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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 →

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In: Caribbean, digitalcollections, dloc, partners

September 22, 2008 Invitation to Participate in Caribbean Newspaper Digitization Project The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is issuing a call for partners in a new effort to ensure preservation of and increase access to newspapers in the Caribbean. Newspapers offer valuable information to researchers on a broad range of topics. Digitized newspapers with full text searching capabilities are revolutionizing the ability of scholars to discover information. Due to the natural tendency of newspapers to deteriorate more quickly over time than other resources, confounded by the climate in the Caribbean, digitization provides a mechanism to ensure that these valuable resources are available not onlyRead More →

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In: Collection Items, context, digitalcollections, UF, UFDC

I haven’t been blogging as much lately, but it’s not because I don’t have much to share. The adage “still waters run deep” seems fitting for the University of Florida Digital Collections of late. In recent months, we’ve upgraded our infrastructure repeatedly and we continue to make progress on working through our digitized-yet-unprocessed materials and in working through the files in need of migration. One collection’s history perhaps speaks best to our current and ongoing efforts, as our Digital Library Center Director explained in 2000: “The Governor’s gift enables the creation and delivery of electronic library resources via the Internet in support of the UniversityRead 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: 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: archives, Collection Items, Digital Library, digitalcollections, dloc, flickr, newspapers, preservation, seo, statistics, UF, UFDC

I’ve been so busy the past year (or 14 months to be completely accurate) since joining UF’s Digital Library Center that it’s hard to see what all we’ve accomplished. The time has flown by with loads of wonderful work, and wonderful progress. I decided to review some of our documentation and to note a few of the highlights: More stuff! We hit the 1 million page mark in September 2007, and as of today we’re at 2.12 million with so many more to load! More types of stuff! Improvements to UFDC that include support for audio and video files, better multi-language support! Better ways toRead More →