"Digital technology does not relieve librarians from continued service
as long-term stewards of our intellectual and cultural heritage." -- Deanna Marcum 

 

Digital Projects Work Plan

The digital projects created will emphasize the Libraries' strengths while focusing on historical or artistic topics of broad cultural interest.  The initial projects provide virtual access to library materials that have not previously received any cataloging treatment at the individual piece level, such as historic photos and historic maps.  Additional materials under consideration include copyright-free monographs and journals, newspapers, artwork, historical items, manuscripts, diaries, personal papers, essays, artifacts, memorabilia,  architectural drawings, and other specialized items.

» The most important aspect of the work plan is the verification that UNR is following "best practices" for both digital imaging and metadata creation as these dynamically change with each passing day.

» The second most important aspect of the work plan is the continuation of the work needed to ensure full participation, by UNR, in the Mountain West Digital Library (MWDL), a consortial project of the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC).  The MWDL was established to support and coordinate the digitization efforts in Utah and Nevada.  

» The third most important aspect of the work plan is  to gain experience with using CONTENTdm to address more challenging technology and knowledge management issues, such as those encountered when mounting compound objects (digitized volumes, postcards, three-dimensional objects) and streaming media.  This will move us to the next phase of the learning curve -- creating multimedia digital projects, an example of which is serving up the video clips of the tree carvings via the Library's streaming media server.

» During these past 8 months that we have had CONTENTdm installed, we have worked closely with the software developers to enhance the software to accommodate our needs.  The most important enhancement has been support for UNR's active directory authentication system.  During the next year, we hope to work with the DiMeMa folks to enhance CONTENTdm to support the DjVu file format, additional standard URLs besides the one form of URL currently supported (http), and longer transcription files.

» During the next year, the digital projects librarian will continue to work with other entities in the state who are creating metadata for digital projects to ensure that their metadata is structured according to the standards that enable "harvesting" of metadata for cross-database searching.   This will probably be UNR's primary contribution to establishing the foundation for the Nevada Digitization Project being coordinated by the Nevada State Library.

» During the next year, the digital projects librarian will begin exploration of the current status of outsourcing options for imaging services, both within and outside of the state.  She will also explore the economic terms for outsourcing digitization of content for future digital projects.
 

Project work this year will include, but will not be limited to:

The progress on these "digital delights" can be viewed at:  http://contentdm.library.unr.edu

As each project nears completion, separate user interface pages are built for them, through a team effort of the head of Special Collections, the UNR Libraries' webmaster, and the digital projects librarian.

These are the current steps that are followed for each "routine" project:

After experience is gained with mounting multimedia and compound objects, staff members will be trained to carry out the additional mounting processes, and more steps will need to be incorporated into this work regimen.

Also this year, the digital projects librarian will:

Continue to gain a state-of-the-art understanding of the technical aspects of mounting digital projects by studying online tutorials, carrying out virtual apprenticeships with recognized leaders in the field, reading the current literature, subscribing to the relevant listserves, and attending relevant workshops and training sessions.

During 2003, the digital projects librarian will attend:

the Scanning for Preservation and Access workshop, a hands-on full-day technical scanning course, co-sponsored by the California Digital Library, and the Online Archive of California

the School for Scanning, the annual conference for digital projects librarians, funded by the NEH, and co-sponsored by Amigos and the Getty Trust

Develop a library web page describing digital projects as a library unit and summarizing digital projects at UNR, with links to project descriptions for each project. [by June 30, 2003]

Develop a content-rich intranet page with information resources for digitization, including tutorials and "Before You Start Your Digital Project" checklists.

Serve as northern Nevada's technical expert in usage of CONTENTdm for digital projects management.

 Create local users' instructions and manuals for effective use of CONTENTdm software.
 

Future plans (in no particular order):

» Host other Nevada entities' digitized collections as prototype projects so that they can familiarize themselves with the usefulness of the CONTENTdm software because the 60-day trial periods offered by OCLC aren't sufficient in length for many small libraries and museums to gauge their interest levels.

» As part of the Nevada Digitization Project, study the options for harvesting metadata from multiple digital project sites that are using disparate digital project management software products to create their digital projects.  Multi-site harvesting is a "hot topic" in digital projects management because users shouldn't have to search multiple databases to find digitized resources, but since there is currently no "OCLC database" for records for individual digital objects, there isn't a well-defined solution to this problem.

Example:  Photos of the Lincoln Highway Exposition taken by someone from Denver that were digitized as part of the CDP.  We should also direct someone landing at UNR's "Images of Tahoe" collection toward other places to search for more digitized images of Tahoe (MWDL, CDP, LC, etc.)

» Explore the feasibility of mounting digital projects highlighting the various re-photographic essays that been conducted for Tahoe, Nevada, and the Great Basin, including securing the copyright permissions to do so.

» Develop, with Bob Blesse, a "Selection Criteria for Digitization" document for the UNR libraries that includes collection development criteria and technical feasibility criteria.