Mission
The Digital Imaging Initiative was established in 1994 with the
initial mission of examining the potential of providing digital
access to the University
of Illinois Library´s collections, and to perform research
with collections and users to determine the best methods for
doing so. The unit, now known at the
Digital Services and
Development Unit, became a more formal part of the
University Library´s structure in 2005. Library users are
demanding greater access to digital information to support
instruction and research.
The fundamental mission of the unit
remains providing digital access to University Library
collections and enabling the preservation, access to, and promotion of
collections. The Library is at a juncture where the central
role for digital library development and digitization of
collections becomes the development of more integrated services
rather than isolated projects.
The overall goals of the Digital Services and Development Unit (DSD)
continue to be:
- Making accessible through digitization fragile and under-utilized Library resources and special
collections;
- Developing and implementing digital preservation best practices for preserving Library digital content;
- Promoting and supporting the availability and integration of Library
digital content into learning and scholarly activities on the
Illinois campus and throughout the scholarly community;
- Conducting digital library research that advances the creation and use of these resources.
The goals of the program are to be met by the following
objectives:
- Providing a leadership role
within the Library to implement institutional access and
long-term preservation and mass storage strategy for digital
content;
- Establishing best practices for digitizing various
classes of visual and textual materials;
- Creating and preserving "master" (archival) images of digitized materials;
- Creating and preserving "access" (lower resolution) images for
Library users;
- Working in tandem with Technical Services and Preservation units to develop best
practices for the creation and production of various metadata schemas;
- Creating metadata to enable
user access to and preservation of digitized materials;
- Identifying new technologies
and services to provide better access to and preservation of
digital collections and resources;
- Coordinating, Library-wide, the development of grant proposals to support digitization
activities;
- Developing multimedia databases
that deliver visual resources and other media in innovative
ways;
- Enabling the Library´s
transition from experimental and developmental digital library
technologies to mainstream Library services;
- Providing opportunities to
future librarians (GSLIS students) to obtain experience with
digitization projects and development activities;
- Providing cost-recovery
digitization services not provided elsewhere on campus for
Library and campus-wide collections.
With the unit´s recent move to
the Main Library, the Digital Services and Development Unit
hopes to accommodate the University Library's goal of
accessibility by scaling up its digitization and access program
over the next several years. To accomplish this goal we plan to
digitize unique collections and build model access and delivery
systems. The DSD has completed the exploratory analysis of
many collections by digitizing samples, and has developed
innovative approaches to making materials accessible through the
Internet. Depending on the project, the technical staff of DSD will develop
a new system to accommodate the materials or, in most cases, we
will develop a system using an existing software packages.
Systems currently supported by DSD include CONTENTdm and DLXS-XPAT. CONTENTdm is a system
that is most commonly used for image
collections. It enables users to search descriptive metadata in
one or more collections for particular images. Projects where we
are using CONTENTdm include the German Emblem Books and Historical
Maps. Results are displayed with thumbnail images. Using our
RealMedia Server enables us to also include audio and video files
in databases if necessary. (See
/projects/index.htm for other
collections). The XPAT system is mostly commonly used for textual
databases such as the Marquez Bibliography. Again, users can
search among collections for particular items, and in some cases,
even search using Cyrillic font.
Projects on which we have worked
during the past few years include:
- Historical Maps;
- Topographic Maps of Illinois;
- Aerial Photographs;
- Aerial Photograph Indexes;
- Teaching with Digital Content;
- Digital Cultural Heritage Community;
- ALA Archives Digital Collections;
- Global Cultural Memory Project;
- Russian Publics Images Project;
- Lorado Taft Photographs and Finding Aid;
- Motley Collection of Theater and Costume Design;
- Kolb Proust Archive for Research;
- Biology Field Guides;
- OpenEmblem Portal;
- Early 19th
Century Russian Readership and Culture;
- German Emblem Books
|
- Bibliographic Guide to Gabriel Garcia Marquez;
- CIC-OAI Metadata Harvester;
- IMLS Digital Collections and Content;
- IDEALS
- Collins Collection of Irish Political Cartoons;
- Krannert Art Museum Japanese Theater Prints of the Utagawa School
- Engineering Research documents;
- Carl Sandburg Collection;
- Amos Kennedy Collection;
- School of Social Work 60 Years of Research Collection;
- Winters Czech and Slovak Poster Collection;
- French World War I Poster Collection;
- Board of Trustees collections;
|
