Interfaces and Tools for the Library of Congress National Digital Library

This paper describes a collaborative effort to explore user needs in a digital library, develop interface prototypes for a digital library, and suggest and prototype tools for digital librarians and users at the Library of Congress (LC). Interfaces were guided by an assessment of user needs and aimed to maximize interaction with primary resources and support both browsing and analytical search strategies. Tools to aid users and librarians in overviewing collections, previewing objects, and gatherin g results were created and serve as the beginnings of a digital librarian toolkit. The design process and results are described and suggestions for future work are offered. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-98-09

Web-at-Risk: A Distributed Approach to Preserving our Nation's Political Cultural Heritage

This report summarizes the results of the interviews with end users for the Web-at-Risk project. The Web-at-Risk project is one of eight digital preservation projects funded in 2004 by the Library of Congress. The project is a 3-year collaborative effort of the California Digital Library (CDL), the University of North Texas (UNT), and New York University (NYU). The project will develop a Web Archiving Service that enables curators to build, store, and manage collections of web-published materials

The Vermont Digital Newspaper Project and the National Digital Newspaper Program: Cooperative Efforts in Long-Term Digital Newspaper Access and Preservation

The Vermont Digital Newspaper Project (VTDNP) is a state partner in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Developed by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), the NDNP is a long-term, national effort to build a freely accessible, searchable Internet database of historical US newspapers. NEH provides funding to state projects to select and digitize historic newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. LC provides the technical support and framework for preservation digitization. Digitized newspapers are archived by LC and made freely available through the website Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Vermont joined the NDNP in July 2010, when the University of Vermont Libraries were awarded NEH funding to embark collaboratively with state partners—including the Vermont Department of Libraries, the Ilsley Public Library of Middlebury, and the Vermont Historical Society—on the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project. Institutional partnerships and the engagement of committed individuals serve as a foundation to the VTDNP and provide an avenue to expand statewide infrastructures to accommodate large-scale microfilm-to-digital conversion and preservation efforts. Through collaboration and outreach, project partners select and digitize historical newspapers from microfilm and promote Chronicling America, a tool for discovery of these primary historical resources

A national digital data policy for the United States: to be or not to be?

As countries worldwide are coming to terms with establishing a national data policy, the United States is approaching the issue in a piecemeal manner. With numerous federal, state and private agencies in control of funding, it is unlikely that a national policy will emerge for the United States in the near future. Regardless, efforts are moving forward on digital initiatives, including open access to scholarly publications, access to digital data-sets, creation of standards for data-set management, and national repositories for scanned images. Consortiums of research libraries such as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Coalition of Networked Information (CNI) and the Digital Library Federation (DLF) are facing these issues and assisting with definition of challenges and options. Several not-for-profit agencies are investigating ways in which they can participate, including OCLC, JSTOR, Portico and LOCKSS. Commercial firms such as Google are establishing partnerships with research libraries. Major federal funding agencies including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have issued statements about the need for a digital policy. Federal agencies such as the National Archives and the Library of Congress are participating by actively managing massive amounts of data. Although there is activity on numerous fronts, there is no forum for a nationally concerted effort. While it is unlikely that a national policy on digital management will emerge in the United States, it is likely that within five to ten years a patch-work quilt of digital policies will emerge. This paper will explore issues faced by the scientific and technical disciplines and the collaborative approaches developing between the research and library communities to meet these challenges

Web-at-Risk: A Distributed Approach to Preserving our Nation's Political Cultural Heritage

This report is part of the Web-at-Risk project. The Web-at-Risk project is one of eight digital preservation projects funded in 2004 by the Library of Congress. Each of the projects represents a collaborative effort to preserve for future generations born-digital or digitized cultural heritage materials and collections. The Web-at-Risk project is a 3-year collaborative effort of the California Digital Library, the University of North Texas (UNT), and New York University. The project will develop a Web Archiving Service that enables curators to build collections of web-published materials. The content will be collected largely from US federal and state government agencies, but will also include political policy documents, campaign literature, and information surrounding political movements. The project work will be conducted along four paths of overlapping activities. The Web-at-Risk Project work paths include (1) Content identification, selection, and acquisition; (2) Content harvest and analysis; (3) Content ingest, retention, and transfer; and (4) Partnership building

Web-at-Risk: A Distributed Approach to Preserving our Nation's Political Cultural Heritage

This report is part of the Web-at-Risk project. The Web-at-Risk project is one of eight digital preservation projects funded in 2004 by the Library of Congress. The project is a 3-year collaborative effort of the California Digital Library (CDL), the University of North Texas (UNT), and New York University (NYU). The project will develop a Web Archiving Service that enables curators to build collections of web-published materials. The content of the collections for this project will be largely from US federal and state government agencies, but will also include political policy documents, campaign literature, and information surrounding political movements and labor unions. This report includes the methods, results, discussion, and appendices related to the Web-at-Risk project

Successful Management of an Outsourced Large-scale Digitization Newspaper Project

This article uses the case study of the Nevada Digital Newspaper Project (https://nvdnp.wordpress.com/), an extension of the National Digital Newspaper Program (https://www.loc.gov/ndnp/), to introduce proven strategies on how to successfully manage a large-scale digitization project. It provides tips on how to stay within the timeline and deliver products with outstanding quality, leveraging limited human resources, and engaging an external digitization vendor. It discusses practical project management techniques and tools, strategies for establishing collaborative vendor partnerships, and strategies for efficient communication with stakeholders

Worldwide Access to Foreign Law: International & National Developments Toward Digital Authentication

This paper was originally presented at the World Library & Information Congress of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), Helsinki, Finland, August 2012, as part of a panel on Promoting Global Access to Law: Developing an Open Access Index for Official Authenticated Legal Information, Part II. Europe. http://conference.ifla.org/ifla78/programme-and-proceedings-day/2012-08-14. It focuses on worldwide access to the official word of the law, specifically to statutes, codes, regulations, court decisions, and international agreements in different foreign countries. The importance of improving global access to foreign law was highlighted at a 2012 joint European Commission/Hague Conference on Private International Law, with the hope for a global instrument to facilitate access to foreign law in civil and commercial matters. The paper discusses the challenges of digital law and the importance of authentication of official legal information worldwide. It retraces the history of what happened in the USA at the federal and state levels, in particular the successful information policy advocacy by law librarians that led to the enactment of the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) in 2012. It highlights the role of law librarians in the digital age and their concern for the sustainability of the digital format. Much effort has been expended on moving legal information from a preserved state (print) to an accessible state (digital). It is important to ensure as well that accessible legal information has a preserved (official, authentic -- hence reliable) venue. The Conclusion mentions a few prospects for the future, and a possible role for IFLA to develop a set of standards to encourage governments worldwide to authenticate their official legal information. This might fit well with IFLA’s stature as the major forum to influence information policy at the international level

Worldwide Access to Foreign Law: International & National Developments Toward Digital Authentication

This paper was originally presented at the World Library & Information Congress of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), Helsinki, Finland, August 2012, as part of a panel on Promoting Global Access to Law: Developing an Open Access Index for Official Authenticated Legal Information, Part II. Europe. http://conference.ifla.org/ifla78/programme-and-proceedings-day/2012-08-14. It focuses on worldwide access to the official word of the law, specifically to statutes, codes, regulations, court decisions, and international agreements in different foreign countries. The importance of improving global access to foreign law was highlighted at a 2012 joint European Commission/Hague Conference on Private International Law, with the hope for a global instrument to facilitate access to foreign law in civil and commercial matters. The paper discusses the challenges of digital law and the importance of authentication of official legal information worldwide. It retraces the history of what happened in the USA at the federal and state levels, in particular the successful information policy advocacy by law librarians that led to the enactment of the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) in 2012. It highlights the role of law librarians in the digital age and their concern for the sustainability of the digital format. Much effort has been expended on moving legal information from a preserved state (print) to an accessible state (digital). It is important to ensure as well that accessible legal information has a preserved (official, authentic -- hence reliable) venue. The Conclusion mentions a few prospects for the future, and a possible role for IFLA to develop a set of standards to encourage governments worldwide to authenticate their official legal information. This might fit well with IFLA’s stature as the major forum to influence information policy at the international level

Shared Collection Development, Digitization, and Owned Digital Collections

While library models already exist for sharing physical materials and joint licensing, this paper envisions an aspect of future collections involving a national digital collection owned, not licensed, by libraries. Collaborative collection development, digitization, and digital object management of owned collections can benefit societies in multiple ways, from expanding access to users otherwise unable to reach these materials, to preserving content even when disaster strikes, to reducing duplication of effort and expense in collection or digitization. This article will explore both the benefits of and the challenges to this type of collaboration