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 don’t) • 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/