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In: Library, open access

Washington, DC – August 28, 2008 – SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture have jointly announced the first international Open Access Day. Building on the worldwide momentum toward Open Access to publicly funded research, Open Access Day will create a key opportunity for the higher education community and the general public to understand more clearly the opportunities of wider access and use of content. Open Access Day will invite researchers, educators, librarians, students, and the public to participate in live, worldwide broadcasts of events. In North America, events will be held at 7:00Read More →

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In: interface, virtualworlds, visualization

This is another news release. Normally I don’t like to re-post news since it’s already handled by RSS feeds. However,  at the start of the University of Florida’s fall semester, there’s so much news with so many new people that it’s good to share to help get the word out through the clamor. The newness of the fall semester should start to quiet down in the next few weeks though. *** The Library Virtual Worlds Group at the University of Florida Libraries will be hosting a virtual lecture by Paul Fishwick, Professor of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida, onRead More →

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In: copyright, oclc

I’ve been hoping to see something like this built from Stanford’s copyright database and all of the copyright records and research so many of us have done and it’s great to see it in beta! http://www.worldcat.org/copyrightevidence While it isn’t as much as I want for the first full release, it’s in beta so it’s nice that they’ve opened it early for us to contribute. In the first full release, I’d like to see it auto-ingest records from Stanford’s copyright database along with any other databases it can (Gutenberg, BMI, the copyright office, anyone) and to then list those records, including what they pull from, withRead More →

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In: digital collections, Digital Library, education, innovation, OCA, open access, OpenContentAlliance

The First Executive Director of the Open Content Alliance has been appointed and CIDE (Data Intensive Cyber Environments group) has joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science. These are two recent news releases that show the expanding happenings and possibilities for digital libraries, collections, and collaboration! *** Maura Marx Named First Executive Director of the Open Content Alliance The Internet Archive and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced today the appointment of Maura Marx as the first Executive Director of the Open Content Alliance (OCA). A search committee representing OCA member institutions made the appointment after anRead More →

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In: context, digital collections, interface, mapping, UFDC

The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) now include a “Map It” feature! With the “Map It” option, all items with geographic information are now displayed on a map using the Google Maps API. For instance, users can now see this photo of Gainesville mapped by clicking on the “Map It” tab, which shows a Google Map view of the photo’s location with a placemark. See the Citadelle Henri Christophe in Haiti, and then see the satellite imagery map for it, which still clearly shows the structure, along with the surrounding area! In case the maps aren’t exciting enough, UFDC also allows displays Flash filesRead More →

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In: catalog, digitalcollections, microfilm, UFDC

In looking at our scheduling for the past few months–with many people out for training, illness, and vacation and a much smaller student workforce due to summer schedules and budget cuts–I was worried that we’d fall far behind our optimum production level. Instead, we’re producing even more. We hit 2 million pages on July 9, and had already loaded another 100,000 pages to reach 2.1 million pages by July 28, and now we show 2,235,174 pages online, and we have more loading right now. This higher production level with lower staffing is only possible because we have so much that’s already partially done, with scanningRead More →

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In: Academia, digital collections, education, language, UFDC

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a posting on Bolivia’s plans to open three universities teaching indigenous languages, including Aymara, Quechua, and Guarani. MJ Hardman from the University of Florida has been researching Aymara, Jaqaru, and Kawki for decades. Her extensive research and teaching materials will help support this and other efforts to protect endangered languages, and many of her earlier materials are even in the process of being digitized for the Jaqi Collection within the University of Florida Digital Collections. It’s always wonderful to hear about how newly digitized materials have been or will be used!Read More →

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In: access, aerials, gis, mapping, preservation

Last week, UC Santa Barbara announced that they received a massive collection of aerial photography, valued at $14.3 Million, from Pacific Western Aerial Surveys of Santa Barbara. The collection includes more than 500,000 aerial images of 65 major metropolitan areas in the United States at the turn of the 21st Century (1999-2002). This is really amazing, especially so because UCSB Map & Imagery Library is home to the Alexandria Digital Library (ADL), so these materials will be preserved and accessible in the future.Read More →

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In: design, Digital Library, digitalcollections, UF, UFDC

The photos above are of our Digital Library Sign, and they’re now online in UFDC (which is harvestable by robots as UFDC2) and online in our Flickr account. These pictures are particularly nice because they include so many of the other images we’ve worked on over the years. It’s also nice to show off some of our office, most of which doesn’t show as well as our work, as shown through the boxes in the photo above, but our messy daily work leads to gorgeously finished materials available online.Read More →

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In: games, UF, UFDC, video, web 2.0

UF students, faculty, and staff are invited to the Library Tech Expo, hosted by the InfoCommons @ West, which will take place on Wednesday, August 27, from 10-2 in the InfoCommons @ West (3rd floor of LW).  We will be showcasing various tech trends offered by our libraries, including Bioactive (a library video game), InfoZombies and other library YouTube videos, RefWorks, Ask-a-Librarian, and much more!  We will also be offering Guitar Hero during this time for students to play while they view our new tech trends.  Snacks will be provided.Read More →