Digital Library Center Blog | UF

The iPhone App for the UF Digital Collections is now live and can be downloaded from iTunes here. The App, codenamed SobekPH for the Crocodile god Sobek (even crocodiles are Gators in Gainesville) and PH for iPhone, makes it easy to browse and search a number of the collections within the UF Digital Collections.

SobekPH is a great iPhone App on it’s own, and it’s because it showcases the power and excellent design of the UF Digital Collections. I often try to explain to people how and why UFDC’s infrastructure is so excellent, why that’s so important, and what it then makes possible. Normally, these are discussions where I focus on an elegantly designed backbone and others participate by focusing on the visual interface. Those are useful, but at a bit of cross-purposes. While interfaces rely on the underlying infrastructure, there’s not a great way to show the difference between an excellent design and one that just works when looking only at the interface. SobekPH is another interface, but it’s an interface on a new platform and one that was easy to design and implement because of the power of UFDC’s underlying infrastructure.  Thus, SobekPH is a new interface that shows the importance of the underlying infrastructure explicit.

[Full disclosure: The UF Digital Collections have an amazingly elegant and robust architecture thanks to the incredible programming work done by Mark Sullivan. My husband, James (he goes by Pete) Taylor wanted to learn to develop iPhone applications and we thought the UF Digital Collections would be the perfect first app. Pete got started on the app one Saturday and soon had a working version. I emailed Mark with the details and Mark made a couple of minor tweaks before the weekend was over. Then, Pete spent time optimizing the iPhone code and I made button images for the app and now it's released and available.]

Celebrate the official launch of the Jamaica Journal online in the Digital Library of the Caribbean:

Jamaica Journal Historical Collection Online
November 15, 2009, 4-6pm
Florida International University; Green Library 220

Event will feature Jamaican writer Donna Weir-Soley, reading from her book, Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women’s Writings. Tour an exhibit featuring the Jamaica Journal with presentations from the Institute of Jamaica.

Admission is FREE and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Subscriptions to the Jamaica Journal and books by Weir-Soley will be available for purchase and signing.

Co-Sponsors Include: Air Jamaica, Jamaican Information Service, Jamaica Tourist Board, and the Latin American and Caribbean Center

This event celebrates the collaborate work of the Jamaica Journal and the Digital Library of the Caribbean. With the cooperation of the publisher, a long run of the Jamaica Journal from the holdings of Digital Library of the Caribbean partners has now been made available in the Digital Library of the Caribbean. These issues are now online here.

One issue of special note is that of Volume 10, No. 1 (1976), dedicated to the folk music of Jamaica. When originally distributed, this issue was accompanied by a vinyl record of examples of traditional Jamaican music. The supplemental recordings were converted to digital audio, and may be heard online. This serves as an example of how the Digital Library of the Caribbean can bring together information from different formats (print, audio, etc.) in one online repository.

Jamaica Journal Online: http://www.dloc.com/ufdc/?m=hdBI2&b=UF00090030

Digital Library of the Caribbean: http://www.dloc.com

The Wakulla News from October 22, 2009 has a news story on their archives in the Florida Digital Newspaper Library.

Press Release -

The Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) has just released a new planning document, DIGITIZATION ACTIVITIES - Project Planning and Management Outline.

The aim of this document is to define activities relating to the digitization of original cultural materials, and to outline general steps for planning and management of this process. The activities described in this document address library/archival issues, imaging and conversion work, and IT infrastructure issues in particular, and were identified using project management outlines from several organizations with significant experience working with cultural materials. This document defines “digitization” as a complete process, and covers all project components from content selection through delivery of digitized objects into a repository environment.

You can access the document from FADGI website  (digitizationguidelines.gov) or go directly to the document page here.  All comments can be submitted using the online form here.