PRDLA

This presentation analyzes the nine-year experience of an academic digital library, e-Asia, which now holds over 4,000 items. In many respects, the e-Asia library is a long-running experiment. Yet the project is mature enough to provided lessons in what to do (and what not to do) when digital text is the focus of collection building. Unlike traditional libraries where, over time, books migrate to and from their shelves, digital libraries hold content that remains relatively immobile while it is the digital “shelves” that change and migrate over time.

The issues to be highlighted in this presentation are from an “in-the-trenches” perspective. Issues include: workflows, scanning procedures and choices, software use, OCR and (cooperative) proofreading, non-Roman character recognition, ebook formats, and finished product presentation. Other sundry concerns such as storage/archiving, the mobile web, and the impact of Google books, e-ink, and Amazon.com will be discussed in the contect of the academic digital library.

Presentation [ PPT ]

The new University of Southern California Digital Library is the outcome of significant transformations in the USC Libraries’ digitization philosophy, practice, and infrastructure. The new entity unites digitization processes, collection-development strategies, metadata services, distributed content creation, and a platform for new modes of intellectual investigation and outreach. It builds upon the libraries’ previous digital archive to engage the archival and research communities through more active channels, including content-contribution tools, digital-exhibition programs, and thematic visualizations as investigative pathways through the archives.

The session presents the USC Libraries’ Basel Mission image collection—a recently completed addition to the Internet Mission Photography Archive—as an end-to-end, philosophy-to-outreach case study of the USC Digital Library. The archives, global in scope, preserve a photographic record of 19th- and 20th-century European missionary contacts—some that are among the first such interactions—with Asia and Africa. The session will cover: the digital library’s contributor module that enables global partners to create content and descriptions; a pilot program with CHNM’s open-source Omeka exhibition platform; and a REST API pilot project that encourages mash-ups, social-media experimentation, and other means of building communities and enhancing discoverability.

Presentation [ PPT ]

PRDLA is pleased to announce that the Karl Lo Award has been presented to Paolina Martin, Singapore Management University, and to Patrick Pu, National University of Singapore. Ms. Martin is the director of the Institutional Repository at Li Ka Shing Library and a metadata librarian, and works on the development of policies, practices and the system for knowledge management at SMU. Mr. Pu is the NUS Libraries web master and the leader for the Engineering/Computer Science Resource Team. Both librarians will be funded to attend the 2009 PRDLA Meeting in Auckland, New Zealand. Congratulations!