Leveraging the Campus-wide Library, Archive and Museum Collection

An RLG Programs initiative investigating library, archive and museum collaboration in campus (and campus-like) environments held workshops at five institutions, and culminated in the report “Beyond the Silos of the LAMs.” The findings of the report provide the backdrop for a discussion of recent developments at Princeton and the Smithsonian, which seek to better serve their diverse audiences through a more integrated view of their collections, and reap economic benefits of scale along the way. Princeton has recently created a Digital Repository Architect position in the Office of Information Technology, and has begun to investigate consolidation of storage and management for digital assets. A high-functioning federated search engine for digital images and methods for incorporating social tagging functionality into digital repository services are also among the envisioned new services. In September, the Smithsonian’s new Secretary publicly announced his aspiration of making the collections in its two dozen collecting units available online. Towards this end, the Smithsonian has established a Central Digitization Office to spearhead the development of a pan-Institutional digitization strategic plan, and is focusing on building the pre-requisite organizational and technical infrastructures, policies and processes needed to make a digital Smithsonian a reality when resources become available.

http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2008-05.pdf