Digital Libraries In a Nutshell

1
Digital LibrariesIn a Nutshell
Roy Tennant
The California Digital Library
2
Outline

• The Vision
• Definitions
• Perspectives
• Research
• Production
• Services
• Collections
• How to Keep Current

3
The Vision

• Anyone, anywhere, will be able to easily locate
  and use any image, text, database, or other type
  of digital resource often in sophisticated ways
  or in association with other related objects
• The only requirements
• access to the Internet
• authorization or payment if required

4
Definitions Part I

• electronic
• information stored and accessed by electronic
  devices
• digital
• information stored and accessed by computers (an
  electronic device)
• virtual
• in essence rather than in actual fact

5
Definitions Part II

• From the Association of Research Libraries
  -http//sunsite.berkeley.edu/ARL/definition.html
• Not a single entity
• Requires technology to link the resources of many
• Linkages are transparent to the user
• Collections are not limited to document
  surrogates, but include items that are
  exclusively digital

6
Perspectives Research

• Research Perspective
• Goal to further knowledge
• Participants computer science/library/information
  science faculty, a few line librarians
• Example
• U.S. Digital Library Initiatives (also called the
  National Science Foundation DL projects)

7
Sample Research Issues

• Advanced search techniques
• e.g., query by image content
• Federation of large, disparate, and distant
  collections
• Complex digital object behaviors
• GIS overlays, moving image navigation, etc.

8
Perspectives Production

• Production Perspective
• Goal to create digital library collections and
  services
• Participants libraries (mainly larger research
  libraries, but not exclusively)
• Examples
• Library of Congress American Memory
  (memory.loc.gov/)
• eLib Programme (www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/)
• Digital Library Federation (www.clir.org/diglib/)

9
Production Issues

• Services
• Collections
• Selecting
• Acquiring
• Organizing
• Providing Access
• Preserving

10
Services

• The challenge providing services when and where
  they are needed
• Examples
• Guides to Internet resources
• Librarians Index - lii.org/
• KidsClick! - kidsclick.org/
• Network-based reference
• Reference 24x7 - 247ref.org/

11
Selecting Digital Material

• The process
• how do you discover what is available?
• how can you evaluate the quality of resources?
• how can cost effectiveness be determined? (books
  remain, databases frequently dont)
• Considerations
• Purchase or license agreement
• funding source
• infrastructure required
• staff time to mount and maintain

12
Selecting Material to Digitize

• Focus on unique materials that are likely to have
  broad interest
• Build on strengths (seek critical mass)
• Consider infrastructure required
• Consider technical limitations

13
Acquiring Digital Collections

• The digital acquisition continuum
• New procedures and workflows are required
• tape loading, scanning, format translation, etc.

mirroring
hosting
archiving
linking
LESS
MORE
Amount of Responsibility
14
Acquiring Non-Digital Collections

• Digitization methods
• scanner (flatbed, slide, handheld, etc.)
• digital camera
• low-resolution - US300-3,000
• high-resolution - US25,000-35,000
• Kodak PhotoCD
• Additional step for text conversion
• Optical Character Recognition or Re-keying

15
Acquiring Image File Formats

• Archival version high-resolution TIFF
• Online versions
• Preview low-resolution GIF
• Full medium-resolution JPEG
• High med./high-resolution JPEG or TIFF
• Up-and-coming MrSID, Flashpix, PNG

16
Acquiring Text File Formats

• Original
• MS Word, Adobe Pagemaker, etc.
• Adobe Acrobat
• Plain text
• HTML
• SGML or XML

17
Organizing Naming and Addressing

• Object naming
• Objects should be named in a fashion that
  promotes longevity (e.g., stay away from any kind
  of implied meaning)
• Object addressing
• URLs (www.w3.org)
• DOI/Handles (www.cnri.reston.va.us)
• PURLs (purl.org)
• ARKs (www.ckm.ucsf.edu/people/jak/home/)

18
Organizing Metadata

• Structured description of an object or collection
  of objects
• Three basic types
• descriptive e.g., title, creator, subject
  used for discovery
• administrative e.g., resolution, bit depth
  used for managing the collection
• structural e.g., table of contents page, page
  34, etc. used for navigation

19
Organizing Metadata

• Appropriate standards or draft standards
• Collection Level
• Encoded Archival Description (EAD)
  -lcweb.loc.gov/ead/
• Item Level
• MARC
• Dublin Core - dublincore.org
• METS - www.loc.gov/standards/mets/

20
Providing Access

• How can we make our resources easily available to
  a diversity of users with a multiplicity of
  purposes?
• How can we integrate access to both print and
  digital resources?
• How can we interoperate with other digital
  collections?

21
Preserving

• Accepted preservation methods
• Acid-free paper
• microfilm
• photographic reproduction
• The digital preservation strategy
• Storing
• Refreshing
• Migrating
• The single most important aspect institutional
  commitment

22
Interoperability

• The capability of two or more different digital
  collections to be used as one in a transparent
  fashion
• One example
• Open Archives Initiative http//www.openarchives.
  org/
• Requires standards (at minimum) or a common
  platform

23
How to Keep Current

• Electronic Discussions
• DIGLIB www.ifla.org/II/lists/diglib.html
• Web4Lib sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/
• XML4Lib sunsite.berkeley.edu/XML4Lib/
• Publications
• Digital Libraries column in LJ
  libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com
• D-Lib Magazine www.dlib.org
• Current Cites sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/
  
• RLG DigiNews www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/