Recently in Announcements Category

From the conference web site:

This intimate conference will feature programming highlighting the work of risk taking, game playing, fun-loving librarians and educators. Sessions in a variety of formats, including the experimental, will be creative and interactive and will showcase genuinely innovative approaches to helping students develop core information gathering and management skills.

Though the focus of the conference is library instruction, the keynote speaker, Greg Niemeyer, will talk about games and the learning process. Certainly a timely and interesting topic that could easily translate to the online environment and digital collections. I've noticed a rise in the frequency of interactive games (one example is the London Science Museum's game) and learning modules especially in online museum exhibits and this is definitely an area ripe for exploration as we seek to integrate primary materials and learning objectives into value-added digital collections.

Enjoy the conference!

Recently, The University Libraries were awarded an LSTA grant to fund a new digitization project: Southern Nevada: The Boomtown Years 1900-1925. This project will focus on digitization of materials in our historic mining and railroad collections and will involve collaboration with local partners to identify content and make it more accessible through an online collection.

The Libraries are currently seeking candidates for the following two temporary grant-funded positions: a Digital Collections Metadata Specialist and an intern currently enrolled in the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Sciences program. More detailed information and required qualifications can be found on the Libraries' employment page.

This is a great opportunity to get involved in the full digitization life-cycle and work with a great team of people at the Libraries. Contact me for more information.

I am currently gearing up for the 2007 LITA Forum and saw this announcement come across my RSS feeder this morning. It is a survey about technology conferences posted on Michelle Boule's A Wandering Eyre blog where she writes that she is a member of "an ALA LITA Committee that is trying to design a better technology conference". Here, here!

While ALA conferences seem to provide a smattering of "technology in libraries overviews", they often focus on trends without providing practical information. I've notice that many of my colleagues find conferences like Internet Librarian to be more relevant to what they are actually doing day to day. In my own experience, I feel that user group meetings (like the CONTENTdm Western Users Group) have been the most helpful to getting hand-on training, answers to specific questions, and insights from librarians and programmers working on specific applications, solutions, or enhancements. If you have opinions on technology conferences, this is a opportunity to share your opinion and hopefully squeeze a bit more out of your hard-to-come by travel funding.

The University Libraries are currently recruiting for a digitization services position. Please see job posting below:

Web & Digitization Application Developer, UNLV Libraries
http://www.higheredjobs.com/institution/details.cfm?JobCode=175237841

RESPONSIBILITIES

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries invites applications for the
position of Web & Digitization Application Developer.

This new professional faculty position, reporting to the Web Technical
Support Manager, will support the technical development and enhancement of
the UNLV Libraries' website and digital publishing initiatives. The
incumbent will enhance the UNLV Libraries' website and digitization
capabilities through the development of relational databases and authored
scripts extending the capabilities of the Libraries' website. The incumbent
will develop applications and programs to help crosswalk various kinds of
metadata information from one standard to another. The incumbent will
design, develop, and extend the user interface of the Libraries' digital
publishing platform (OCLC's CONTENTdm), customize templates to better
enhance the public CONTENTdm interface and functionality, and provide
troubleshooting assistance and serve as a library contact with CONTENTdm.
The incumbent will participate in general web development support,
including HTML coding and the creation of original web pages augmenting the
Libraries' website. For all website and digitization development efforts,
the incumbent is expected to create and maintain technical and client
documentation to help maintain developed applications and help guide future
development efforts.

As a strong partner in student learning, UNLV Libraries fosters information
literacy with innovative services, entrepreneurial staff, over one million
volumes, outstanding digital collections, up-to-date technology and
internationally renowned Special Collections in four modern, flexible
facilities. We welcome individuals with diverse backgrounds to join our
growing organization of over 120 highly-trained and experienced faculty
librarians and staff members supporting teaching, learning, research and
creative endeavors at one of the nation's fastest growing universities.

For more information, please visit
http://www.library.unlv.edu/employment.html

QUALIFICATIONS

Required: A bachelor's degree in computer science or related field from an
accredited college or university; two or more years professional experience
designing and modifying relational databases (such as MySQL); two or more
years professional programming experience (such as PHP, Perl, and a higher
level object oriented programming language such as Java or C++); two or
more years experience working within the UNIX operating system at the
command line level (Sun Solaris or Linux preferred); evidence of
documentation writing skills supporting developed applications. As part of
an interdisciplinary team, the incumbent is expected to have experience
working collaboratively and constructively with a wide range of groups and
individuals, and possess the ability to communicate with colleagues the
technical constraints, requirements, and resource needs associated with
work projects.

Preferred: A background in web site development, creation of backend
databases supporting database driven web sites, and previous experience
with the CONTENTdm publishing platform.

SALARY RANGE

This is a full-time, 12-month, non-tenure-track position at Range 2.
Salaries are competitive and dependent upon labor market. Position is
contingent upon funding.

APPLICATION DETAILS

Application materials must include a current resume, detailed cover letter,
and names, addresses, and telephone numbers of three professional
references who may be contacted. Applicants should fully describe
qualifications and experience, since the initial review will serve to
evaluate applicants based on documented, relevant qualifications and
professional work experience. The review of materials will begin
immediately. Materials should be addressed to, Web & Digitization
Application Developer Committee Chair, and submitted on-line at
https://hrsearch.unlv.edu/. For assistance with UNLV's on-line applicant
portal, contact Jen Feldmann at (702) 895-3886 or email hrsearch@unlv.edu

Thanks for stopping by! This blog serves as an information source for updates on UNLV Libraries digitization activities, digital collections news, and items of interest from the field of digital libraries.

Digital collections at the University of Nevada Las Vegas are managed and created in the Web and Digitization Services (WDS) department of the Libraries. UNLV uses CONTENTdm™ as its digital media management system, which helps facilitate collaboration and sharing of digital collections. This blog will also provide updates and information regarding CONTENTdm development and implementation.

Currently, there are two major digital collections in production. The Showgirls project focuses on historic materials relating to Las Vegas showgirls and features scanned digital images of original costume design sketches and photographic prints. The Nevada Test SIte Oral History Project is being created in conjunction with the UNLV Department of History and consists of oral history interview transcripts and digital audio. The digitized content has been collected to create a much-needed research collection on the Nevada Test Site.

WDS and staff working on digital projects are always interested in hearing your comments, questions, project ideas, and feedback. Please feel free to E-mail Us, or stop by and visit!