Article 9: The Librarian's Role in Promoting Digital Scholarship: Development and Metadata Issues by Eileen Llona

Scholarship in both the arts and sciences continues to make increasing use of technology to analyze information and create new knowledge.  The impact of digital technology continues to be felt in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.  Digital scholarship is defined as the products, results and tools that are either born digital or have been converted to digital format.  

Although digital scholarship is on the rise, Llona explains that there are still many constraints and barriers when it comes to managing digital scholarship.  First, when scholars retire or leave an institution, support for their resources might not continue.  In many cases, the library is asked to take ownership of the project.  Second, confusion over copyright issues can block the production or preservation of digital scholarship.  Librarians have the ability to educate scholars about these issues and options for copyrighting their materials.  The constant change of technology standards can also serve as a barrier for some scholars.  Once again, librarians can educate scholars about proper file formats and programs.  Finally, attaching the correct metadata can also be a problem.  The description of these projects can prove problematic, but this is another area in which librarians can apply their training.

Llano writes that librarians need to be aware of these issues because we as a profession are becoming more and more involved in digital scholarship.  Not only to we have the skills necessary to preserve scholarship, but also to give advice on information architecture.  Also, specialists in metadata, content description, and search and access methods are also needed to ensure new forms of scholarship.

Other ways that librarians can be helpful is keeping informed about funding opportunities for digital projects so that scholarship can begin or continue.  It is also important to understand file formats, how they work, and which formats should be used when.  Keeping up to date on the latest metadata standards is also important. Even if a professional is not a metadata specialist, it is still important to at least have an idea about this field in order to communicate about these issues effectively. 

Another issue that Llano briefly mentions is the issues of storage and providing access.

Article 8: Application of MARC21-Concise Format for Bibliographic Data in Bulgarian Libraries: The Case of the Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences by Sabina Aneva

Sabina Avena, Chief Systems Librarian at the Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, discusses the application and use of MARC21 in Bulgarian libraries.  She begins by discussing the first efforts toward the standardization of data in Bulgaria, which began in the 1930s.  The article explains the template for the description of microfilms of medieval Slavic manuscripts, with descriptions of specific field selections.  The author then explains the steps that have been taken to promote widespread adoption of this format in libraries across Bulgaria.

It will be interesting to see how things will change since AACR2 has changed to RDA (at least in North America) and to see whether other countries, including Bulgaria, will follow suit.  It will also be interesting to see how long it will take to make the change.

Article 7: Digitizing the Zdenka and Stanley B. Winters Collection of Czech and Slovak Posters, 1920-1991 by Patricia Hswe

In 1991, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign received a collection of nearly 500 Central European posters dating from 1920 to 1991.  They belonged to Dr. Winters, a former history professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.  His wife, a native Czech,  was a librarian with an enthusiasm for the visual arts.  Together, they travelled extensively, collecting posters of museums, castle, concerts, and festivals.  The posters have been divided into categories: Artistic, Individual Artists/Personalities, Alphonse Mucha, Tourist, Nature, and Political, Technical, Children, Folk Art, and Cultural and Political.  

Steps to digitize the collection didn't take place until 13 years later.  Personnel at the Slavic and East European Library consulted staff in Preservation and Conservation, University Archives, and the Digital Services and Development Department to assess the needs of the physical collection as well as the construction of a database, converting the finding aid using EAD, and the selection of a metadata scheme.  The scanning of the posters was carried out by the Digital Services librarians.  Due to the nature of the posters, the Visual Resources Association Core Categories, version 3.0, was selected as librarians felt this scheme best represented and described the collection.

One aspect of this project that became very complicated was the issue of copy right.  Librarians and graduate assistants drafted a general permissions letter, which was then translated into Czech.  The letter was then sent to prospective copy right holders in both English and Czech.  However, this was very problematic because the rights holder was rarely located.  Thus, the collection is password protected.

For more information, visit http://www.library.illinois.edu/spx/winters/Overview.htm

Article 6: Implementing an Image Database for Complex Russian Architectural Objects: The William Brumfield Collection

Librarians at the University of Washington are creating a digital library of Russian architectural images from the William Brumfield Collection.  Brumfield is a professor at Tulane University and has devoted his time and travels to the study of Russian architecture.  His collection is estimated at nearly 100,000 images, which have been featured in over 50 exhibits both here and abroad.  Many of these images are on slides.  Because of this, Brumfield is nervous about the collection deteriorating, hence the origins of this project.  This will benefit scholars and researchers greatly, as the amount of resources on this subject are few and far between and because Russia is losing historical buildings at an alarming rate.

When the project is completed, nearly 30,000 slides and photographic prints will be digitized, both as high-resolution TIFF images and medium-resolution JPEG images.  The images are cataloged using a metadata set that has been specially created.  Project staff have created the schema by adapting METS and CCO standards.  This presents the images within architectural, geographic, and chronological contexts.  Professor Brumfield has been actively participating in the project, scanning nearly all of the images himself, naming each image, and helping to add metadata.

To browse the collection, go here:

http://frontiers.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfdigcol/mfdcphot.html

Scanner Down!

Anyone reading this blog would notice that I have been doing a lot of article reviews as of late.  This is because the summer is winding down and they will soon be due but also because the scanner has been down for a few days now.  Circulation will also be moving to our floor temporarily while a remodeling project takes place, so I have also been helping move our offices around in order to prepare for that.  Therefore, there hasn't been too much I can do. Luckily, the scanner is now up and running.  At this juncture, I have roughly 230 maps scanned and catalogued.  I'm sure this is probably less than 5% of the whole collection.  I have worked exclusively on 1:50,000 maps, which make up the bulk of this collection by far.  There is only one drawer of 1:25,000 maps and only a handful of drawers in the 1:100,000.  Of course, this makes sense since the 1:100,000 maps are the largest in scale.  I have also been spending this down time learning how to use the index in order to find particular maps.  It is very challenging.  I find myself looking up the coordinates, bringing up a map on Google, and then looking at the index to find which map I actually need.  It seems that I am almost always one off.  Once the maps are done, the map librarian is thinking about creating a GIS-based index that will hopefully take a little bit of the guess work out of it!  Hopefully, this will come to fruition.

Article 5: Internet Resources on Russian History: The Electronic Library at Moscow State University

Moscow State University's Elektronnaia biblioteka of Moscow State University holds on-line texts related to global history, but emphasises different periods of Russian history.  These are divided between Medieval Russian history, history of the Russian Empire, and 20th century Russian history.  This part of the library holds 114 texts while providing links to outside sources.  The collection also includes legislative codes, legal acts, and treaties with foreign countries.  The library also contains memoirs and non-official writings.

The site also helps illustrate topic oriented historical Internet resource (TOHIR).  The author uses its collection on Russian/Soviet labor history as an example of this.  The collection includes historical sources, historiography, bibliography, databases, and references to other on-line sources.  This collection has 11 sections and has been well received both in Russia and abroad.  At the time this article was written (2007), the Electronic Library was one of the most popular and most cited sections of the Faculty of History website.

This article would be helpful to a subject librarian working within a Slavic collection.    This would be the kind of source to which you could direct both students and faculty. A librarian could also post a link to this site on their respective library web-page.  It seems to be an invaluable resource to those studying Russian history.

Article 4: Russia Beyond Russia Digital Library: History, Concept, and Development by Nadia Zilper and Rita Van Duinen

This article focuses on the planning and efforts involved in creating the Russian Beyond Russia digital library. The mission of this collection is to bring together monographs, serials, recordings, newspaper, and images published by Russians outside of Russia.  This initiative gained significant ground when the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill acquired the Andre Savine Collection in 2002.  

In designing the database, Russian language search and retrieval capabilities were a priority as well as using the most current metadata standards for the collection.  At the center of the library is a Core Module which includes the bibliographical and biographical information indexes.  This project was outsourced to East View Information Services and funded by the Mellon Foundation.  During the research phase of this project, the team identified technical requirements, the data content, and data structure.  Savine kept very good records of the collection on notebook paper and index cards, so they used these in establishing the content and structure.  Some objects were represented by both notebook paper and index cards, but some by only one or the other.  

The record display interface contained three sections for each individual record: Description, Related Indexes, and images of the original notebook paper and/or index cards.  The author then outlines the technical processing workflow and the Core Module Data Fields.

The next section outlines their plan for resource discovery on the internet.  The team decided to use MODS, simplifed Dublin Core, and METS.  The data field will map first to related field in Mods, then DC through a crosswalk, with METS acting as a container.  In addition to the internet, resources can be discovered through the library's OPAC and Worldcat.

I found this article very helpful as someone who is somewhat new to building the actual structure behind digital libraries.  I just completed courses in database design and metadata and found that I was able to better understand this article through my background in those courses.  The article also had many diagrams that I found helpful.  The authors organized the article in a step-by-step approach, which helped me understand their process.  I visited the site myself after reading the article and did some browsing.  However, it was difficult for me to do any actually searches since I didn't really have a search in mind and because Russian Diaspora is not something I study.  Overall, I found this article extremely helpful and well written.