Archive for the 'digitalcollections' Category

Ever-closer to Another Milestone!

Laurie N. Taylor October 4th, 2008

The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) currently has 109,991 total items, which make up 60,664 different titles (newspapers, serials, and so forth mean one title can have thousands of items so that’s why these numbers differ), for 2,471,489 total pages.

Of that total 34,578 items in 5,067 titles with 512,204 pages have been added since July 1.

Meaning, in only slightly over 3 little-ole months, we added 512,204 pages! That’s over my hoped-for goal–which was set intentionally too high based on what I thought we could do–of 150,000 pages a month! I don’t think I should keep setting unrealistic goals, but it sure is nice to set something at an unrealistically high level and then still exceed it, so this is certainly cause for celebration, but we’ll wait for the next 29,000 pages to load and celebrate at the 2.5 million page level–which we’ll meet only a smidgen over a year after hitting the first 1 million pages (which we did in September of 2007–so less than a year later and a million more pages)!

LOC Press Release: Federal Agencies Collaborate on Guidelines for Digitization

Laurie N. Taylor October 3rd, 2008

LOC Press Release:

The Library of Congress is among a dozen federal agencies launching an initiative to establish a common set of guidelines for digitizing historical materials. Basing its efforts on a combination of collaborative research and combined experience, the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative will address a variety of issues related to the complex activities involved in the digitization of cultural heritage items.

Two working groups have been formed, one addressing content that can be captured in still images, the other involved with content categorizing sound, video, or motion-picture film. The initiative includes a just-launched Web site, www.digitizationguidelines.gov.

The Federal Agencies Still Image Digitization Working Group will focus its efforts on content such as books, manuscripts, maps, and photographic prints and negatives. Its members include the Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Gallery of Art, the National Library of Medicine, the National Technical Information Service, the National Transportation Library, the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Government Printing Office. An Advisory Board of technical experts from industry and academia will also contribute to the initiative.

The Federal Agencies Audio-Visual Working Group, which will address standards and practices for sound, video, and motion picture film, includes the Defense Visual Information Directorate of the Department of Defense, the Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Library of Medicine, the Smithsonian Institution, the Government Printing Office and the Voice of America.

The agencies began meeting in 2007 to identify common practices for digitizing cultural heritage materials in a sustainable way. Establishing guidelines is expected to increase the quality and consistency of digitized documents and media that are made available to the public, streamline workflows and reduce costs, promote the exchange of research, and encourage collaboration across agencies. The guidelines will also provide common benchmarks for digitization service providers and manufacturers.

The Web site currently features two documents developed by the Still Image Digitization Working Group that are open for comment until mid-November. The first proposes a minimal set of embedded TIFF metadata for use in historical and cultural heritage digital imaging. The second two-part document presents a taxonomy of digital image characteristics and provides corresponding metrics and criteria to describe and validate imaging performance and quality.

The Web site also provides a glossary of digitization terms and concepts, and presents digitization-related news and events on the subject from the participating agencies.

This collaborative effort initially formed under the auspices of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), a Library of Congress-led program initiated by Congress in December 2000 to develop a national strategy to collect and preserve digital content. For more information on NDIIPP visit www.digitalpreservation.gov.

Invitation to Participate in Caribbean Newspaper Digitization Project / Una Invitación para Participar en un Proyecto para la Digitalización de Periódicos Caribeños

Laurie N. Taylor September 23rd, 2008

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:

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:

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.

Road to the Moon

Laurie N. Taylor September 6th, 2008

Papers of Governor C. Farris BryantI 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.

Papers of Governor C. Farris BryantAdding 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.

Benefits of a Backlog - Over 100,000 a Month

Laurie N. Taylor August 18th, 2008

In looking at our scheduling for the past few months–with many people out for training, illness, and vacation and a much smaller student workforce due to summer schedules and budget cuts–I was worried that we’d fall far behind our optimum production level. Instead, we’re producing even more. We hit 2 million pages on July 9, and had already loaded another 100,000 pages to reach 2.1 million pages by July 28, and now we show 2,235,174 pages online, and we have more loading right now.

This higher production level with lower staffing is only possible because we have so much that’s already partially done, with scanning and other steps completed, and with less constantly coming in, we’re more able to move through some of the older items from the backlog.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean everything in the backlog because much of it needs special handling. Fortunately, though, it does mean that more is going up and that will help us process more efficiently later on when we do have more people and it means there’s a lot more online that wasn’t there before.

With so many new items, our improved processing also means we’re searchable by Google and other search engines through the static UFDC2 pages, and the Cataloging and Metadata department has been working hard to help our materials show in the library catalog. This is an interoperability nightmare because our items are item-level listings and library catalogs aren’t designed or normally used to see every picture in a collection. Cataloging is doing great work to sort through the different types of materials and different workflows necessary for each to make sure the most materials can be represented in the most useful ways.  This will be continue to be an ongoing process, but it’s already showing progress with the individual Digital Collections being added to the catalog.

We’re moving along rapidly on many fronts, but there’s so much left to do. It would be absolutely overwhelming if it weren’t so wonderful to see so many rare items not available anywhere suddenly available for everyone online!

The Digital Library Center, Our Sign (and a bit of the office)

Laurie N. Taylor August 6th, 2008

DLC SignDLC Sign, 2DLC Sign, 3

The photos above are of our Digital Library Sign, and they’re now online in UFDC (which is harvestable by robots as UFDC2) and online in our Flickr account. These pictures are particularly nice because they include so many of the other images we’ve worked on over the years. It’s also nice to show off some of our office, most of which doesn’t show as well as our work, as shown through the boxes in the photo above, but our messy daily work leads to gorgeously finished materials available online.

Job Opening in the Scholarly Technology Group at Brown

Laurie N. Taylor August 1st, 2008

The Scholarly Technology Group at Brown is looking for the a research programmer  They’re looking for a creative, technically sophisticated individual who will use computer methods and structured data to augment the research process for humanities scholars. For more information: www.stg.brown.edu or elli_mylonas@brown.edu. To apply, go to the Brown job website, http://careers.brown.edu, and look for job B01052. The position sounds wonderful, and Brown has so many wonderful research projects and researchers - this looks like a great position for current and future work given the many project possibilities and the potential for growth!

One Year, Two Months

Laurie N. Taylor July 28th, 2008

I’ve been so busy the past year (or 14 months to be completely accurate) since joining UF’s Digital Library Center that it’s hard to see what all we’ve accomplished. The time has flown by with loads of wonderful work, and wonderful progress. I decided to review some of our documentation and to note a few of the highlights:

  • More stuff! We hit the 1 million page mark in September 2007, and as of today we’re at 2.12 million with so many more to load!
  • More types of stuff! Improvements to UFDC that include support for audio and video files, better multi-language support!
  • Better ways to see the stuff! Optimized code for a faster UFDC, thumbnails for new all book images for faster quick-viewing, a better interface for usability!
  • Better connections to find stuff! Optimizing UFDC for search engines so we’re crawled properly, created RSS feeds for the collections within UFDC, set up external accounts to share content and to connect users to UFDC (this blog, our Flickr account, our YouTube presence, Wikipedia links for items and entries on authors, books, people, and places related to the collections connecting context with actual items).
  • More work to tell people about our stuff! Multiple presentations internally and at national and international conferences, interns, class tours, working with faculty, students, staff, and organizations to tell them about UFDC and to show them how it can help their work. We made exhibits, contributed digital materials to exhibits and other events and publications, and worked with the Libraries’ Public Information Officer to write and distribute press releases and other materials.
  • More projects to keep going! Working with other groups at the UF Libraries for particular collections, including: Retrospective Dissertation Scanning; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Collection; Romanies Collection; Gainesville Bands; British Parliamentary Debates; Asia Collection; Women in Development; and many more, including further developing existing collections like the Florida Digital Newspaper Library and the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) with partners at the UF Libraries, at UF, and elsewhere. In addition to projects based on partners, we’ve also defined some projects chronologically with grant and time-based projects and this we’ve finished some grants, started new ones, applied for others, are preparing to apply for even others, and migrating some of our older projects from other technology to UFDC.

All of this and much more happened during the past year, but the Digital Library Center has been around since 1999 so it all grows from that ongoing work. That’s still the more recent history because the Digital Library Center grew out of the Preservation Department (founded in 1987, I think, based on the  “News from the Preservation Office” newsletters now online in UFDC). By 1993, the Preservation Department was already looking toward a comprehensive method for preservation, around the same time that the Mosaic browser was helping generate interest in the World Wide Web, heralding the promise of the digital revolution to come. There’s so much more to the history and the future of the Digital Library Center, but it’s too much to try to put in one blog post so it’ll have to wait for later.