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The Natural Resources Digital Library: Needs, Partners, and Challenges

December 1, 2003

Janine Salwasser
Natural Resources Consultant
Oregon State University

Bonnie Avery
Natural Resources Librarian
Oregon State University

Janet Webster
Associate Professor, Head Librarian-Guin Library
Oregon State University

In the year 2000 the Oregon Progress Boards State of the Environment Report noted that essential data, maps, and information on natural resources in the state are largely inaccessible, unusable or non-existent. Building on the land grant mission, the Oregon State University Libraries considered how best to build a natural resources digital library to address the need of planners, policy-makers, and researchers for access to high-quality, timely information to inform their decision-making and environmental stewardship.

In 2001 the Libraries undertook a needs assessment to guide the development of a natural resources digital library and better define its content. Interviews with citizens, policy makers, and scientists showed that potential users want to find, retrieve, integrate, and synthesize well-organized and geo-referenced information in a wide variety of formats. Building partnerships as a means of addressing the users needs and promoting the development of a distributed information system will support the digital library goal of providing access to natural resource information at the local watershed, basin, statewide, and regional levels.

This briefing will highlight three case studies (Virtual Oregon Data Clearinghouse, Willamette River Basin Explorer, and Tsunami Digital Library) that demonstrate the benefit of partnerships, the diversity of content, and the new digital library technologies employed—including spatial and non-spatial data cataloging, Web-enabled GIS, and collaborative filtering—by OSU Libraries to address the needs of different communities of users. With each of these case studies, we will share with the audience universal technological, economic, and social challenges to promote a continuing discussion that will move us towards collaborative and innovative solutions.

Presentation:
The Natural Resources Digital Library (PowerPoint)

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Digital Libraries, E-Science
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The New Frontier of Institutional Repositories: Three Different Libraries, Three Different Plans, One Common Goal

December 1, 2003

Robert H. McDonald
Assistant Director of Libraries
Florida State University

Tyler Walters
Associate Director
Georgia Institute of Technology

Anthony Smith
Systems Librarian
University of Tennessee

This panel discussion brings together representatives from three different ARL libraries in varied academic settings who want to exploit the advantages of the new scholarly communications framework of institutional repositories (IR). The panelists will discuss their motivations for wanting to implement an IR, indicate the available resources within their respective institutions and collaboratives, and then briefly cover their strategies for defining, scoping and implementing IRs.

Web Sites:
http://dscholarship.lib.fsu.edu/

http://www.library.gatech.edu/search_locate/digital_collections.html

http://dspace.sunsite.utk.edu

http://www.sedlc.org/presentations/cni2003

Presentation:
The New Frontier of Institutional Repositories (PowerPoint)

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Repositories
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The New York Public Library Digital Gallery: An Open Source Approach Using XML and the Lucene Search Engine API

December 1, 2003

John Parsons
Technical Project Manager
New York Public Library

David Dodson
Web Developer
New York Public Library

The New York Public Library’s Digital Library Program is nearing the end of a long-term initiative to digitize and index hundreds of thousands of images from the Research Libraries’ holdings. Providing access to these images and allowing the public to search and retrieve them in a fast and easy manner has been a technological challenge. After exploring several different approaches, we came up with a low-cost architecture using XML representations of our image data indexed and searched using Lucene, an open source search engine API supported by the Apache Jakarta Project. This briefing will examine the details of the architecture and elaborate on some of the benefits and problems that come along with it.

http://digital.nypl.org (program homepage)

http://digital.gallery.nypl.org/digital_gallery/

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Digital Libraries, Information Access & Retrieval
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Persistent Identifiers

December 1, 2003

John Kunze
Preservation Technologies Architect
California Digital Library

This project briefing focuses on how to move library community discussion forward on the creation and maintenance of durable links to information objects. It will solicit ideas, needs, and visions. As a point of departure, participants are encouraged to read a recent reformulation of the problem, “Towards Electronic Persistence Using ARK Identifiers,” at the URL provided below.


http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/ark/arkcdl.pdf

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Digital Preservation
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Power to the People: The IUB Libraries’ Digital Asset Management System

December 1, 2003

Phyllis H. Davidson
Director of Information Technology
Indiana University

Doug Ryner
IUB Libraries Web Administrator
Indiana University

The Indiana University Bloomington Libraries Web site evolved over a period of several years, from a few pages of information to more than 6000 static Web pages, with completely decentralized control over the content and the layout of the pages. The only standard created was a template with a common look and feel that various users adapted in different ways. Many staff spent time learning HTML and trying to keep the content up-to-date, but were not always successful.

At the same time, the site had become a focal point for access to the Libraries’ growing collection of electronic databases, full-text resources, and electronic journals. Two consulting companies conducted usability studies with students and faculty and studied the architecture of the site in 2000. They recommended engineering the site with a database infrastructure and hiring a Web administrator to lead the effort. After a year of searching we hired an experienced Web administrator and formed a planning team. The new site debuted a little more than a year later, in October 2002.

This briefing will describe the re-engineering of the site, assessing philosophical and cultural factors, and highlighting the internal development of a content manager to allow librarians to present information without the need for strong design or HTML skills. We will demonstrate a few highlights and efficiencies of the system (organizing the information, simplicity of publishing, quality control, separating content from presentation, responsiveness, data collection, reporting, and flexibility), and will discuss in detail revisions made to the site since its implementation and planned next steps.

Web Site:
http://www.libraries.iub.edu

Presentation:
Power to the People (PowerPoint)

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Digital Libraries
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ProQuest Dissertations Publishing On-line Submission Program

December 1, 2003

Bill Savage
Director, Dissertations Publishing
UMI Dissertations Publishing

Timothy Brace
Senior Systems Analyst
University of Texas at Austin

ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, in conjunction with the Berkeley Electronic Press, has developed a Web-based application for the submission, review and approval of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). The application is expected to improve and speed the dissertation and thesis publishing process for graduate students, faculty, and graduate schools.

The new system allows a graduate student to upload his/her approved document into the publishing system, where it is automatically reformatted into Adobe PDF and sent directly to the graduate school. The document is then reviewed for compliance with graduate school policy and format. The system allows the graduate school to track the document throughout the entire process. Using an administrative tool, the graduate school reviewer can accept the document or request revisions. The author is automatically notified by e-mail of the actions taken. Once the thesis or dissertation is accepted, the document and all relevant metadata are delivered to UMI Dissertations Publishing for expedited processing, cataloguing, and posting. The university library also automatically receives a copy of the document. This briefing will describe the project and report on progress to date.

http://dissertations.umi.com/

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETDs)
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Public and Distributed Scholarship in an Age of Wires and Empires

December 1, 2003

David Silver
Assistant Professor
University of Washington

In 1996, the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies, a not-for-profit online center devoted to mapping the then-emerging academic field of digital culture, was established. This presentation will include a history of the Center and a discussion of barriers to collective knowledge, including discipline-based scholarship, geographically-based publication, and the limits of print. The briefing will conclude with a few modest solutions to these problems, and some notes regarding the role of public and distributed scholarship in the Age of Empire.

http://www.com.washington.edu/rccs

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Publishing, Scholarly Communication
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Research in Seeking Copyright Permission for Open Access

December 1, 2003

Denise Troll Covey
Associate University Librarian for Arts, Archives, and Technology
Carnegie Mellon University

Although 95 percent of the books ever published are still in copyright, only 3 percent of them are still in print, which means that 92 percent of the world’s published works are neither generating revenue for copyright holders nor easily accessible to potential readers. During the period when U.S. copyright required renewal, fewer than 15% of copyrights were renewed. Clearly most books are abandoned within 28 years of publication. Academic books seem to be abandoned much more quickly because they typically go out of print within three years. Nevertheless, copyright law prohibits digitizing and providing open access to these materials without permission from the copyright holder that has abandoned them. This state of affairs is significantly impeding the creation of a digital library of books that could enhance student learning and faculty research, and address worldwide disparities in library collection size and accessibility.

This project briefing will describe three studies conducted by Carnegie Mellon University Libraries to acquire permission to provide open access to copyrighted books on the surface Web. The first study, a random sample feasibility study in 2000-2001, secured an overall success rate of 22%, alhough the success rate varied significantly by publisher type. The second study, currently ongoing, seeks to acquire permission to digitize and provide open access to a collection of fine and rare books. Different strategies for negotiating with publishers in this study have yielded an overall success rate to date of 56% with a transaction cost of $37 per title. The third and largest study is an attempt to acquire copyright permission to include 500,000 copyrighted books in the million-book collection being produced by the international Million Book Project.

Web Sites:
http://www.ulib.org/html/index.html

http://www.dli.gov.in

Presentation:
Research in Seeking Copyright Permission for Open Access

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Intellectual Property
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ResearchChannel Video Content

December 1, 2003

Jim DeRoest
Director, Streaming Media Technologies, ResearchChannel
University of Washington

Amy Philipson
Executive Director, Research Channel
University of Washington

ResearchChannel is a consortium of the world’s leading research institutions and organizations whose common goal is to distribute research information to the public. ResearchChannel is dedicated to broadening the access to and appreciation of our individual and collective activities, ideas, and opportunities in basic and applied research. One of the major goals of ResearchChannel is to use program content creation and manipulation processes as testing medium for analog and digital broadcast and on-demand multimedia offerings, thus providing an unusual opportunity to experiment with new methods of distribution and interaction on a global basis. This session will provide background on the Research Channel and describe its wealth of content, its asset management strategies, and its programs.

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Digital Libraries
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The Shibboleth Library Administrators’ Tool

December 1, 2003

Jennifer Vine
User Interface Designer
Stanford University

RL Bob Morgan
Senior Technology Architect, Computing and Communications
University of Washington

The Shibboleth Project will be developing tools for librarians and other administrators to enable the management of end-user access to licensed resources. This briefing is intended to gather input about typical scenarios and requirements for these tools.

http://shibboleth.internet2.edu

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2003 Project Briefings, Information Access & Retrieval, Intellectual Property
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