Digital Library Projects headspace

Over the winter break, we were busy getting another decade of the student newspaper online, as well as some truly unique audio material from the May 4 Collection. Visit  http://dks.library.kent.edu/  to browse the new decade (1990s). As well, we also have added many unique reel-to-reel  audio  recordings from the May 4 collection to our May 4 Digital Archive. These are quite fascinating- with many live radio broadcasts from the hours, days and weeks after the shootings as well as many public hearings, and I can truly say that it is very easy to get lost in these recordings.  Some of the recently digitized items include previously inaccessible audio recordings of radio call-in forums, a speech by University President Robert I. White the day after the shootings, a press conference with six students who met with President Richard M. Nixon just days after the shootings, the Scranton Commission hearings , and a speech made by Dick Greg...

We are currently working on the 1990 decade of the Daily Kent Stater, which will be live in the next few weeks. I wanted to write a post about what the work entails for this project, and how many different processes are involved to get a single page posted online. This process involves using three outside vendors once we have prepped the materials for scanning in-house. We use on vendor to create high resolution scans, another vendor to encode the words on each page for a searchable database, and finally another vendor to host the content. Before we publish the content online, I do a spot check of the original scans from the first vendor, as well as a review of the decade on a test site from the hosting vendor. I look for any known issues that we noted during the preparation phase (such as torn pages, mis-numbered issues, inserted materials, etc.). This is a tedious process, but does ensure the quality of the scans online. While I am not able to check every page of the decade, I hav...

This week we rolled out a new face for the digital collections from the Special Collections and Archives department at the University Library. Some of the changes may seem subtle, but they will be crucial ones as we continue to build up our digital collections. Our previous iteration was built on a home-grown service, and had some shortcomings. Our hope with this new interface is to provide a more fluid search and browse experience without losing any of the functionality of the old site. Previously, users were unable to search across all collections, and now we have a way to search three of the five collections. Two collections are hosted by outside vendors, but we are working on a way to also add these to the search functionality. We will also be sharing some important audio files from the May 4 collection in the coming weeks. Stay tuned! http://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/ 

Next week I will be presenting a session at the annual ASIST conference on creating metrics for digital collections. My focus will be on how to apply a consistent set of metrics to collections, and also define multiple tools to gather information. For our pilot year, we'll be using Google Analytics, Webometric Analyst and Open Web Analytics (and, also currently doing a trial of alt-metrics, through PlumX). I'm excited to see how our digital collections are cited and linked to on the open web, and also if we can use this information to determine usage of particular collections. We've selected a mix of Special Collections and Archives content, and also image galleries from our Digital Commons instance. The following metrics below are the ones we have defined for the project. We will plan to publish the results next year after we have gathered after the pilot year. Sustainability Web mention analysis Blog analysis Link Impact Report Audience Analysis Usage...

We have just loaded the digital issues of the Kent Stater from January 1980 to December 1989. This adds another 20,000 pages to the digital archive, and we are anticipating having the 1990s up before the end of the year. Check back for more updates, and enjoy gems like coverage of the Michael Stanley band from the spring of 1980. Check it out here .

I've heard a few presentations from Jim Bradley (Head of Metadata and Digital Initiatives at Ball State) over the years on the idea of the Russian Doll effect in digital libraries . This has been an intriguing premise to me- How can we effectively assess and track how our digital collections are living beyond the scope of the repository, and further, how can we track this type of scholarship? Surely this process would display the value and importance of open digital collections, and also indicate how scholarship is influenced and created through these collections. The elusiveness of digital media can be a curious one to try to ponder and capture effectively, but I think what is interesting to me, is how users can repurpose, repackage and bundle information into new contexts. Bradley has spoken about a project where students used drawings from the Pierre and Wright Architectural Records and created new designs and 3D objects from the original drawings. The digital library then s...

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how users come to find our digital content, and how we can improve the ways users find, navigate and interact with our content. We are in the midst of a re-design of Digital Collections for Special Collections and Archives at Kent, moving to an open source Omeka option. I'm most excited about the enhanced search and browse features, and also in using OAI-PMH to further open our collections online. I will be tracking use over the next year and looking to see how users find our collections (open Google search? From our homepage?), and then what they do once they have found what they are looking for. But this all assumes that people have found a way to search the digital collections- how can we highlight certain features that are currently hidden and buried away? Our staff and faculty have used some social media tools in the past, but are these a lasting mechanism? Omeka has a digital exhibit function, which I hope will be quite useful as ...