Digitization Projects at UNLV Libraries

Announcing dmMonocle: a new open source viewer for CONTENTdm collections

2009-10-02T22:26:10Z

Digital collections managers in my position often make the case for digitizing materials like maps, newspapers, architectural drawings, and detailed images by highlighting that digitization is not only a great way to make the items globally accessible online, but it is also one way to actually transform the usage of the item.

What makes a digitized image transformative is the enhanced way that users can zoom into details that may not be easily seen with the naked eye, but become visible through high resolution images and the ability to zoom into small details of the image.

CONTENTdm users have had this ability for some time for JPEG2000 images / high resolutions JPEG's in their collections. The problem is that getting into the details requires enough clicking to cause carpal tunnel syndrome. This repeated clicking turns off all but the most determined users. Until now....

Recently, the Libraries' Web and Multimedia Designer has been working to improve the viewing experience for our users and has developed an open source application called dmMonocle to share with the CONTENTdm community.

It was only announced this week and already several libraries have implemented the code for their collections.

Download the code from Google Code and access screencasts to help get it installed and running on your collections.

More information on dmMonocle

Read more about web projects at UNLV at the Webbin Rebels blog

The digital collections team encourages your feedback, comments and suggestions. Please let us know what you think!

UNLV Announces New Digital Collection, Southern Nevada: The Boomtown Years 1900-1925

2009-05-20T18:56:09Z

The University Libraries are pleased to announce the launch of a new digital collection:

Southern Nevada: The Boomtown Years 1900-1925
http://digital.library.unlv.edu/boomtown

The LSTA-grant funded, Southern Nevada: The Boomtown Years 1900-1925 digital collection brings together a wide range of original source materials found in the rich collections of UNLV Libraries Special Collections, as well as items from the Nevada State Museum and the Clark County Heritage Museum.

The project contains over 1500 digitized items; including photographs, correspondence, newspapers, maps, and ephemera from several mining and railroad manuscript collections documenting both large historical events, and the more private and social lives of individuals and their communities during the mining boom in Southern Nevada.

Notably, this collection also promotes the use of primary source materials by K-16 educators by providing a wide variety of standards-based teaching activities for elementary and high schoolers.

For more information about the collection, or to share your comments, please feel free to contact me via e-mail at cory.lampert@unlv.edu.

Must-read on Technology Obsolescence

2009-04-17T14:55:37Z

What media succeeds and what happens when it fails? Should we care about obsolete technologies?

This past week I was invited to a Journalism department Media Technologies and Society class to engage in a discussion about technology obsolescence. In preparation for what turned out to be a very compelling discussion, I was given a selection of articles to think about. And I just have to pass on the citation for one article that really should be required (and is in fact) very enjoyable, reading for anyone and everyone:

Sterling, B. (2004). Built on digital sand. Horizon, 18.

As a teaser, I'll include a quote from the article, where Sterling is comparing print media (paper and ink) preservation problems to our current situation:

"Paper documents do die, rather slowly. But the alphabetical symbols on this paper can be copied fairly cheaply and quickly without much loss of fidelity.
However, if you have a computer with digital data inside it, you have not one problem, or two problems, but level after level of sophisticated instabilities. Basically, you the lonely archivist are trying to support and preserve an entire cybernetic post-industrial system."

During my time with the class, I got to share the perspective of someone in the education/cultural heritage field whose professional work deals heavily with technology (and therefore obsolescence). I was asked a multitude of insightful questions by the students and I was pleased to hear it summed up quite succinctly as the realization grew, "So basically we are ALL becoming digital librarians!" Yes, we are!

Attention Library School Students!

2009-02-04T17:04:13Z

The ALA New Members Roundtable Student Chapter of the Year Award Committee wants to hear about your accomplishments! Are you a member of an active ALA student chapter? Apply today for this annual award that comes with bragging rights, plus $1,000 in travel funding to support ALA conference attendance! Feel free to forward this announcement to any interested students you might know. Thanks!

Applicants Sought for the NMRT Student Chapter of the Year Award

Deadline: February 27, 2009

Calling All Student Chapters!

Has your chapter had an outstanding year? Has membership in your chapter increased? Did your chapter develop and provide opportunities for members to participate in interesting and rewarding activities? Has your chapter received any awards? Do you have outstanding officers or members who should be recognized nationally?

Apply for the *New Members Round Table Student Chapter of the Year Award*! Applying for this award is a great way to highlight the time, energy and creativity that your chapter has put forward in planning activities and increasing student involvement. The Award is presented in recognition of a chapter's outstanding contributions to the American Library Association, their library school, and the profession. A winner and runner-up will be selected for the award. The Student Chapter winner will receive $1,000.00 to help defray travel expenses to ALA Annual, and the winning chapter, along with the runner up, will each receive a certificate. Both will be recognized at the Student Reception at ALA Annual. All interested applicants must be accredited ALA Student Chapters.

Please visit the NMRT Student Chapter of the Year Award website for more award information and application forms.

Welcome Home, Howard: New Digital Collection on Howard Hughes

2008-12-17T16:31:25Z

The UNLV University Libraries announces the launch of a new digital collection, Welcome Home, Howard: Or Whatever Became of the Daring Aviator? This collection is an update of a popular Special Collections web exhibit, that has been converted to a searchable digital collection with added functionality and a new look.

The collection features photographic images and portraits documenting the life of Howard Hughes, including images selected from two collections: The Howard Hughes Collection and the Hughes Electronics Collection.

This collection also features several new functions, including a commenting feature and the ability to rate individual items. Search suggestions have been incorporated into the basic keyword search box and there is an enhanced date search that can be found under "Advanced Search". Give it a try!

Visit the collection at: http://digital.library.unlv.edu/hughes/

Comments and feedback are always appreciated!

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Receives Award

2008-10-23T16:40:44Z

I am pleased to announce that the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project is the recipient of the Elizabeth B. Mason Project Award, Honorable Mention, for "outstanding use of oral history".

I was able to attend the Oral History Association's annual meeting this past weekend in Pittsburgh, PA to join and celebrate the other award winners and participate in the conference's Digital Showcase. I feel honored to be a part of this project and I am grateful to the OHA for welcoming me into their community.

Other award recipients include:
Muskie Oral History Project (The Edmund S. Muskie and Special Collections Library at Bates College)

In Our Own Words - The Negro Spirituals Heritage Keepers Oral History Project of Mexican American Community Builders in San Jose, California (Mills College)

Congratulations!

New Resources from NEDCC

2008-09-22T17:16:38Z

The Northeast Document Conservation Center has recently released a set of valuable web resources for preservation and digitization. The entire release includes disaster planning, online preservation education curriculum, and a full selection of NEDCC leaflets on a variety of topics.

Of particular note to digitization managers are the two sections on:

* Toolkit: What's Wrong With This Picture which covers creating long-lasting quality digital master images and covers how to preserve these digital images over time.
* Tookit: on Surveying Digital Preservation Readiness This toolkit "contains readings and resources on preservation and digitization of photograph collections, based on a highly successful three-day workshop series" and is chock full of helpful research, conference presentations and reports.

NEDCC also sponsors several on-site professional development opportunities, including Stewardship of Digital Assets: A two-day workshop, Persistence of Memory: Sustaining Digital Collections, and continuing preservation education programs.

Is your digital repository a secret?

2008-08-22T14:51:37Z

It is a commonly held notion that digitization work is done to support learning and to increase access to materials. Cited in the report mentioned below, nearly 80% of large academic libraries either already have or plan to have digital repositories. Sounds great, right?

Well hold on. Ithaka's 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education, presents research highlighting faculty views on the academic library. The report also tracks changes in their views over time (the years 2000, 2003, and most recently: 2006). This very interesting report reveals lots of thought-provoking topics for discussion; but the section on digital repositories was what drew my immediate attention and may be cause for some alarm. Especially this:

"Still, the vast majority - almost two-thirds - of faculty members are not even sure if their institution has a digital repository and less than a third of those aware of a campus digital repository report having ever contributed content to it. It is clear that these repositories have not become embedded in faculty workflows; in fact, many faculty are not even aware of their existence. Faculty of all different disciplines and across different size institutions were relatively equally unaware if their institution has a repository."

Clearly, this is a problem. Considering all the work that goes into repository creation, not to mention the implications for scholarly publishing and the important educational impact; this research certainly calls for a more targeted effort to not only make digital materials accessible -- but to encourage and support their use. Marketing of repositories, education about participation in repositories, and evaluation of repositories are all key areas that need future attention to change the course of the current statistics.

At UNLV, we are just beginning to tap into faculty participation through our subject liaisons and outreach. What techniques have others found to be most effective in this area?

Two handy digitization planning tools

2008-07-25T17:59:32Z

On of the things that can be frustrating and/or exciting (depending on your personality) when you work in the world of digitization is that regardless of how proficient you become at the end of a successful project, the slate always gets wiped clean and you have to return to square one when the next project comes along. The process of determining standards, procedures, and status of items for the project is important and may take up a significant amount of time in planning the digitization process.

I have come across two helpful tools that may come in handy for this planning process. The first one deals with everyone's favorite topic-- copyright. And while, there will never, ever, be a simple solution to any copyright questions, this neat digital slider created by the Library of Congress will at least get you started in the right direction and may help you generate a list of questions to ask in the process.

Once your copyright status is clearer, you might be ready to start scanning, or at least taking a few sample scans to help determine resolution, bit-depth, and pixel dimensions that meet the needs of the project. If you only digitize one type of materials and already have standards to refer to, this process is pretty straightforward. But if you are scanning a new format, a over-sized item, or if you have students working on a project, you may find that the Image Quality Calculator from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a lifesaver. I have found that by walking library staff from other departments through their scanning request using this tool is also a good opportunity for me to teach them that there may not be a one-size-fits-all answer to "how should I scan X?"

Thanks to those that help make all of our lives easier by creating cool tools to aid in digitization planning!

Thoughts from ALA: the happiest conference on earth?

2008-07-03T22:59:06Z

Well, maybe not everyone agrees...but since my lodging was within a stone's throw of Disneyland and I could hear the screams from the roller coaster from my hotel patio, there was a certain added thrill to the 2008 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim.

So how was this year's conference and what did I accomplish in my four days? Lots of running around looking for conference rooms (anyone else find the Disneyland Hotel a total nightmare?), lots of vendors in the exhibits hawking their schwag, and fun times reconnecting with librarians from far and wide.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and was able to register and drop in on the very end of a committee meeting before heading out to grab some dinner and meet up with former colleagues. Saturday began the marathon race to fit in as much information and experience as possible in four days and after a quick tour around the exhibits, it was time to present one of my two poster sessions. The first one was a summary of how we built the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project digital library and the poster was well-received with lots of interest and questions. I think ALA puts the poster sessions in a somewhat buried area of the exhibits and there wasn't much foot traffic, but nonetheless I gave out handouts and bookmarks and talked to several folks that are also working on oral history projects. After lunch and a few aspirin to combat a wicked headache, I attempted to find the Digitizing Indian Country presentations. This was one of the few sessions directly related to digitization, and I do wish that there were more presentations to attend in my specific area. Often I digital collections topics are spread throughout LITA, ASCLA, ACLTS, and other random groups. The last session I attended Saturday was the Collaborative Digitization Discussion Group that turned out to be the most interesting and informative session I got to see.

Toby Graham (Director of the Digital Library of Georgia) talked about the Civil Rights Digital Library, an impressive digital collection that contains digitized content from Georgia (news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives) as well as serving as a comprehensive portal to other digital collections on the subject. The video included in this collection is amazing to watch and Mr. Graham did a great job summing up the process of building the collection. This presentation was followed by two speakers from ALA's Washington Office who specialize in copyright policy: Carrie Russell and Corey Williams Green. Both speakers did a great job of providing concise and informative updates on Orphan Works legislation and how this legislation may affect those of us doing digitization of works with uncertain copyright status. All in all there are still some worrisome notions in the various bills (i.e. a proposed "dark archive" of materials seems more than a bit problematic), but I am very glad to have more knowledge of the issues to help in making local decisions.

Saturday night I ventured out to a local Korean restaurant with some colleagues and co-workers. I couldn't tell you the name of it, since I don't read Korean, but it was off the beaten path and had some seriously tasty eats. Nothing like sitting around a table with hundreds of condiment plates and piles of searing meats (sorry vegetarians out there!) to dispel the mob-feeling of the ALA conference.

Sunday, I got up early and attended a breakfast for YA authors at my hotel. I talked with some librarians at the opposite end of my professional spectrum and enjoyed the change in conversation. After the breakfast I tried to attend a session on the Myers-Briggs Personality Types in the workplace, but ended up leaving early as the whole session was predicated on deep understanding of the Harry Potter characters, and I haven't read any of the books. Instead, I went to a research presentation put on by LRRT. The various speakers all presented research results from large library studies with very interesting topics (career tracking of LIS graduates, National Board Certification and achievement in school media centers, and information services during community disasters). After this meeting, I helped my co-worker set up for her poster session before taking a quick detour to the LITA Awards ceremony.It was really fun to see some extremely talented people be recognized for their work before I headed off to attempt to attend the Alumni Reception at the Disneyland Hotel. This was a bad experience that left me frazzled in the Sleeping Beauty Tower (not good!) and frustrated at the apparent lack of a Central Ballroom. Luckily, Downtown Disney was close by to explore before attending a lavish vendor party. I even made it back to the hotel in time to see the fireworks.

Monday I attended the CONTENTdm user group meeting which packed a lot of stuff into one morning session: breakfast, networking, two presentation, roundtable discussions and a product update that previewed the 5.0 release in the Fall, which promises a totally revamped Acquisition Station and Report Generator (among other enhancements). After the user group meeting, I met up with my co-presenters at the poster sessions for my second presentation entitled, "Sayonara Party Girl, Hello Real World: Surfing Into Library Technology Positions". Things went really well and we talked to several folks in our targeted demographic of recent graduates. Our data provided some encouragement with a healthy dose of reality and I think it was interesting for people to see. We rushed a bit to pack up and load the car for the return trip, but we all returned to Vegas without incident. I don't know if I could tolerate Anaheim for every conference, but I have to say that it was a interesting venue with fun options for kids of all ages.

Report from CONTENTdm Western User Group Meeting 2008

2008-06-11T14:41:59Z

Over the weekend, I joined two other library staff members at the CONTENTdm Western User Group meeting in Claremont, CA. The conference was generously hosted by the Claremont Colleges where we could stroll the gorgeous campus and network with fellow CONTENTdm users in between sessions.

This two-day conference began with an extremely content-packed session (perhaps it could have been divided into two?) that included overviews of two digitization projects. Of particular interest was the Washington Rural Heritage project that involved the leadership of the Washington State Library in mentoring small rural libraries to help get them started in digitization. The projects has been very successful in building grassroots support for digitizing content because Laura Robinson of the State Library had done an impressive job of reaching out to the community with information and technical support. The financial support of continuing state library grants help sustain the initial efforts and further build the collections. There was an additional presentation by the Claremont University Consortium about their digitized scrapbooks, and a vendor presentation on large-format scanning issues and challenges.

I came away from the second session thinking about how to structure collection in CONTENTdm, because while it is possible to purchase an "unlimited" item license, there is still a "collection" limit and this has presented problems for some institutions with extensive collections. The main issue is that it can be very difficult to merge collections because you must refer users to a new URL and they may have trouble locating content they depend on. In addition, it can be hard to navigate long, long, lists of collections. Good food for thought as we start to grow our program.CONTENTdm is increasingly being used for institutional repositories, and there was a presentation from Oklahoma State about how collections were transitioned between IRs...yet another data wrangling issue that is a headache, but can be accomplished.

The afternoon was a treat for me, because UNLV's own Alex Dolski unveiled his spatial search tool, ISIS and talked about the shortfalls of text searching maps. There was a general awe in the audience when he demonstrated the searching. It is always exciting to see what can be done by creative and talented developers like Alex and his co-presenter Eric Luhrs from Lafayette College. Eric showed his MetaDB tool and how their organization has used it to streamline decentralized web-based metadata creation.

That's was it for day one and we ended the day with a meal in the quaint Claremont Village at a place called Heros and Legends where you could shuck your peanuts on the floor and order monstrously-sized portions of bar food.

Day two started with an update on the new features we can expect in new versions of CONTENTdm; including: Unicode support, Powerpoint plug-in redesign (works with Office 2007!!), a revamped acquisition station, and improved image viewers. This is all good news as we have been anticipating these changes and hoping OCLC would respond.

The second morning session detailed the University of Utah's, U-SKIS repository inventory system, which is truly a fabulous tool that they are using to manage IR content. The tool allows them manage comprehensive research on publishers, status of author's documents, notes for staff, and archival copies while seamlessly integrating into CONTENTdm for presentation. It was shared that it is a priceless "teaching moment" for faculty on Utah's campus when they experienced the scholarly communication crisis first hand. Often the library's research into publisher policies would reveal that publishers only allow the peer-reviewed (not the final version) copies of the publication or no rights at all and faculty learned quickly about these challenges.

The final session was on getting the word out about digital collections and I was pleased to see that as of our last two collections, UNLV is using all the methods mentioned in the presentation. While, we have not moved into YouTube or Flickr, we do add links to Wikipedia to our content and web statistics show that referrals do come in from those links.

The afternoon was a developer's meeting and was lightly attended. There is much discussion of a shared workspace for CONTENTdm users to create a code repository or to seperate out "newbie questions' from customization/technical enhancement questions. There is also a need to improve CONTENTdm's reporting features and search results (faceted searching was often brought up). My co-workers and I ended the conference with a bike ride around Claremont and up into the foothills of the Claremont Wilderness Park. It was an enjoyable and informative meeting. Stay tuned for next year....

LOEX of the West Conference Starts Today at UNLV

2008-06-04T14:55:55Z

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!

Grant-funded Digitization Employment Opportunities at UNLV

2008-05-16T22:07:05Z

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.

Spending a Little Quality Time with Metadata

2008-05-05T21:59:18Z

This week marks the start of an online course my employer was kind enough to pay for me to attend called "Metadata for You and Me: A Training Program for Shareable Metadata".

I was interested in taking this course for two main reasons: first, because in the world of digitization we spend a huge amount of time creating metadata on the item level for every digital object in out repositories and this equates to lots of dollars in staff time. So, I'd like to spend some time thinking about this investment and what type of returns it is providing for us. Are we agonizing over the right things? Spending too much time or detail? Using appropriate standards?

Secondly, we do indeed have the noble goal of providing accurate, easily discoverable, re-useable records but are we delivering the goods or deluding ourselves? What exactly does our metadata look like outside our own local repository and does it mind its manners? As much as I'd like to say that my metadata is a model citizen...I just don't really know. With more and more materials being aggregated with the goal of broader access, it's time to try and find out.

I logged into the on-line course this morning and printed out some of the readings for the first module. I couldn't help but draw attention to a fabulous article, Metadata For All: Descriptive Standards across Libraries, Archives, and Museums that worked miracles in helping me to understand what exactly we are talking about when we discuss metadata (especially across library, museum, and archives standards). It is also recent enough (2007) to provide up-to date information about recent trends and proposes a format-based way of looking at standards in the parallel disciplines. A very good read.

I will update this blog as I progress through the course and learn more!

UNLV Announces New Digital Collection: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project

2008-04-18T18:36:08Z

The University Libraries are pleased to announce the launch of a new digital collection:

The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project
http://digital.library.unlv.edu/ntsohp/

The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project documents the remembered past of persons affiliated with and affected by the Nevada Test Site during the era of Cold War nuclear testing. Through the Libraries' partnership with the UNLV College of Liberal Arts, a wide range of oral history interviews were organized to be presented in an digital collection representing diverse points of view including: scientists and engineers; labor and support personnel; military personnel and corporate executives; Native American leaders; peace activists and protesters; Nevada ranchers and communities downwind of the test site. The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project was directed by Mary Palevsky from September 2003 through July 2007 with funding from U.S. Depts. of Energy and Education. For the academic year 2007-2008 work on final interviews, the digital collection, and project website was supported by the University Libraries and the Department of History.

Nearly 200 full-text searchable transcripts and audio clips are now available in this digital collection. For more information about the collection, or to share your comments, please feel free to contact me via e-mail at cory.lampert@unlv.edu.