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.
No comments:
Post a Comment