Digital Library Center Blog | UF

The Digital Library of the Caribbean’s diverse partners serve an international community of scholars, students, and citizens by working together to preserve and to provide enhanced electronic access to cultural, historical, legal, governmental, and research materials in a common web space with a multilingual interface.

Please read our latest newsletter to learn about new partners, new content and new technologies available in dLOC.

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If it has been a while since you’ve been to www.dloc.com, we encourage you to browse our more than 1.5 million pages of content. Enjoy reading more about dLOC in the newsletter and please contact us with any questions or suggestions.

Also, we encourage you to forward the newsletter to any professional associations or colleagues that are interested in the region!

The Council on Library and Information Resources’ Digital Library Federation program and centerNet are delighted to announce today their formal alliance. Established in 1995, the Digital Library Federation is a community of library practitioners engaged and committed to building and sustaining digital libraries through collaborative effort and establishing best practices. The DLF community includes project managers, code developers, and digital curators.

The affiliation will focus on areas where digital libraries and digital humanities converge and need further exploration and understanding of each community’s roles and responsibilities. Areas of likely collaboration include the following:

• Data Curation–examining options for the preservation of digital scholarship objects and workflows, and digital products of research and instruction;
• Cyberinfrastructure–exploring interoperability, data mining, shared infrastructure, and linked open data;
• Internationalization–sharing work with international networks to increase awareness and cooperation; improving communities’ awareness of and influence on international initiatives;
• Scaling up and scaling down–working with Google books, HATHI Trust, and the Digital Public Library of America to explore the meaning of aggregating data, and the new types of research questions that can be asked using huge digital libraries; also examining how to leverage smaller scoped work, and understanding the unique preservation challenges this scholarship presents;
• Career paths–highlighting career opportunities in fields of digital humanities and digital libraries to better understand changing professional roles;
• Publication and distribution—exploring how we share research efforts to better inform practice.

The US Government Printing Office (GPO) is celebrating its 150th anniversary! Congratulations GPO!

And, congratulations to all of us, who benefit from GPO’s work and from the closely related Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). FDLP is an early and brilliant program in collaborative library operations to ensure access and preservation.

The University of Florida Libraries is the FDLP Regional Depository Library for Florida, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. The University of Florida is also a core partner in similar collaborative programs that date back multiple decades, like the current Digital Library of the Caribbean which has an over 80 year history of collaborative preservation and access work using microfilm and now digital technologies.

The FDLP website explains FDLP:

The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) was established by Congress to ensure that the American public has access to its Government’s information. Since 1813, depository libraries have safeguarded the public’s right to know by collecting, organizing, maintaining, preserving, and assisting users with information from the Federal Government. The FDLP provides Government information at no cost to designated depository libraries throughout the country and territories. These depository libraries, in turn, provide local, no-fee access to Government information in an impartial environment with professional assistance.

As institutions committed to equity of access and dedicated to free and unrestricted public use, the nation’s nearly 1,250 depository libraries serve as one of the vital links between “We the people” and our Government. Anyone can visit Federal depository libraries and use the Federal depository collections which are filled with information on careers, business opportunities, consumer information, health and nutrition, legal and regulatory information, demographics, and numerous other subjects. (citation)

News story below from FDLP.gov:

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) kicked off its 150 year anniversary celebration on June 23, 2010. GPO was created when President James Buchanan signed Joint Resolution 25 on June 23, 1860. GPO opened its doors for business nine months later on March 4, 1861, the same day Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office becoming the 16th President of the United States. GPO began celebrating this milestone with an event that honored its current and retired employees. Public Printer Bob Tapella and Archivist David Ferriero unveiled a facsimile of the seven-page handwritten document that created the agency.

“When you think about GPO’s rich history and what has made GPO successful for the past 150 years, it’s our hardworking employees,” said Public Printer Bob Tapella. “GPO is a family business. We have families who have contributed to this agency that span three and four generations. It’s that dedication which has made GPO one of the largest printing, secure credentialing and digital information facilities in the world.”

As part of the celebration, GPO launched a Web page devoted to the agency’s 150 year history that includes portraits of past public printers as well as a video of the history of GPO. To learn more about the history of the GPO, GPO has reissued 100 GPO Years, 1861-1961, which can be purchased from the U.S. Government Bookstore. Read the GPO press release.

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Congrats again to GPO, and to all of those who participate in FDLP!

Mark Sullivan (our wonderful UFDC Programmer) just added RSS feeds by institution to UFDC!

For each institution (other than ones we suppressed, such as UF), we have a complete RSS feed with every item, and a feed with just the last 20 items added. This is a feed for all items tagged to this institution from all of their collections within UFDC.

Check out these great RSS feeds for:

• National Archives of Haiti
• CARICOM
• The College of The Bahamas
• Caribbean Studies Association
• FUNGLODE
• National Library of Jamaica
• Belize National Library Service and Information System
• Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra
• Universidad de Oriente
• University of the Virgin Islands
• University of Central Florida
• Florida International University
• University of South Florida

The University of Florida’s historic biscuit dates back to 1913 when a hungry student mailed it to his parents as evidence of UF’s food quality. The George A. Smathers Libraries now preserves the historic biscuit. Our biscuit can be viewed online along with millions of other images through the University of Florida Digital Collections.

Every institution archives objects illustrative of its own history. Join us here to let us know about yours.

We’ve got the Biscuit. You bring gravy.

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