New Developments in Digital Libraries Carol Hixson Head, Metadata and Digital Library Services University of Oregon Kenning Arlitsch Head of Information Technology University of Utah Eileen M. Llona International Studies Computer Services Librarian University of Washington Western Waters Digital Library: Building a Multi-State Consortial Digital Collection Using CONTENTdm (Hixson & Arlitsch) The Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) is a consortium of 30 research libraries located in the greater Midwest & Western U. S. with common interests in programs related to scholarly communication, interlibrary loan, shared electronic resources, cooperative collection development, digital libraries, staff development and continuing education. Eleven of the GWLA libraries have been collaborating for the past year in building a digital collection of textual, image, cartographic, video, and other format materials related to the waters of the Western United States. Unprecedented drought colliding with continued population growth in the West has prompted great interest in this project. The project briefing will discuss the challenges of building a consortial collection of this nature from both the policy and technical standpoints. Special attention will be given to discussing the technical challenges and opportunities presented by the use of the CONTENTdm digital content management system. PowerPoint Presentation Handout (Word document) http://westernwaters.org/ Using Geographic Information Systems for Displaying Information: The Central Eurasian Interactive Atlas (Llona) The Central Eurasian Interactive Atlas is a web-based geographic information system (GIS) for accessing socioeconomic information from the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union. It originated at the University of Washington in the late 1990s as part of an effort to assemble large, coordinated sets of demographic, socioeconomic and political spatial data for the Russian Federation and thus facilitate more programmatic quantitative social science research of contemporary Russia and the former Soviet Union. This briefing will include a demonstration of the current version of the Atlas, a report on usability studies conducted during Spring 2004, and a discussion about the design, staffing, and infrastructure requirements identified during the development of the resource. Handout (Word document) http://green.lib.washington.edu/website/ceir/