Over the past 5 years German archives have undertaken numerous digital archive projects to provide access to their holdings. Web presentations such as HADIS, Ariadne or BAM, to name some of the larger projects, and several single archival institutions vary in their goals and technical specifications by making their metadata accessible through the Internet. On the one hand these projects use a wide variety of system designs and metadata formats to organize, describe and provide electronic access to their holdings. However, on the other hand, it is a great advantage for German archives that they traditionally maintain a high degree of standardization concerning the description of archival material and a well structured composition of archival finding aids.

The quantity of information and the number of archival information providers are increasing. This expansion makes it increasingly difficult for both researcher and user to keep track of the disparate information lanscape. At the present technical stage of information services for German archives on the World Wide Web, it is obvious to think of a federally coordinated and integrated Internet information service, based on a united and standardized platform. The realization of such an idea, from the presenters’ point of view, is closely connected to the development of a software solution. This will provide the possibility to integrate metadata from a wide range of existing archival database applications and to normalize this information in a formal, structured and semantical way. Finally, this will enable the delivery of a standardized and easily accessible outcoming datastream to be used in subsequent applications. The two projects – ARIADNE and UNIMATRIX – will be presented as steps toward a solution of these problems.

http://ariadne.uni-greifswald.de
http://unimatrix.uni-greifswald.de

Handout (MS Word)

Despite the development of commercial systems for providing art historians with digital images for classroom use, the practical issue of how to project dual images for teaching art history survey courses in large classrooms remained unsolved. The split screen system found in most commercial products for comparing images does not provide large enough images to be seen in the back rows of classes of 100 or more students. A technology solution was needed to provide full-size dual image projection from one computer that was easy for faculty to use. While the technology was relatively easy to adapt so that two different “slide shows” could be projected to mimic two traditional slide projectors, the real challenge was to address the culture of an art history field that is wedded to slides, and to address the administrative challenges of developing support systems for helping faculty use technology that is different from what is found in most of the large classrooms. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Libraries and the Art and Art History Department received a joint teaching grant from the University to create digital image collections that would meet the needs of the art historians teaching large survey classes, and to assess the impact on student learning when students have access to the images used in class on a 24×7 basis. A project team of library staff, art historians and the art slide curator, and technologists was created to manage the grant. CONTENTdm was used to create the image collections, and then programs were written to allow dual image projection using PowerPoint, rather that split screens, for the MAC platform. Software from CONTENTdm that supported the PC platform was also tested and used.

In this briefing session, we will describe the challenges of moving from developing digital content to solving the “last mile problem” of how to put the technology in large, general classrooms and then persuade faculty to change their teaching methods to use the new system. Technological, administrative, financial, and instructional challenges will be addressed. The views of an art historian who was reluctant to give up slides and is now using digital images in the classroom will be described. The librarian and technologist will discuss the programming and equipment issues, training issues, and the challenge of helping art historians understand how a key word searchable digital collection can be more powerful in teaching than the traditional slide collection. Lessons learned, including both successes and failures, will be included.

Handout (MS Word)

The quantity of digital text continues to expand at unprecedented rates, and attempts to categorize the information with metadata have not kept pace with this growth. As a result, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has supported the development of the NITLE Semantic Engine (NSE), a tool to address the issue of bringing order to large quantities of otherwise unstructured text. In a completely automated process, using word distribution and co-occurrence statistics, this tool exceeds simple keyword search capabilities by making inferences about the semantic relationship among documents. As an “expanded recall” search engine, the NSE will display relevant documents that may not contain the original query term. In addition, search results are automatically grouped into semantically coherent clusters, and interactive visualizations help a user explore the underlying associations among documents. This presentation will describe both the network-based tool and the desktop application as tools for exploring and navigating large collections of textual information.

http://www.knowledgesearch.org

Handout (MS Word)

The Dance Heritage Coalition, a consortium of eight leading dance archives in the United States dedicated to preservation, access and documentation of dance, is working with Media Matters LLC to develop a pilot project for searching and distributing dance-related audiovisual records among DHC institutions. Students and scholars of dance wishing to view materials currently available only by traveling to a particular DHC institution (among them New York Public Library and The Ohio State University), will be able to upload selected moving image files at special viewing stations established at four DHC member sites located in four distinct areas of the country. Presenters will discuss the significance of this file-sharing network to the field of dance scholarship, as well as the methodology and digital rights management technology to be employed.

http://www.danceheritage.org/

Powerpoint Presentation

The Georgia Tech Library and Information Center began a robust agenda in 2001 to establish collaborative campus services to enhance the contemporary student learning experience. Other collaborations underway help to shape the campus infrastructure and policy to meet learning and research needs in the digital environment. The GT Library’s heralded collaboration with the GT Office of Information Technology (OIT) resulted in the Library West Commons in 2002. This spawned other Library – OIT partnerships such as the brand new student collaborative learning space called the Library East Commons (opened September 2006) and the OIT/Library Resource Center (opened April 2006). The Resource Center includes hosted services from Undergraduate Academic Advising, Graduate Fellowship and Scholarship Office, Counseling Center, and OIT Customer Services. Ongoing collaborative policy and technology infrastructure initiatives addressing virtual learning needs range from courseware and eLearning tools selection to strategic planning and intellectual property management. The virtual learning collaborators include the Library, OIT, the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL), and Distance Learning and Professional Education (DLPE). This session will give an overview of some of Georgia Tech’s major Library – OIT collaborations and the philosophies underlying this fertile environment for transforming information and learning services. A discussion with attendees will focus on gaining feedback on the work presented and sharing the attendees’ experiences with Library – IT collaborations.

http://www.library.gatech.edu/about_us/lwc/lwctour.pdf
https://intranet.library.gatech.edu/docs/2005factsheet.pdf
http://epage.library.gatech.edu

Powerpoint Presentation

In this session, reports from two institutional assessments of research behaviors and needs will be presented. The studies provide data resulting from a campus-wide assessment (New York University), as well as analyses of particular communities (humanities and social sciences at Minnesota). Results reveal trends in research methods and the shifting landscape of content, services, and tools that shape faculty and student repertoires. Opportunities to reconceive library space and methods of service delivery will be explored.

Handout (PDF)

Handout (MS Word)

The University of Michigan BlueStream project provides the cyberinfrastructure to support digital media enabled academic practice. Essential access, media, metadata, analysis, and storage services do the heavy lifting allowing the community to focus more on academic outcomes and less on technical skills. Three years of pilot projects across multiple disciplines have provided a depth and breadth of experience. As the academic community explores the emerging practice, the information technology community explores media provisioning and requisite interoperability with the wide range of enterprise and academic systems, i.e. course management, directory, library, etc. This session will provide an overview of the BlueStream Digital Asset Management (DAM) Cyberinfrastructure, related academic practice, and discussion of relevant issues.

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/bluestream

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/bluestream/cni

Handout (PDF)

Recent studies show that still images are the most heavily used type of digital resource in higher education, one that can radically affect teaching practice. In 2005, interested in how different faculty were actually using digital images in the classroom, Wesleyan University and the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) commissioned an intensive study of digital image use by more than 400 faculty at 30 liberal arts colleges and universities in the Northeast. The focus of the study was on the pedagogical impact of the widespread use of this new format, with related issues of image supply, support and infrastructure making up much of the fabric of the report. Topics include image sources; the cataloging and management of personal image collections and their relationship to institutional collections; new software tools required; copyright policy and practice; the digital and image “literacy” skills required for optimum use of digital images by teachers and students; opportunities for faculty to share pedagogical needs and discoveries; and the management of the transition from analog to digital resources. This session presents and discusses the project’s findings.

http://www.academiccommons.org/imagereport

Handout (MS Word)

Handout (PDF)

Handout (Wesleyan Univ PDF)