items and collections that fail quality checks may be deaccessioned from the digital library in accordance with the FABERC Accessioning and Deaccessioning Policy, whereupon the collection builder is informed. If FABERC users find errors or have suggestions for improvement for resources in a collection or for the collection's metadata, FABERC will consider the suggestions, make changes as appropriate, and work with the collection builder involved.

Terms of Use

For the FABERC collection as a whole and for the individual collections within FABERC, there are two terms of use issues: resource terms of use and metadata terms of use. For resources (materials), FABERC attempts to provide a statement of copyright information or information on how the materials may be used. Library users are encouraged to read such information or to go directly to the materials to obtain the latest copyright and terms of use information. If a copyright statement cannot be readily determined, FABERC indicates this with the following statement: Copyright and other restrictions information is unknown.

Individual collections maintain the copyright to their metadata and prescribe the terms of use of the metadata. However, collection builders agree that FABERC may redistribute metadata as well as modify and reformat metadata to function within FABERC systems and services. This allows for the redistribution of metadata records to third parties, such as the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). Collection builders must notify FABERC if they do not want their metadata redistributed. Individual metadata records are available for harvest (viewable and collectable by 3rd parties) from FABERC.

Persistence Plan

The collection is expected to continue growing and to exist indefinitely as long as funding is reliable. If the FABERC funding situation changes dramatically enough to impact operations, collection builders will be notified.