PRDLA

The definition and purpose of crowdsourcing and social engagement with users will be discussed with particular reference to the Australian Newspapers service http://newspapers.nla.gov.au, FamilySearch http://familysearchindexing.org, Wikipedia http://wikipedia.org and the Distributed Proofreaders http://www.pgdp.net. These services have harnessed thousands of digital volunteers who transcribe, create, enhance and correct text. The successful strategies which motivated users to help, engage, and develop the outcomes will be examined. How can the lessons learnt be applied more broadly across the library and archive sector and what is the future potential? Users no longer expect to be passive receivers of information and want to engage with data, each other and non-profit making organisations to help achieve what may seem to be impossible goals and targets. If libraries want to stay relevant and valued, offer high quality data and continue to have a significant social impact they are well advised to have active engagement strategies and harness crowdsourcing techniques and partnerships to enhance their services. Can libraries respond to the shift in power and control of information and do we dare give users something greater than power – freedom?

Presentation [ PPT | DOC ]

The Hong Kong Memory Project (HKMP) was initiated by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government in 2002. The goal is to establish a web-based digital repository for the collection, preservation, presentation and dissemination of Hong Kong’s unique historical and cultural heritage. In 2006, the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) donated US$10 million to fund the project for 5 years. At the same time, HKJC also asked the Centre of Asian Studies (CAS) and Libraries of The University of Hong Kong (HKUL) to participate in the project, responsible for content development and system setup of the repository.

CAS and HKUL have been working closely together with HKJC, HKSAR Government and other stakeholders to create the digital repository since November 2006. Much has been achieved over the past two and a half years, including putting together a team of dedicated staff, drawing up copyright guidelines and contracts, seeking support from contributors and recently, issuing the tender document for procuring hardware and software of the HKMP system. A prototype website has also been created to gauge comments from target groups through running a series of usability tests. It is expected that the HKMP website would be available to the general public by 2011, before the repository is handed over to the HKSAR Government for continual maintenance and development.

Presentation [ PDF ]

Institutional repositories (IR) were initiated in recent years in recognition of the need for an alternative method of publishing and knowledge dissemination. The debate continues on whether articles in open access (OA) actually create more discovery, and citations on those articles. However in the discussion that follows, this appears to be yesterday’s battlefield. Proponents of IRs now find that by aligning the goals of the IR with those of the underlying institution, there is no more battle to be fought. At HKU, the Senior Management Team has recently re-articulated the institution’s mission and vision statements, to focus on three themes; 1) Teaching & Learning, 2) Research, and 3) Knowledge Exchange (KE). The HKU definition of KE includes the act of making HKU generated knowledge and skill sets accessible to business, government and the community.

The IR at HKU, the HKU Scholars Hub, is now well positioned to support these three areas, as well as measure quantitatively and qualitatively, how much work is done in these areas. The Hub collects and provides OA on teaching & learning objects, and the published & grey literature. It provides metrics on downloads, and imports citation counts from Scopus and Web of Science. It provides these metrics by article or object, and cumulates for each author. The Hub was recently enhanced to show “HKU Author Pages” with these metrics for each author, as well as fields to show in which areas an author can undertake contract research, in which areas an author can act as a spokesperson to the media, etc. With these re-articulated three themes, and the recent enhancements to the Hub, it has now become a star player, indeed “mission-critical”, in the University’s strategy for research distribution, or, KE. Increased funding and policy mandates for research deposit are correspondingly imminent.

Presentation [ PPT ]

The “Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program” (TELDAP) was officially launched on January 1, 2008. TELDAP is aimed to digitize national cultural treasures, including archaeology, archives, artifacts, calligraphy and paintings, flora and fauna, rare books, and other cultural assets, to cultivate popular e-learning culture, to encourage innovation in e-learning research, and to lay a cornerstone for Taiwan’s e-learning and digital content industries.

Presentation [ PPT ]

The libraries in China may be categorized into three types based on their superior government agencies or affiliated institutions: public, academic and special libraries . The public, academic and special libraries are usually governed and sponsored by the culture, education and sci-tech administrations at the central or local government levels respectively. For the past 10 years, dozens of digital library projects have been implemented in China, and they have been led and sponsored by different government agencies based on their administrative systems. The funds and the digital products of the DL projects are usually shared only within a type of the libraries. Therefore, the mass digitization of print collections and the software development in the different DL projects have serious duplications, and the resources are not reasonably shared among the three types of libraries, either at the national or local levels.

Ningbo is a coastal city in Zhejiang Province with a population of 5.65 million. Ningbo Digital Library (NBDL) is the first joint digital library project across the three types of libraries in the nation, cosponsored by the three local government agencies, Bureau of Education, Bureau of Culture, Radio & TV, Press and Publication, and Bureau of Science & Technology. There are 18 individual libraries, including 16 academic libraries, 1 public library system (the city library and the subordinate public libraries at county and community levels) and 1 special library (the city information institute) join the project. The goal of the project is to digitize the local cultural, sci-tech, industrial and educational resources, integrate the born digital materials of the participating institutions and local enterprises, develop several special databases with local characteristics, establish a unified portal and serve the local industries, education and research institutions, and the citizens as well. The first phase of the NBDL project was initiated in early 2007 and will be completed in 2010. Ningbo Municipal Government allocates RMB40 million yuan (US$5.85 million) to the first phase of the project. In March 2009, the NBDL portal (http://www.nbdl.gov.cn/) began to open to the local users. By the end of June 2009, 750,000 full-text documents have been viewed by the users, and 71,000 titles of different types of papers have been delivered to the patrons via the document delivery system of the portal. The digitization duplications of the project are avoided, and the digital resources are shared with different types of libraries at the city level.

Presentation [ PDF ]

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 ]

The Pacific Rim Library (PRL – pronounced “pearl”, formerly PRDLA Archive) is an ongoing project to collocate metadata from PRDLA member digitization projects and to maximize exposure of the metadata to the large data aggregators.  The PRL server repository is hosted by the University of Hong Kong Library.  Search access is via the PRDLA web site Resources section or via direct access at http://prdlaarchive.lib.hku.hk/.  PRL provides search access for the collocated metadata and serves as an efficient resource to expose the digital assets of PRDLA members to Google and, thus, to ensure access by the largest and broadest audience.  PRL promotes PRDLA by creating awareness among its users.

At the 2008 PRDLA membership meeting, there was a consensus to further develop the design and branding of PRL in order to promote its collections. A task group will be charged to develop a proposal for a design process for PRL and the PRDLA website.

In April 2008, the University of California, San Diego sent its first shipment of books to be digitized as part of the Google Book Search Library Project, a global effort launched in 2004 to digitize collections from the world’s top universities and libraries to make them searchable and discoverable online. The UC San Diego Libraries will contribute thousands of volumes from its East Asia collection and from its International Relations & Pacific Studies Library, in such diverse subject areas as history, literature, political science, public policy and economics. Speakers will discuss the project background, estimated future impacts, local processes, applied standards, technical features, and lessons learned.

Presentation (PDF)

ODiL began with a request for US$50,000 to digitize items from the libraries of the University of Auckland, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of California, San Diego as a starting point for the collaborative creation of an “Oceania Digital Library” (ODiL).  The project goal is creation of a single point of access for researchers seeking information about the cultures and history of Oceania (Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia). The digitization request was approved by the PRDLA Steering Committee at the PRDLA 2007 Membership Meeting, University of California, Berkeley on16 October 2007. The project website is: http://odldev.lbr.auckland.ac.nz/. Presenters will also discuss next steps regarding the creation of the ODiL portal and share the list of additional materials they hope to digitize in the future.

U. of Auckland Presentation (PDF)

U. of Hawaii Presentation (PowerPoint)

UC San Diego Presentation (PDF)

The paper will briefly describe digitization projects in Hong Kong. More in-depth description and problems encountered at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)will be discussed. At CUHK, not only paper and microform formats, but also audio and visual materials are digitized or converted into electronic format. The paper will try to forecast what will happen after massive digitization has taken place either in Hong Kong and in greater China.

Presentation (PDF)