Digital Library Center Blog | UF

During the ASCLA/ICAN discussion group meeting on collaborative digitization, a number of great projects were presented:

• digitalMETRO: directory of digital collections by members of the Metropolitan NY Library Council (built with Omeka)
• Lyrasis’ mass digitization initiative
• Tennessee Electronic Library: Volunteer Voices
• BCR will have workshops for collaborative groups on digital preservation
• South Carolina Digital Libraryand the Low Country Digital Library
• Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative
• Digital Library of Georgia

CHICAGO – Ann Russell is the winner of the second annual LBI George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg Preservation Award. The Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) of ALCTS will present the award on Sunday, July 12th, at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2009 American Library Association meeting in Chicago, IL.  The Cunha/Swartzburg Award is sponsored by LBI: The Library Binding Institute and includes a $1,250 grant and citation.

Established in 2007, the award honors the memory of George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg, early leaders in cooperative preservation programming and strong advocates for collaboration in the field of preservation. The award acknowledges and supports cooperative preservation projects and/or rewards individuals or groups that foster collaboration for preservation goals.

Ms. Russell, the recently retired Director of the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC)  in Andover, MA, is being presented with this honor in recognition of her advocacy of and contributions to cooperative preservation during her  thirty year tenure in the field of library preservation.  Ann’s vision and leadership were the driving force behind NEDCC’s growth and influence in the field of preservation and conservation education and training.   From the creation of the School for Scanning, to work as a founding member of the Regional Alliance for Preservation, Ann has been at the heart of numerous national and international initiatives. NEDCC workshops have been offered all over the US, and in Cuba, South Africa and Russia. In addition to her comprehensive and effective impact on collaborative preservation over the past three decades,  Ann’s collaborative vision and outstanding leadership have strengthened preservation knowledge, practice, and awareness of tens of thousands of staff in libraries, archives, and museums around the world.

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is the national association for information providers who work in collections and technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, collection development, preservation, and continuing resources in digital and print formats.

ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.

The Research Library Leadership Fellows (RLLF) Program is an executive leadership program jointly designed and sponsored by ARL member libraries. The pilot program was sponsored by the University of California at Los Angeles; Columbia University; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Texas at Austin; and University of Washington. The second offering was sponsored by six ARL member libraries: University of California, Berkeley and the California Digital Library; Harvard University; University of Minnesota; North Carolina State University; Pennsylvania State University; and the University of Toronto. The 2009-2010 program is being jointly sponsored and designed by Brigham Young University, University of Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Houston, University of Michigan, University of Utah, and University of Western Ontario. The program offers an opportunity for development of future senior-level leaders in large research libraries.

Applications for the RLLF Program are due by March 6. Not only is this an amazing opportunity, but it’s one that includes a visit to the University of Florida Libraries, which is also wonderful and I’m excited to know that the Libraries have the opportunity to host the RLL Fellows. As one of the sponsors for the 2009-2010 RLLF Program, the University of Florida Libraries is hosting a meeting (“Strategic Issues Institute II”) in February 2010!

Along with thousands of other folks working in or around libraries and information services, I’ll be in Denver this weekend of the ALA Midwinter conference. ALA will have lots of great presentations and great folks who have lots to information to share! Jan. 25, update: I came down with the flu the flu on Jan. 23 (the day before my flight), but soon I’ll be better and reading all the blogs and posts from others who did go (and learning vicariously of all that I missed).

I’m at ALA (still today and through some of tomorrow before a red eye flight home) and this morning I attended and presented within the OCLC Sponsored “Microfilm to Digitization Roadshow.” This included presentations from Kelly Barrall and Joan DaShiel on the ins and outs of their microfilm and microfilm digitization processing and Katherine Walter from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on her work with the Nebraska Public Documents project. Katherine is the Co-Director for the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities and Chair of the Digital Initiatives & Special Collections Department, and my presentation on digitizing from microfilm for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). These were great presentations, but it was especially great to chat with the presenters and attendees both before and after. One of the projects I’m working on is an “adopt a reel” option for donors to fund microfilm digitization by reel, and learning more about Preservation Resources and processing is helping me build that project proposal which will hopefully be successful and lauch before the end of 2008. While there’s a lot to be done before that can happen, this was one more step in the process building toward that project and toward other projects as well.