Recently in digital collections Category

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?

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!

Recently, I helped out with a presentation for our Hot Topics discussion group that involved coming up with some web use statistics. There were some very interesting ones that indicated that in addition to research help, which we expect the site is used for, unique materials are another key feature that consistently brings in users from the web. For instance, Howard Hughes has been and continues to be a popular search term that delivers users to our site!

Interestingly, the meeting coincided with the publishing of a timely article titled, Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections, which details the efforts the University of Washington has made to include links to their digital collections in relevant Wikipedia articles. I think this is a great idea and I have added a general link to UNLV Digital Collections on Lied Library's Wikipedia page and also added specific collection links on pages like the Hoover Dam and Showgirl pages. Since many people now turn to Wikipedia as a first source for general information I will be monitoring web statistics to track whether these links show a new trend of users linking in from Wikipedia.