Digital Library Center Blog | UF

I saw this announcement and it sounds great. I hope to make it (if finishing an article doesn’t prevent me), but it’s especially wonderful because this will definitely be a smart, aware, contextualized discussion of feminism like the kind found in Bitch Magazine articles which interrogate popular culture in a way not done elsewhere, or done as well or at least not as humorously.

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The University of Florida’s Center for Women’s Studies & Gender Research & The Friends of Wild Iris Books invite you to join a participatory discussion with Debbie Rasmussen, Publisher of Bitch: Feminist Responses to Popular Culture about how—and whether—feminism can become a transformative, justice-centered movement for social change.

• How can we drive attention to the power, privilege, and marginalization that continue to play out in feminist communities, and how can those of us with power and privilege become genuine and effective allies to those without it?
• How can we collectively create a feminist/ media/justice movement that doesn’t rely on white supremacy, class privilege, and economic exploitation?
• Can the idea of “feminism” shift to foreground an uncompromising, transformative commitment to systemic social change, or is it time to evolve to new language?

When: Friday, 3 October, 7:00 pm
Where: The Atrium at Ustler Hall,  UF Campus (UF Campus Map)

Collection Development/Resource Sharing (CDRS) Conference, March 26-27, 2009
Florida State University Alumni Center; Tallahassee, Florida
Information about the CDRS conference is available online and below.

Call for Proposals
Florida State University and the Panhandle Library Access Network (PLAN) are co-sponsoring a two day event that is based on the Janus Challenges. The Steering Committee for the Collection Development/Resources Sharing Conference is accepting presentation proposals that address some aspect of the Janus Challenges.  Presentations may demonstrate projects that have been successfully implemented at a local level and have the potential to scale to multi-institutional and/or multi-type groups, or propose innovative new approaches to collection development practices and resource sharing. Panels Sessions, Project or Idea Sessions, Poster Sessions and the hosting of Roundtable Discussions will all be considered. The Call for Proposals closes on October 31, 2008.  The committee will notify applicants of the status of proposals no later than December 1, 2008. Please send inquiries and completed proposals to Roy Ziegler at: rziegler@fsu.edu.

Proposal Submission Criteria:

1. Type of presentation (Panel Session, Project/Idea Session, Poster Session, Roundtable Discussion Leader)
2. Presenter(s) contact information (name, job title, institution, mailing address, e-mail address, phone)
3. Presentation title
4. Program track (Recon, Procon, Core Collections, Licensing, Archiving, Scholarly Communications, multiple tracks, other)
5. Brief program description (less than 75 words)
6. Major learning outcomes (brief statement)
7. Media requirements
8. If proposal is accepted, a full program description (less than 500 words)

About the CDRS Conference
In January 2007 a Collection Planning Committee task force was charged by the deans and directors of Florida’s statewide Council of State University Libraries (CSUL) to explore challenges and opportunities for building library collections in the digital age based on the Janus Conference held at Cornell University in October of 2005.  At that conference Ross Atkinson presented the major components that were critical for academic libraries to have a sustainable future: 1) Coordinated retrospective conversion of print collections (Recon), 2) Acceleration of transition from print to  electronic collections (Procon), 3) Importance of defining and building core collections, 4) Expansion of library partnerships and redefinition of the library marketplace for the licensing of electronic resources, 5) Development of mechanisms to archive print and digital content and 6) Creation of an infrastructure for alternative channels for scholarly communication.* Currently there are six statewide CSUL task forces working on the Janus Challenges with the goal of enhancing our ability to develop and share collections, practices and ideas beyond our individual institutions.  The goal of the CDRS Conference is to expand this collaborative discussion to all academic institutions and research libraries within the State of Florida and the Southeast region. Individuals and groups from Florida and neighboring state universities, community colleges, and private institutions are encouraged to participate.

*For additional reading on the Janus Conference, refer to the following article by Ross Atkinson, “Six Key Challenges for the Future of Collection Development,”  Library Resources & Technical Services vol. 50 (4), p.244-251.

September 22, 2008

Invitation to Participate in Caribbean Newspaper Digitization Project

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is issuing a call for partners in a new effort to ensure preservation of and increase access to newspapers in the Caribbean. Newspapers offer valuable information to researchers on a broad range of topics. Digitized newspapers with full text searching capabilities are revolutionizing the ability of scholars to discover information. Due to the natural tendency of newspapers to deteriorate more quickly over time than other resources, confounded by the climate in the Caribbean, digitization provides a mechanism to ensure that these valuable resources are available not only to today’s researchers, but to those for generations to come.

dLOC is seeking Caribbean partners with historical newspaper collections that are interested in digitizing these titles and providing them online for free, open access to researchers, students and citizens. In addition, we are seeking partnerships with newspaper publishers to provide archival services of their current issues to ensure future preservation. The holding institution will retain all rights to the newspapers, and will provide the dLOC with permission to distribute the digital images for educational use. Please see the following examples of some of the newspapers dLOC already has online:

• Star. Roseau, Dominica: January 7, 1967 http://www.dloc.com/?b=UF00072476&v=00062
• The Royal gazette, Bermuda commercial and general advertiser and recorder. D.M. Lee. Hamilton, Bermuda: May 1, 1877 http://www.dloc.com/?b=UF00076588&v=00124

We are in the process of preparing the application for funding. If you are interested in more information about how to participate in this important initiative, please contact the dLOC project coordinator, Brooke Wooldridge, at dloc@fiu.edu.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean began with the collaboration of the University of the Virgin Islands, the University of Florida and Florida International University on a U.S. Virgin Islands History and Culture IMLS digitization project. After successfully working together on this project, the group decided to explore the possibility of expanding collaboration on digitization projects in the Caribbean. The initial concept of the joint Digital Library of the Caribbean was presented during the ACURIL XXXVI conference in May, 2004. The five Caribbean and four United States initial partners successfully submitted an application for funding from the US Department of Education’s Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access program.

During the first three years of the project we have built a collaborative digital library management system, provided basic digitization equipment for each of the original project partners, developed and implemented tri-lingual training materials, conducted multiple on-site training programs, and initiated an educational outreach program. Our content and usage has consistently increased, and we now have nearly 500,000 pages of content online. In addition, seven new partners with existing capacity and/or desire for digitization have joined the project.

Una Invitación para Participar en un Proyecto para la Digitalización de Periódicos Caribeños
La Biblioteca Digital del Caribe (dLOC por sus letras en inglés) está buscando nuevos socios en un trabajo conjunto para asegurar la preservación de los periódicos en el Caribe y el aumento en el acceso a dichas publicaciones. Los periódicos brindan información importante a investigadores acerca de diversos temas y la capacidad de buscar por palabra, a través de periódicos digitalizados, está revolucionando la manera de descubrir información. Debido a la tendencia de periódicos a deteriorarse más rápido que otros documentos y en combinación con el clima del Caribe, la digitalización provee un mecanismo para asegurar que estos documentos estén disponibles no solamente a los investigadores de hoy sino a las generaciones que siguen.En estos momentos nos encontramos en un proceso de estructuración y dLOC busca socios en el Caribe con colecciones de periódicos históricos, los cuales estén dispuestos a digitalizarlos y ponerlos en el Internet con distribución abierta y gratis para investigadores, estudiantes y ciudadanos. También buscamos acuerdos con editores de periódicos para archivar sus recientes publicaciones y a su vez asegurar su futura preservación. Las instituciones que participen en éste proyecto permanecen con todos los derechos sobre los periódicos digitalizados y sólo otorga a dLOC los derechos no exclusivos para distribuir las imágenes digitales con fines educativos.Los invitamos a consultar los siguientes ejemplos de algunos periódicos dLOC ya existen en línea:

• Star. Roseau, Dominica: January 7, 1967 http://www.dloc.com/?b=UF00072476&v=00062
• The Royal gazette, Bermuda commercial and general advertiser and recorder. D.M. Lee. Hamilton, Bermuda: May 1, 1877 http://www.dloc.com/?b=UF00076588&v=00124

Si desea obtener mayor información de cómo participar en ésta importante iniciativa, por favor comunicarse con la coordinadora de proyectos, Brooke Wooldridge, a su correo electrónico dloc@fiu.edu.

Historia del Proyecto: La Biblioteca Digital del Caribe empezó con un trabajo conjunto de la Universidad de las Islas Vírgenes, la Universidad de la Florida y la Universidad Internacional de la Florida con un proyecto digital llamado La Historia y Cultura de las Islas Vírgenes. Debido al gran éxito de esta colaboración, las tres instituciones decidieron buscar otra oportunidad para expander la colaboración en la elaboración de proyectos digitales en el Caribe. El concepto fundamental de la Biblioteca Digital del Caribe fue presentado durante la conferencia ACURIL XXXVI en mayo de 2004. Las cinco instituciones caribeñas y cuatro estadounidenses entregaron una propuesta exitosa para el subsidio por parte del Departamento de Educación de los Estados Unidos, en su programa de Innovación Tecnológica y Cooperación para Acceso a Información en el Extranjero.

Durante los primeros tres años del proyecto hemos construido un sistema de biblioteca digital, brindado a los socios originales equipos básicos para la digitalización. A su vez, hemos desarrollado e implementado un programa de entrenamiento trilingüe, presentando múltiples talleres de digitalización en las instalaciones de nuestros socios e iniciando un programa educativo. Nuestro contenido y el número de visitas han aumentado constantemente y ahora contamos con casi 500,000 páginas en línea. Además, siete nuevos socios con capacidad y/o deseo para la digitalización se han involucrado en el proyecto.

The Alachua County Historic Trust: Matheson Museum, Inc. and the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries need help identifying historic photographs taken in Gainesville from 1920-1970. The photographs were taken by Elmer Harvey Bone and they’re all online within the Elmer Harvey Bone Collection here.

The Elmer Harvey Bone Collection is particularly important to the Digital Library Center because the collection is shared between the Matheson Museum and the University Archives, and because our own Lourdes Santamaria-Wheeler chosen this collection for her graduate work in museum studies because of the way it connects traditional library and museum collections. The Gainesville Sun newspaper has an article on the collection, and please dive into the collection and let help us find the names of the men in the “Best Beard” contest, the names of the people in the Brown Wedding party, and all of the others!

The University of the Netherlands Antilles is hosting a Seminar for Libraries in the Dutch Caribbean this week and it will include a session on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC).

The full program is online, and Brooke Wooldridge (the dLOC Coordinator) and I will both be attending and we’re excited to share about dLOC and to further develop connections and representations of the Dutch Caribbean in dLOC. Currently, dLOC already includes a number of maps like the one here, travel books, and many other items related to the Dutch Caribbean with many more materials in process to be added. Please see the materials already in dLOC, and check back often to see what else is being added.

Yale is hiring for a Librarian for Digital Humanities Research and some of the job announcement information is below. The Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA) still has an opening for a Digital Services Librarian and they’re awesome and working at FCLA means working with UF (and we’re great too!). While the two positions are very different, all digital library positions include some level of digital humanities research because as more stuff goes online, it’s even easier to do more with it. While a few old maps, newspapers, and photos may not seem to be essential humanities materials aside from their particular area relevance, having thousands of them together and cross-referenced with census information, disease trends, urban growth information, and more make them immediately humanistic in their ability to tell stories of their places, people, events, and relationships to others, and in their potential to be used for so much more.

The digital humanities librarian position at Yale looks like a wonderful position not only for what it offers, but also because its description reinforces what it means to be a digital librarian with preferred qualities including “curiosity about how technology is affecting research, and enthusiasm for collaboration in an exciting and dynamic intellectual environment.”

Yale University Position Announcement for Librarian for Digital Humanities Research
Digital humanities is an evolving specialization in librarianship that requires a combination of technical skill and strong background in the humanities, knowledge about how technology is transforming research, and energy for collaborating with students, faculty, and staff. We are looking for a creative, technically-grounded, visionary person to serve as an advisor, advocate, and implementer for digital humanities resources at Yale University Library. Reporting to the Head of Research Services and Collections (RSC), the Librarian for Digital Humanities Research will work closely with subject specialists, the department coordinator for research education, the Library Web Manager and other members of the Library’s technology department, and affiliates of the Collaborative Learning Center in order to provide the vision and strategic leadership for incorporating current and future technologies into the research activities of the humanities community at Yale University. The successful candidate will also participate in the development of the collection in an area related to his or her academic background.

Responsibilities
The Librarian for Digital Humanities Research will employ information and Internet technologies to help Yale-affiliated researchers in the humanities make use of the rich collections available at the Yale University Library. The Librarian for Digital Humanities Research will offer consultation for faculty members’ research, and will research Web technologies (such as Zotero, RSS, mashups, tagging, and social networking sites) and promote them, as appropriate, to Yale faculty and students and library staff. Develops and tracks personal and departmental technology goals in collaboration with the head of RSC, the Library Web Manager and the head of Web, Workstation & Digital Consulting Services. In addition, the Librarian for Digital Humanities will collaborate with the Library Web Manager and other units to develop databases and portals for disseminating Library resources in support of humanities research, and to design and implement an integrated next-generation technological presence for the Library in general; ensure that RSC web pages conform to guidelines and usability standards established by the library technology group; and provide a high level of office technology support to the department. The successful candidate will coordinate RSC’s participation in the implementation of a Library-wide web content management system. The Librarian for Digital Humanities Research will be professionally active and serve on select Library-wide committees, engage in research and service to meet the library requirements for promotion, and will assume collection development responsibilities appropriate to the successful candidate’s academic background. May be required to assist with disaster recovery situations.

Qualifications
Required: A graduate degree in history, literature or another humanities discipline, and an intermediate level of knowledge about web-based and related technologies. Preferred: A Ph.D. in a humanities discipline, and a master’s degree from an ALA-accredited program of library and information science. Appointment at the Librarian II level requires a minimum of two years of professional experience and demonstrated professional accomplishment. Appointment at the Librarian III level requires a minimum of 5 years of professional experience and professional accomplishment.

Demonstrably advanced skills in some combination of website management, text mark-up, graphics editing and database creation. Preferred: Candidate will possess, most importantly, a deep understanding of the research process and knowledge of the ways that new technologies are affecting the production of scholarship in the humanities, as distinct from other fields.  Preference will be given to candidates who demonstrate an exceptionally strong background in humanities, curiosity about how technology is affecting research, and enthusiasm for collaboration in an exciting and dynamic intellectual environment. Ideally the applicant will additionally have demonstrated knowledge in both front- and back-end technologies such as Web design and site management (including XHTML, CSS, graphics editing software), humanities technologies and standards (such as XML, EAD, and TEI), relational databases design and development, and server-side web-development (e.g., PERL, PHP, java, javascript, ASP or .Net).

Salary and Benefits
Rank and competitive salary will be based upon the successful candidate’s qualifications and experience. Full benefits package including pro-rated 22 vacation days; 18 holiday, recess and personal days; comprehensive health care; TIAA/CREF or Yale retirement plan; and relocation assistance. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Applications consisting of a cover letter, resume, and the names of three references should be sent by creating an account and applying online at http://www.yale.edu/hronline/stars/application/.  Please be sure to include Source Code #:  5826BR.

Antonio Prohías is best known for creating MAD Magazine’s Spy vs. Spy. Spy vs. Spy is immediately recognizable by any age group because of its amazing minimalist yet non-reductive portrayal of political conflict. It should come as no surprise that its creator Antonio Prohías honed his skills inking political cartoons for newspapers like El Avance Criollo.

We found these cartoons thanks to Will Canova, the Digital Library Center’s newspaper digitization coordinator. Will was processing El Avance Criollo and, noticing the incredibly well styled political cartoons, quickly noted that these cartoons were done by none other than Spy vs. Spy’s creator Antonio Prohías.

The University of Florida Libraries’ copies of 1960-1961 issues of El Avance Criollo are currently being digitized and will soon be online here. The cartoons themselves are available right now through our Flickr Photostream and will also soon be in the UF Digital Collections within the El Avance Criollo issues and separately (as JPEG and JPEG2000 images and as a downloadable PDF).

For more on Antonio Prohías, listen to NPR’s program on him, read his obituary in the New York Times, and check out Spy vs Spy: the Complete Casebook  which includes historical and biographical essays.

UF’s Digital Library Center is currently loading more historic newspapers into UFDC (the University of Florida Digital Collections) and they look incredible! The newspaper here is The Weekly Miami Metropolis from June 26, 1908. Even though it’s over 100 years old, it’s one of the more recent issues from the historic papers being loaded. Like many of the historic papers, it features a political cartoon prominently on the first page.

This and many other newspapers were digitized through the “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers” joint program by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. I’m still only beginning to explore these papers, but I expect to link to various titles and issues as I have time to read through them and to explore historic Florida in the making.

To see the newly loaded historic newspapers,  go to the new items browse in the Florida Digital Newspaper Library (one of the collections in UFDC) or to the all items browse.

I’ve stolen the title of this post from Shawn Rider’s article “Why Nintendo Gets It” because the title explains the whole point of this post and because of the parallels between Google and Nintendo. Nintendo gets it because they understand that games are about playability more so than technological innovation and because they understand that innovation can be  evolutionary or sustaining as well as disruptive. Evolutionary or sustaining innovations build incrementally on existing structures, but disruptive innovation changes the whole landscape.

The 8-bit NES to the Super Nintendo was an evolutionary or sustaining innovation, largely technological, but that technology enabled longer and deeper games. The current console gaming market changed in response to the Sony PlayStation 2 both because of the system and because so many had grown up with games. In the last console release, however, Nintendo showed how they got it by releasing the Wii and inviting all non-players and casual players to get into gaming and inviting existing players to learn to play in new ways. Nintendo used a disruptive technology to their advantage–investing in its development instead of in the best graphics card on the market and instead of pushing an ever-increasing polygon count, they focused on playability and leveraged it for an even greater market share and for a community of Nintendo followers.

Google announced yesterday that they’re scanning microfilm to digitize historical newspapers, which is just the latest of their work to get more content online. This could be seen as an evolutionary innovation, where Google has digitized books and now they’re working on newspapers. However, Google gets it because they make interoperable and open content. Google is digitizing whatever it can and indexing whatever it can to ensure that it has access to the most data for use by Google’s search engine and for Google’s paid services like advertisements. Google isn’t simply adding newspapers into this collective vat of information, though. Google has shown time and again that they’re adding and indexing content so that it can be faceted–for searching only by news or only by places with mapped locations–and that they’re allowing those facets to be connected together in context.

Placing content in context is an enormous task, especially when context means historical, spatial, cultural, social, and personal. Some of the existing components in traditional library records (if complete) can be extended and mined to create a basic infrastructure that can then be further enhanced, mined, and adapted for further use and this is what Google has done. This enhancement, mining, and adaptation are also what UF’s Digital Library Center has been doing for several years beginning in earnest with the Ephemeral Cities Project. The Ephemeral Cities Project began before I came to the Digital Library Center and its goals are only now beginning to be fully realized with the Map It! feature for items in the UF Digital Collections, enabled through KML becoming an Open Standard in 2008 leading to our use of the Google Maps API.

We’ve also been digitizing newspapers for the Florida Digital Newspaper Library and the Caribbean Newspaper Imaging Project, the same reasons Google is interested. Newspapers tell the stories of history in the making, connecting the current social and personal concerns to the larger cultural and historical movements and eras, and newspapers tell the local stories of their areas, along with the larger national and international stories of their days.

What surprises me most is not that Google gets it in terms of seeing the immediate need and the long tail future goals for massive amounts of interoperable data, but that there are so many people who got it and were working toward so much earlier than I’d have expected. In UF’s Digital Library Center alone, Director Erich Kesse first proposed the Ephemeral Cities Project in 2003 and Mark Sullivan (our wonderful programmer at the time who’s still with us as well) began developing the digital library software for users to access such data and for the digital library staff to most easily create the necessary metadata within the digitization process. I can’t say that I got it in 2003, but I’m glad so many others did so that the infrastructure is in place to help support the wonderful projects to come.

I’m also extremely happy that Google gets it in particular because they have the business infrastructure to make the incredibly tedious and expensive work of digitizing materials in context affordable and sustainable through ads which have a return on investment value. Universities return investments from society in the form of knowledge, a more educated and capable workforce and community, and through the infrastructure necessary for other advances, but in difficult economic times the investment itself becomes more difficult. Luckily for all, Google gets the full context of their investment and knows that digitized materials have more value when they can easily be used, thus ensuring greater usage. The smart business plan for Google requires keeping materials open and usable by as many others as possible,making it good business for Google to do what’s already in the public interest. Of course, Google is facing monopolistic concerns and smart business models can go bad with changes in leadership, so its smartest public institutions like universities to continue getting it and ensuring that the digital revolution brings as many benefits as it can for accessing, using, and understanding information while building the infrastructure for the next innovations be they sustaining or disruptive.

I haven’t been blogging as much lately, but it’s not because I don’t have much to share. The adage “still waters run deep” seems fitting for the University of Florida Digital Collections of late. In recent months, we’ve upgraded our infrastructure repeatedly and we continue to make progress on working through our digitized-yet-unprocessed materials and in working through the files in need of migration. One collection’s history perhaps speaks best to our current and ongoing efforts, as our Digital Library Center Director explained in 2000:

“The Governor’s gift enables the creation and delivery of electronic library resources via the Internet in support of the University of Florida’s teaching and research objectives,” explains Erich Kesse, director of the Digital Library Center. “But, perhaps most important, Gov. Bryant’s gift provides the hardware infrastructure to develop and serve these and other resources to the people of the state of Florida.” (UF News Bureau)

The Governor’s gift founded the Papers of Governor C. Farris Bryant Collection, which began at PALMM (the statewide digital collection). Soon after, with technological advances, the former PALMM system came up against limitations. The old system is still operational, but PALMM’s new system has been deployed and collections are migrating. Similarly, the University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) didn’t even exist in 2000 as a separate entity and now that it does, we’ve migrated the Papers of Governor C. Farris Bryant Collection to the University of Florida Digital Collections.

Adding these 33,000+ pages to UFDC required additional infrastructure in terms of hardware with more server space and software from our programmer to people to process the materials. The infrastructure developed for this collection now also benefits all of UFDC and all of the state of Florida and the world through the over 2 million pages now online, and more adding daily. The 2 million pages from so many titles and collections are each much like the Papers of Governor C. Farris Bryant Collection in that the sheer quantity can’t explain the quality even though each added page adds to the overall quality of the existing materials.

The Governor’s papers tell the stories of the state of Florida, Florida’s citizens, a changing world with the explosive growth of Florida tourism and the US space program, a man and his family, the importance of the media, the influence of the University of Florida on its graduates and the influence of University of Florida graduates on the world and the University of Florida, and much more. The Governor’s papers support the Florida Law Collections and the Florida Digital Newspaper Library, respectively chronicling Florida’s laws and the state’s application and response to them. Even more directly, the Governor’s papers support The Floridians Collection which includes a vast array of writings - history, literature, community and political activism - from and about Florida. Florida will be a swing state in the coming election as it so often is because Florida is a state with many tales and ideas, orange groves and astronauts, St. Augustine as the oldest city and Disney World as a land outside of time.

William Faulkner is quoted with “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The statement couldn’t be more true when dealing with technology - we never finish with our past because all digital creation includes the trace of prior technology and the continuing needs of that the prior technology supported - and it couldn’t be more true in dealing with Florida. The Papers of Governor C. Farris Bryant tell the stories of building the highways and across Florida (the roads that supported Florida tourism and the current concept of Florida) and of building higher education in Florida. The digital collection for those papers supports the information highway and all of education by building supporting UFDC and all of its collections, including UFDC’s role in building international collections like the Digital Library of the Caribbean.

Now that the Governor’s papers are loaded, we’ve begun work to connect the existing finding aid to the digital collection items in the best way possible, to allow both to operate separately and together while benefiting from and without inhibiting the unique benefits of each. This work also supports the proposal for a new digital collection on papers from the Everglades. The Everglades also capture Florida’s history in the balance of railroads, Florida’s development, and their sensitive ecology. Infrastructure for information access benefits the coming events in each of these stories of Florida’s history. The past will never be dead, but through the necessary infrastructure we can harness the strength of the past for the present and future, from the vast orange groves of Florida building the road to tomorrow.