Goals and Structure of a Digital Collection

In the article “It’s Not Just about Curators Anymore: Special Collections in the Digital Age” Barbara Taranto described the process of the digitization of the New York Public Library in an effort to explain the advantages and best process to incorporate a digital collection to a library. She described that the New York Public Library approached the digital collection, not as a separate component of the library but as a comprehensive effort. The NYPL focused greatly on the users of the library while constructing their system. By focusing on the digital library as a service it allowed them to have a more useful and satisfying interaction. Taranto explained that the NYPL was able to experiment more with their collections because of the focus on the use of the collections.

In her article she explained that the NYPL found that digital collections were not only important, but essential to a public library in this technology driven age. The digital collections allowed the library to actually extend out to the community and reach its patrons out of the boundaries of the four walls of the physical building. Focusing on digital collections was also essential because the NYPL already had a large collection of archival images, video/audio recordings and many microfilm frames that had been formatted to digital. They had also participated in the Google and MSN books projects. However, these digital components were independently managed and kept from the rest of the library’s collection. Therefore the NYPL changed their focus to incorporate more of the library’s collection and to involve all of the library staff in the digitalization process. Taranto called this the libraries broader practice.

In the last part of her article Taranto described in detail the way the NYPL built their collection. First the library distributed the activities of their digitalization to all members of their staff. They also included the selection of new digital content in the overall strategy of library purchases. Taranto also explained that the library used their digital collection to supplement subject areas that may be lacking. The NYPL also used every opportunity to build their collection, such as making digital copies when patrons request copies of material. The NYPL also encouraged staff at all levels offer ideas to additions to the digital collection. Taranto stated in her article that the most important part of the NYPL’s digital collection was its focus on the users of the collection.

References:

Taranto, B. (2009). It's Not Just about Curators Anymore: Special Collections in the Digital Age. RBM , 10 (no 1), 30-36. Retrieved from Wilson Web (link)

Link:

New York Public Library

Archival Products (linked to in article)

Digital Children’s Library

Posted by Julia Music

In the article “The International Children’s Digital Library Enhances the Multicultural Collection”, Lemmons ties together two important themes of librarianship: access to literature and educational enhancement.   As a media specialist, Lemmons faced a situation that every teacher dreads.  Her 5^th grade students completed her planned 60-minute lesson in 30 minutes. Lemmons quickly assigned students who had finished early the task of going on the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL), exploring and giving her honest feedback about the site.

Her students were able to use the site without a lot of direction. The site encourages students to find information on their own by allowing easy access to digital books.   The digitized books are organized in way that makes sense to children.  For example, children pick books by their age group, make believe or true books or genre (Simple Search). 

Much to Lemmons’ delight, the students were so engaged in the digital books they were reading that day they didn’t want to leave class when the period ended. The next week, the students wanted to hop on a computer immediately to finish reading the book from the prior week (Lemmons, 2009).  Moreover, these were students that Lemmons described as “reluctant readers” (2009).

The main goal of the ICDL is, “To create a collection of more than 10,000 books in at least 100 languages that is freely available to children, teachers, librarians, parents, and scholars throughout the world via the Internet.  The materials included in the collection reflect similarities and differences in cultures, societies, interests, lifestyles, and priorities of peoples around the world” (ICDL - Foundation Goals).  Lemmons article suggests that the ICDL is meeting their goal.  ICDL provides access to quality literature, an easy to follow formant and high interest texts, which empower students to chose their own learning path.  These are undeniable benefits of digitization. This particular digital collection allows schools to expand their collection for free, while offering enough texts to pique interests of all students.

ICDL - Foundation Goals. (n.d.). ICDL - International Children's Digital Library. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from http://en.childrenslibrary.org/about/goals.shtml

Lemmons, K.. (2009, March). The International Children's Digital Library Enhances the Multicultural Collection. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 25(7), 28-30.  Retrieved October 12, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 1645334861).

Simple Search. (n.d.). ICDL - International Children's Digital Library. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SimpleSearchCategory?ilang=English

Special Libraries in the Digital Age: Copyright Issues in Unique Collections

Storing special formats in libraries has changed drastically in the digital age: audio recordings are no exception given the multitude of possible formats: LP’s. cassettes, CDs, and now mp3s and the devices which play them.  Duplication for preservation of audio sources has become significantly easier with the advent of these digital technologies, but copyright law has held back the efforts of some archives. 

Two kinds of copyrights exist for music – copyrights to the music itself (i.e. sheet music) and copyrights for each recording of the music (i.e. multiple copyrights for different performances/recordings of the same sheet music).   Generally, anything recorded before 1923 is considered in the public domain, and almost everything after 1923 is copyrighted for a time span of 95 years. 

In order to preserve the content of aging recordings, making digital copies from the original medium is often preferable, but restricted by limitations on the number of copies (if any) that are allowed to be made.  Another point of complication in the copyright laws involves the 1976 decision that all recordings pre-1972 would remain under each individual state’s laws, and all after would be under federal copyright law (Brooks).

            Other formats are also susceptible to restriction due to copyright.  Duke University’s digital library blog explains their decision not to digitize their zine collection in their blog, stating difficulty attaining author permission and tracking down permissions to use potentially copyrighted pieces that make up parts of the zines are the main deterrents to digitization (Wooten).
          Copyright law not only affects zines and audio recordings, but these examples give some examples of how these copyright issues affect digital libraries. 

References: 

Wooten, K. (2009, October 17, 2010). Why We're Not Digitizing Zines. Blog posted to http://library.duke.edu/blogs/digital-collections/2009/09/21/why-were-not-digitizing-zines/#more-1231

Brooks, T. (2009). Copyright and historical sound recordings: recent efforts to change U.S. law. Notes, 65(3), 464(411).

Other interesting links:
http://www.arsc-audio.org/copyright-recommendations.html - the Association for Recorded Sound Collection's "Recommendations for Changes to the U.S. Copyright Law"

http://www.artofthestates.org - a collection of audio recordings that are openly available

Digitization of Special Collections and Open Access

             In her article, Anne Kenney expands on principles regarding the mass digitization of special collections she and her colleagues in the Association of Research Libraries (link) wrote following a meeting of the ARL in 2009.  As of July of this year, the ARL endorses these principles.  In this report, principle three states that the libraries should think ahead to the widest range of people who would use the resource.  This would include other patrons that are not affiliated with that library, university, or archive.  This principle ensures that digitized archives would be available to many people, which would help new researchers in finding sources that may not have been available to them otherwise.  Does digitization of special collections close a portion of the “digital divide”?             

             After her discussion of the principles, Kenney speaks of one of the many ideas librarians and archivists have begun to realize of digitizing special collections. This idea is the creation of social digital communities to help the digitization process, using tools of the Web 2.0 generation.  The Institute of Museums and Library Services (link) gives out grants that help with digitizing Special Collections.  One of the 2009 grants was given to the University of California, Santa Cruz to digitize their Grateful Dead Archive and make it available on the Web.  One of the hopes for this endeavor is that the fans of the Grateful Dead, the “Deadhead” community, will then create a digital community to contribute to this archive.  This will allow the creation of a fuller archival preservation.  Would other archives benefit from such a venture? 

             Kenney then explains that “mass digitization of special collections and online access can lead to mass consumption” and speaks of Cornell University, her affiliation, which has provided access to digital archives to people who are unaffiliated with the university.  She explains that many users appreciate and use the open access archives, people with many different backgrounds and reasons for the usage. The question then becomes how many resources and how much attention should the institution pay to those users who are not affiliated with that university or library? Is there a line of “openness” that libraries, archives and universities should not cross?  How will Web 2.0 and social communities change that line of open access? 

Resources:

Kenney, A. (2009) The Collaborative Imperative: Special Collections in the Digital Age. Research Library Issues: A Bi-Monthly Report from ARL, CNL, and SPARC. 267. 20-29.  Retrieved from Publications of ARL (link)

Rappaport, S. (2009) UC Santa Cruz Receives $615,000 Grant to Digitize Grateful Dead Archive. Retrieved from http://news.ucsc.edu/2009/09/3237.html