Preparing to Preserve: Three Essential Steps to Building Experience with Long-Term Digital Preservation

Many organizations face complex questions of how to implement affordable and sustainable digital preservation practices. One strategic priority at the University Libraries at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, United States, is increased focus toward preservation of unique digital assets, whether digitized from physical originals or born digital. A team comprised of experts from multiple functional library departments (including the special collections/archives area and the technology area) was established to help address this priority, and efforts are beginning to translate into operational practice. This work outlines a three-step approach: Partnership, Policy, Pilot taken by one academic research library to strategically build experience utilizing a collaborative team approach. Our experience included the formation of a team, education of all members, and a foundational attitude that decisions would be undertaken as partners rather than competing departments or units. The team’s work included the development of an initial digital preservation policy, helping to distill the organizational priority and values associated with digital preservation. Several pilot projects were initiated and completed, which provided realistic, first-person experience with digital preservation activities, surfaced questions, and set the stage for developing and refining sustainable workflows. This work will highlight key activities in our journey to date, with the hope that experience gained through this effort could be applicable, in whole or part, to other organizations regardless of their size or capacity

Controversy, Code Names, and Cultural Memory: Building the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Digital Collection

This poster highlights the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project (NTSOHP); a digitization collaboration dedicated to documenting, preserving, and disseminating the stories of persons affiliated with and impacted by forty years of U.S. Cold War nuclear weapons testing. The project is a partnership between the UNLV University Libraries, the director of the NTSOHP, campus, and community partners to create an online, fully searchable, digital re-search collection from the collected oral history research. Project participants include scientists, miners, military officers, contractors and corporate executives. Also presented are the voices of native tribal leaders, peace activists and communities downwind of the test site. Working with controversial material, deciphering military code names, and negotiating government acronyms were all unique challenges to the project. This poster also presents practical digital projects solutions (such as managing cross-campus communication, quality control for complex metadata creation, troubleshooting online document display, and tackling project marketing), with a focus on issues in converting oral history research for the online environment. Project at a Glance University Libraries partnered with UNLV College of Liberal Arts (History and Sociology) Over 175 participants; 335 hours of interviews (digital audio, transcribed text, images and related documents and video) Research design approved by UNLV’s Institutional Review Board and followed Evaluation Guide-lines of the Oral History Association Collection built in CONTENTdm digital collection management software Metadata created with controlled vocabulary and library standards Full-text indexing enabled for searching; transcripts provided in PDF format for output Multimedia delivered via streaming audio with custom embedded player Custom web interface to display metadata, audio player and PDF side by side

Adventures in Digitization: A New Librarian Shares Five Hard Earned Tips to Avoid Project Management Pitfalls

Many institutions are feeling pressure to embark on digitization projects to provide greater access and visibility to their unique materials. Digitization initiatives have numerous benefits, but they can also drain staff time and resources if they are not planned and prioritized well. As new librarians are hired into increasingly technical entry-level positions, they are often expected to contribute to or lead digitization projects requiring a diverse skill set. Learn five key tips to help recent grads and new digital project managers to avoid pitfalls. Topics will include: the importance of the planning process, involving key people at the right time, never underestimating the challenges of metadata, learning to love the tools at hand (the CONTENTdm digital media management system will be discussed), and successfully launching a completed project

So You Want to Be a Digital Librarian -- What Does That Mean?

[Excerpt] Ranganathan’s fifth law -- “The library is a growing organism -- is what this chapter is really about. Access to information has increased in amazing ways in the past couple of decades, and that doesn’t eliminate the need for librarians; it gives us even more room to do truly staggering things. In fact, it’s this recent explosion of information that has given rise to the newest iteration of our profession: the digital librarian. If you’re reading this book, then you either are one of this new breed, or you want to be -- or you suspect that you might be, and you’re thinking about changing what it says on your business card. This chapter will set the stage. We’ll define what it means to be a digital librarian and discuss the mindset, resources, and challenges specific to the role, as well as the connections it has to traditional librarianship and what sets it apart from what’s come before

Tales From the Field: The right mix of theory, practice, and soft skills for educating digital library leaders

Technology skills have entered the LIS curriculum, but an overlooked variable in employability is often the perception of graduates’ soft skills. Communication skills, consensus-building and strategic thinking are critical to employers and by integrating coursework, internship experience, and networking opportunities as part of the core educational experience new graduates can set themselves apart as they enter the workforce. Research shows that programs that most effectively prepare future digital librarians are those that complement theory with interdisciplinary practice by developing partnerships and offer mentoring opportunities. This paper presents two perspectives identifying strategies to help develop leadership skills for the digital library field, representing the view of a new graduate employed in a digital library and a practicing librarian engaged in mentoring and training future digital librarians

Success factors and strategic planning: Rebuilding an academic library digitization program

This paper discusses a dual approach of case study and research survey to investigate the complex factors in sustaining academic library digitization programs. The case study involves the background of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries’ digitization program and elaborates on the authors’ efforts to gain staff support for this program. A related survey was administered to all Association of Research Libraries (ARL) members, seeking to collect baseline data on their digital collections, understand their respective administrative frameworks, and to gather feedback on both negative obstacles and positive inputs affecting their success. Results from the survey, combined with the authors’ local experience, point to several potential success factors including staff skill sets, funding, and strategic planning

From Temporary to Transformative: Leveraging Externally-Funded Special Collections Projects as Organizational Learning and Development Opportunities

This poster proposes an academic library approach to addressing temporary project staffing in Special Collections and Archives with a focus on organizational transformation, professional development, and mentoring. The strategy includes both managerial perspective and insights from a visiting faculty librarian on key aspects of hiring, supporting, and leveraging temporary professional staff for impactful organizational development. While the focus of temporary projects is often completing deliverables on time, this poster presents three areas of layered learning outcomes that leverage project work as a catalyst for organizational development, managerial development, and new professional mentoring

Insights into the Cultivation and Sustainability of Academic Library Digitization Programs: Success Factors and Challenge Threats

Many academic libraries have invested time and resources into the creation of library digitization programs, and at this point in time there is a growing need to evaluate the impact and success of these efforts. What factors determine whether institutions achieve goals and experience long-term success or face challenges in staffing, funding, and strategic vision? This poster presents the results of a comprehensive survey administered to ARL (Association of Research Libraries) Library digitization managers to help provide a cross section of the current state of a diverse group of programs. Presented along with the survey results, the authors delve deep into the process undertaken at the UNLV Libraries to develop a strategic vision and decision-making structure to revitalize the library’s digitization unit and create increased buy-in from staff and partners. Such work entailed two reorganizations, various workshops presented to library staff, drafting of a comprehensive digitization white paper, and establishing an administrative structure to review and prioritize digitization project proposals. These two methods of investigation are presented side-by side to reflect patterns and point to several factors that contribute to success and sustainability of digitization efforts in academic libraries

Strategic Planning for Sustaining User-Generated Content in Digital Collections

Experimentation and exploration are hallmarks of innovative libraries, but as experiments become on-going projects and investigations become long-term commitments, it is important to gain perspective on how the roles of librarians, archivists, and information professionals are changing. As social computing becomes routine for computer users, libraries of all types are responding to these new expectations by building interactive communication features into their on-line collections. Social features and user-generated content raise several compelling issues as organizations strive to balance agile adaptation to the ever-evolving user environment with the realities of limited staff resources and greater administrative expectations. This paper examines the challenges inherent in efficiently managing social media and user-generated content and discusses the various stakeholders involved in managing the increased day-to-day work these initiatives create. Several strategies are suggested to help develop an flexible and supportive organizational framework that can effectively sustain and deliver on the promise of social computing

Transforming digital collections into linked data: The rise of missing links

Goals Study the feasibility of developing a common process that would allow the conversion of our collection records into linked data preserving their original expressivity and richness Publish data from our collections in the Linked Open Data Cloud to improve discover-ability and connections with other related data sets on the We