INF 385R Survey of Digitization

1. INF 385RSurvey of Digitization Class 2 January 27, 2006

2. Today’s Topics • Defining “Digital Library” • Why Digitize? • Organization of Digitization • Is Digitization a Preservation Tool? • Guiding Concepts for the Course

3. What is a Digital Library? • http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~l38613dw/website_spring_03/readings/diglib.html

4. What is a Digital Library? • Multiple disciplines define digital libraries differently, and, often, there is conflict among and within disciplines about what the term 'digital library' means." Here are some illustrative definitions from the LIS field:

5. What is a Digital Library? • Digital libraries are characterized by three elements: an organized collection that can be both digital and paper, full-text material not just surrogates, and a commitment to serving some audience(s) (Bishop & Star, 1996).

6. What is a Digital Library? • "Digital libraries are organized collections of digital information" (Lesk, 1997, xix). • "Digital libraries are distributed, multimedia-based collections that provide specified services under some personal or institutional auspices" (Doty & Erdelez, 1999, p. 154).

7. What is a Digital Library? • Digital libraries are "organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities" (Digital Library Federation).

8. Examples of Digital Libraries • http://www.cdlib.org/ • http://www.archives.gov/research/tools/checklist.html • http://memory.loc.gov/ • http://www.digimorph.org/

9. Why Digitize??

10. Access—and lots of it! • Make the hard to see visible • Make the remote accessible • Bring together research materials widely scattered about the globe • New scholarly use

11. For Whom? • You have to decide what audience you are digitizing and for what use • The quality and utility of an image depend on the quality of capture and the display capabilities • Building digital collections of permanent value is not the same as creating digital exhibits

12. For Whom? • Powerful teaching materials • Lots of interest in providing high-resolution images to meet a wide variety of audiences—scholars, undergrads, K-12, the general public; good reason for insisting on “full informational capture”??

13. For Whom? • Among the most valuable types of materials to digitize from a classroom perspective are those from the special collections of research institutions, including rare books, manuscripts, musical scores and performances, photographs and graphic materials, and moving images. Often these items are extremely rare, fragile, or, in fact, unique, and gaining access to them is very difficult. Digitizing these types of primary source materials offers teachers at all levels previously unheard-of opportunities to expose their students to the raw materials of history. e.g. LC American Memory http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/

14. Problems of Digital Representations • Decontextualization of the screen experience • Never a perfect substitute for the original • Integrity – is the image a faithful representation? • Authenticity - is it what it purports to be? • Portions of collections (what’s missing?) • Expectations on users part of high functionality (costly) • Dealing with sensitive materials in a networked environment

15. Organization of Digitization • http://www.library.cornell.edu/about/digital.html • http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/preservation/digital.html • http://library.osu.edu/sites/dlib/ • http://preserve.harvard.edu/digital/ • http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ • http://www.lib.utexas.edu/dls/

16. Is Digitization a Preservation Tool? • ARL Statement