Collection
Development
Resources
Program and Agency Information
Original BRYCS Materials
Early
on, BRYCS conducted a needs assessment with potential clearinghouse
users from local and national resettlement agencies, mutual
assistance associations, national ethnic organizations, and
public child welfare agencies. Combined with information gathered
in our technical assistance activities
and ongoing communications with service providers, this helps
us to understand information needs, as well as to prioritize
topics and document types for acquisition.
Resources
BRYCS
conducts literature searches, reviews sites on the Internet,
and talks with agencies to determine what resources are available.
We decide which resources to acquire based on established
priorities, staff expertise and suggestions of service providers.
We also accept gifts of resources for consideration by the
clearinghouse review team.
For
quality control, BRYCS reviewers read all the selected documents,
with the following questions in mind:
- Is
this good content on child welfare and/or refugee experiences
and adjustment?
-
Who might this information help? What information need does
it fill?
-
Will it help one part of the clearinghouse audience understand
another service system that works with refugee youth, children
and families?/li>
-
How technical is the resource; will readers need background
in the subject to understand it?
-
Is the information timely? Practical?
-
Should we seek permission to use this in full text?
-
Is the resource accessible to the public, if we can’t
include it in full text?
Once
a decision is made to include a resource in the clearinghouse
collection, an abstract is created, keywords are selected,
availability is researched, permissions may be sought, and
a complete record is created in our database.
It
takes several months to process each individual resource before
the information can be made available to clearinghouse users.
At the time of our launch, several hundred more resources
are in process, and new possibilities are being identified.
Program
and Agency Information
BRYCS
has developed a template for program descriptions, designed
to capture the kind of information that organizations find
useful when considering programs offered by other agencies.
It
includes basic descriptive information, as well as more reflective
questions about outcomes and measurements, and “key
ingredients” questions about funding sources and collaborations.
This
template was tested and modified, with the goal of being open-ended
and flexible enough to accommodate a range of programs and
responses, while also gathering as much information as possible.
It has been integrated into our database, which allows for
a variety of search options.
BRYCS
conducts outreach to service providers, inviting them to send
information. We started with our pilot sites in Atlanta, GA;
Cleveland, OH; and St. Louis, MO. As with other resources
for the collection, program descriptions are reviewed. In
addition, BRYCS staff may edit these descriptions, with the
goal of making them accessible to a wide audience. For example,
location-specific references, agency acronyms, and professional
jargon are addressed. On occasion, BRYCS may decline to include
a program description, if the program is not sufficiently
connected to the clearinghouse mission.
This
is a developing area of the clearinghouse collection. Please
help us spread the word; encourage service
providers to send in their information. Through word of mouth,
the program collection can expand to a valuable repository
of promising practices, and function as a national institutional
memory on refugee family issues.
Original
BRYCS Materials
Materials
produced by BRYCS are made accessible through the clearinghouse.
When we can’t find many resources on a prioritized topic,
that information feeds back into our planning process for
future BRYCS resources.
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