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In: Caribbean, dloc, law, UFDC

The Haiti Press Network has an article on the digitization of Hatian law (in French, or translated with Google Translate). Digitizing Haitian law is a major project with great significance because like all democratic societies, access to the law and legal information is necessary for the public to be involved in the democratic process. Many countries, including the US, are still struggling with making laws accessible and comprehensible, and Haiti’s digitization project faces the same challenges and will reap the same rewards. The Haitian law digitization project will present a complete inventory of Haitian law from 1804 within a clear and ease to use databaseRead 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 →

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In: Commons, Digital Library, dloc, innovation

Now that the UF Digital Collections have worked through a bit more of the backlog–and gotten 2 million pages online!–I’ve started catching up on reading. Many great new (or maybe new-ish) ideas are being realized with sites like Foodsville, which repurposes digitized historical cookbooks to create a cookbook community and herald in innovations in printing, Interactive Relighting technologies that bring new information to life (which is amazing for so many historical documents!), Mscape keeps getting better, IBM and Linden Labs are moving toward virtual world interoperability (which is especially great with Google’s new 3D chat), and Google’s Map Maker has been out for awhile nowRead More →

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In: ALA, conference, dloc, microfilm, presentations, UFDC

I’m at ALA (still today and through some of tomorrow before a red eye flight home) and this morning I attended and presented within the OCLC Sponsored “Microfilm to Digitization Roadshow.” This included presentations from Kelly Barrall and Joan DaShiel on the ins and outs of their microfilm and microfilm digitization processing and Katherine Walter from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on her work with the Nebraska Public Documents project. Katherine is the Co-Director for the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities and Chair of the Digital Initiatives & Special Collections Department, and my presentation on digitizing from microfilm for the Digital Library of theRead More →

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In: Caribbean, conference, Digital Library, dloc, presentations, tools

In my last post on the Digital Library of the Caribbean presenting at ACURIL, the title for Brooke Wooldridge and Marilyn Ochoa’s presentation was incorrectly listed as “dLOC Toolkit and Usability Testing: A User-­Centered Approach to Improve Electronic Resource Design” when it should have been “A User-Centered Approach to Improve Electronic Resource Design.” More importantly, I failed to list (or even realize) that Mark Sullivan from the University of Florida presented twice on the dLOC Toolkit, “dLOC Toolkit: Create Your Own Electronic Resources.” Mark’s presentation will soon be online within dLOC here and an earlier presentation, “dLOC Technical Overview,” is already online within dLOC here.Read More →

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In: access, Caribbean, digital collections, Digital Library, dloc, preservation

The Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries (ACURIL) 2008 Conference included many presentations, at least two of which spoke on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). Brooke Wooldridge and Marilyn Ochoa (both of dLOC, from FIU and UF respectively) held a workshop on usability for the dLOC contributor tools entitled “dLOC Toolkit and Usability Testing: A User-­Centered Approach to Improve Electronic Resource Design.” OCLC’s Karen Calhoun presented “Digital Library Dreams,” on ways that research resources are being brought to student and researchers of and in the Caribbean, and how the dreams of effective resource delivery are coming true, with the Digital LibraryRead More →

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In: Digital Library, dloc, Library, tools, Uncategorized

The UF Digital Library Center has a number of homegrown tools for digitization, and we’ve refined these tools working with our partners in the Digital Library of the Caribbean. Our digitization tools for the digitization process are available online with general documentation as well as a full manual with tools available for download.  We also have documentation on our servers and general infrastructure as well as on our internal equipment and our day-to-day operations. Much of this was created in response to our small team and for the Digital Library of the Caribbean, and some of it comes from our ever-changing needs and operations. InRead More →

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In: Caribbean, dloc, friends, partners

In the next few months, folks from the Digital Library Center will be traveling to meet with some of our partners, and to meet new friends. Our upcoming travel includes: May 8: Erich Kesse (director), Mark Sullivan (programmer), and Brooke Wooldridge (dLOC Coordinator, from Florida International University) are going to Washington, DC to meet with the World Digital Library based at the Library of Congress about the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) May 11-14: Erich, Brooke, and Mark are off to meet with the US Embassy in Haiti and the National Archives in Haiti about the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and establishingRead More →

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In: Caribbean, dloc, newspapers, preservation

The Digital Library Center has been working on getting legal materials online for the Caribbean and from other areas in our collections. Most recently, we’ve added to our law collection with Hansard’s British Parliamentary Debates, which are one of the best sources of the political record for the United Kingdom [1803-1891]. We’re almost done digitizing the 2nd series [1820-1830, 25 volumes] of the Debates, and later projects will digitize the rest provided they’re still in need. The University of Southampton is also working on Parliamentary Publications and related materials. In addition to Hansard’s, the University of Florida Digital Collections includes Florida Law, with publications fromRead More →

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In: Academia, archives, Digital Library, dloc, Library, open access, preservation

In working on other projects, I stumbled across this poster on the Digital Library of the Caribbean from last year. The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. All materials in dLOC are Open Access for everyone to see, but any rights remain with the owners or with the contributing partners. This is a great example of collaboration creating materials for all to use, while supporting the creators and their communities and nations. The digitized materials include Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections. TheRead More →