Home > Selection policy (BESOCIAL)

Selection policy (BESOCIAL)

This page states our policy for the selection of social media data. It is intended to guide KBR collection managers and web archivists in selecting
specific data for the collections of born digital data of social media. It also serves to provide readers and librarians with information on the contents and boundaries of the social media collection. This specifies the criteria which ensures a standard and quality for the collection.

 

Selection criteria

The content of the social media indicated by hashtags and social media handles must be relevant to Belgian society. In addition to this fixed frame, additional selection criteria are defined based on content specific to cultural heritage, related to specific themes of KBR’s missions and collections.

  • Content in all languages may be included, not only in the three official
    languages in Belgium
  • Content that is linked to the cultural heritage of Belgium

“Cultural heritage is a collective term for everything made by previous generations that still exists today and has great value for the Belgian community. The BESOCIAL definition of this heritage is broad and covers movable, immovable and intangible heritage.

The following themes can also be part of it: hot topics in Belgium, sporting events, festivals, commemorations, literature, minorities, holidays, geographic regions, museums, art events, food, monuments, strikes, media, …”

  • No private accounts (no non-public accounts of private persons)
  • No private messages (no Direct Messages, …)

 

Legal responsibility

KBR is responsible for providing library materials for the Belgian public. Our mission includes four goals applicable to social media archiving:

  • Acquire and keep for legal deposit, whatever the medium used, all
    publications published in Belgium and those of authors domiciled in Belgium published abroad, as well as publications on Belgium published abroad
  • Manage, conserve and supplement an important cultural heritage
  • Collect scientific, archival or documentary data relating to collections and disciplines.
  • Collect and inventory websites related to KBR’s missions with the exception of blogs and private websites.
View the collections

 

 

 

Collection

The data of the social media platform Twitter will be collected by using the Social Feed Manager Tool. This open source software collects information from Twitter’s public API. Tweets are collected of specific users, and hashtags. Instagram Posts are also collected of specific users, and hashtags.

The list of handles and hashtags from Twitter and Instagram that will comprise the collection come from two sources:

  1. suggestions from the public in the KBR Social Media Crowdsourcing Campaign
  2. the BESOCIAL team

Through quality control, the input of the Belgian public is checked against the KBR mission as described above.

 

Cross-check

All submissions are subject to a cross-check by KBR staff, before being considered in the collection, to ensure that it meets the selection policy criteria.

 

Result

The collection of the related content from the submitted hashtags and social media handles from Twitter and Instagram form a thematic born digital collection. The list of hashtags and handles will be made available on the KBR website. An automatically updated dashboard of the collection on Twitter will be made available Spring 2022 of top hashtags and profiles.

If you have any questions, comments and/or suggestions, please contact cevinpl@xoe.or.

Published: July 2021