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In: statistics, UFDC

We had a drive fail on our development box, which runs our loader. This wouldn’t have caused much of a delay, but we had people out and the drive should have recovered with a disk check (or at least that’s how it appeared). With the holiday yesterday, we’re running hopefully the last of the checks possible and we’ll either have the development server back up and running tomorrow or we’ll restore from the last backup. While it’s been a long delay–thanks to a weekend and another day off–we’ll soon be loading again and we have lots to load. With all of the files ready toRead More →

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In: mapping, sanborn, tutorials

The UF Digital Collections (UFDC) have grown so dramatically that we critically need more resources to both promote and explain the many materials and their use. As of November 1, UFDC includes over 2.79 million pages. This means we’ve added 1.79 million pages in 13 months. Our existing training materials, tutorials, and help pages haven’t been able to keep up with the variety and quantity of materials, nor with documenting and explaining the other technical improvements we’ve implemented. We’re working on making online tutorials that will explain the basics of using UFDC and that will highlight a few of the largest collections. While we’re activelyRead More →

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In: artifacts, collaboration, partners, UFDC

The University of Florida’s historic biscuit dates back to 1913 when a hungry student mailed it to his parents as evidence of UF’s food quality. The George A. Smathers Libraries now preserves the historic biscuit. Our biscuit can be viewed online along with millions of other images through the University of Florida Digital Collections. Every institution archives objects illustrative of its own history. Join us here to let us know about yours. We’ve got the Biscuit. You bring gravy. More >>Read More →

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In: dloc, newspapers, rss, statistics, UFDC

UFDC now has more RSS feeds! The feeds are available here, http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc2/rss/, and can be added to readers or webpages of your choice (and these are again thanks to our ever-working, industrious and creative programmer)! The new RSS feeds and other improvements include ongoing optimization for faster loading online and for faster internal processing. Plus, we’re working rapidly and now have 2,60,4573 pages online from 61,108 titles and 116,492 volumes! The Digital Library of the Caribbean now stands poised to hit half a million pages with 475,992 pages online and the Florida Newspapers now include a whopping 306,702 pages. We’re loading quickly, so using anRead More →

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In: Florida, freeculture, open access

UF’s Florida Free Culture student group will be having it’s first meeting of the semester on Monday, October 13, at 7:00 pm in Reitz Union 288. FFC is an organization that advocates for copyright law reform, the use of open source software, and fights for your rights online. Free food will be provided! For more information about FFC, see their website: http://uf.freeculture.org/. While I can’t make this meeting, I’d recommend it to anyone who can. FFC is a great advocacy group to promote awareness and as a ways for finding the means to do needed work. Copyright law reform is desperately needed, as is aRead More →

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In: Digital Library, open access

************(Press Release)************ The Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library is pleased to announce the availability of a new open access monograph, Economics and Usage of Digital Libraries: Byting the Bullet, edited by Wendy Pradt Lougee (University Librarian, University of Minnesota) and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason (Arthur W. Burks Collegiate Professor of Information and Computer Science, School of Information, University of Michigan). In the late 1990’s, researchers and digital  library production staff at the University of Michigan collaborated on deploying the Pricing Economic Access to Knowledge project (PEAK), a full-scale production-quality digital access system to enable usage of content  from all of Elsevier’s (thenRead More →

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In: digital collections, Florida, microfilm, newspapers

Like the other collections in UFDC, the Florida Digital Newspaper Library is expanding rapidly. The Florida Digital Newspaper has added 158,989 pages, doubling the previous size for a total page count of 279,507. Sometimes I prefer to post statistics like page and item counts because those can speak more effectively to how much mass is there and to its usefulness even if people aren’t sure what they might be looking for or why–just knowing that there’s enough stuff can help indicate critical mass and use value. For the Florida Digital Newspaper Library, the number of pages is useful as are examples of the titles andRead More →

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In: digitalcollections, statistics, UFDC

The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) currently has 109,991 total items, which make up 60,664 different titles (newspapers, serials, and so forth mean one title can have thousands of items so that’s why these numbers differ), for 2,471,489 total pages. Of that total 34,578 items in 5,067 titles with 512,204 pages have been added since July 1. Meaning, in only slightly over 3 little-ole months, we added 512,204 pages! That’s over my hoped-for goal–which was set intentionally too high based on what I thought we could do–of 150,000 pages a month! I don’t think I should keep setting unrealistic goals, but it sure isRead More →

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In: Digital Library, digitalarchive, digitalcollections, LibraryofCongress, LOC, standards, technologies

LOC Press Release: The Library of Congress is among a dozen federal agencies launching an initiative to establish a common set of guidelines for digitizing historical materials. Basing its efforts on a combination of collaborative research and combined experience, the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative will address a variety of issues related to the complex activities involved in the digitization of cultural heritage items. Two working groups have been formed, one addressing content that can be captured in still images, the other involved with content categorizing sound, video, or motion-picture film. The initiative includes a just-launched Web site, www.digitizationguidelines.gov. The Federal Agencies Still Image DigitizationRead More →