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In: cultural heritage, documentary heritage, preservation, scholarship

Victoria University of Wellington has announced the establishment of a targeted PhD scholarship in the broad area of digital preservation: Future Memory at Risk: Digital Preservation and Cultural Heritage The creation of a national digital memory poses fundamental challenges for cultural heritage institutions. Our libraries, archives and museums are searching for new ways to demonstrate their relevance in the digital world, but they are uncertain of the boundaries of their responsibilities which were established in a pre-digital age. Our future access to a trustworthy and meaningful national memory requires these institutions to identify, preserve and make accessible significant digital artefacts of society and also toRead More →

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In: ALA, preservation

CHICAGO – Ann Russell is the winner of the second annual LBI George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg Preservation Award. The Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) of ALCTS will present the award on Sunday, July 12th, at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2009 American Library Association meeting in Chicago, IL.  The Cunha/Swartzburg Award is sponsored by LBI: The Library Binding Institute and includes a $1,250 grant and citation. Established in 2007, the award honors the memory of George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg, early leaders in cooperative preservation programming and strong advocates for collaboration in the field of preservation. The award acknowledges and supports cooperative preservationRead More →

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In: Digital Library, digitalarchive, preservation

The New York Times has an article “Digital Archivists, Now in Demand” and it’s great to see the field recognized and growing! I’m not sure where they got the salary information though, but perhaps the field pays more in some areas than others. Regardless of the financial compensation, working with issues of digital preservation and with the actual materials to-be-digitized is incredibly rewarding and there’s always more to learn.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: 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: conference, preservation, printondemand

“Staying Alive: Books through Print on Demand Technology,” an ALA/ALCTS/PARS Program  (Saturday, June 29, 2008, ACC Room 304a-b) Presenters include: Brian from Bridgeport National Bindery Lynne Terhune, Wiley & Sons, Print on Demand Beth, New York Public Library, head of access, espresso book machine University Conservator from the University of Iowa, and that will be posted on the ALA wiki. Brian from Bridgeport National Bindery Brian began by speaking with the importance of the printing press in the history of inventions, and the lose-ability of books. With digitization, how print on demand works. Conceptually, take a collection of print files, order them, have them printed.Read More →

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In: access, Caribbean, Collection Items, newspapers, preservation

The University of Florida supports the Florida Digital Newspaper Library and the Caribbean Newspaper Imaging Project. By preserving and digitizing the news of the past, these projects make the news new again. The Caribbean Newspaper Imaging Project includes papers like Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste, with issues from 1899 – 1902 now online. While the early issues online are imperfect (because of materials and processing with newspaper paper, microfilming, and then digitizing from microfilm) the pages are easily readable. If I could read Haitian Creole, or at least enough French to understand with savvy use of Google’s translator, I’d be able to read the December 30, 1899Read 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: archives, education, preservation

The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) has created an online preservation class, “Preservation 101: Preservation Basics for Paper and Media Collections”. “Preservation 101” covers the basics of preservation for small and moderately-sized collections, for the preservation of paper collections and related formats (which includes film and electronic media and glass slides). The course homepage explains “Learn how to identify deteriorated materials, how to properly care for collections, and how to set priorities for preservation.” This is a wonderful service for all libraries, museums, archives, and personal collectors because it advocates for the value of learning about and supporting preservation, while also supporting others in preservation.Read 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 →