    IFLA Standing Committee on Preservation and Conservation Workshop, IFLA Boston 2001: Preservation and Digitization - Natural Partners SurveyDetailed ResponseSurvey Question 2: Digitization of Library Collections: WHAT collection materials is your library digitizing? Describe the types of materials your library has chosen to digitize. Are they single items or collections? Are they organized in any special way? Please provide specific examples and include slides or digital files of selected items that illustrate your decisions.
BN-P is currently digitizing printed materials (in public domain), manuscripts, music scores, graphics and cartographic materials. No sound recording or motion picture has been digitized so far. As the materials are organized in thematic sites, the choice is mostly of single items that are dispersed within the collections. However for another digital project – Manuscripts and Letters from Portuguese Writers – the decision was to digitize the individual archive as a whole. These, however, are only available for consultation on site although some of the items "per se" can be accessible on line in the thematic sites about Portuguese Writers. The material digitized changed over the time along with the goals evolution. The first French culture library project corresponds to an item per item approach for monographs and to an entire serial collection when a serial title issue is selected for digitization. The cultural heritage approach for visual material corresponds to a collection approach. The total Digital library on line is organized per themes and sub-themes, century per century. In addition special browsing are offered : chronological, special collections, dictionaries and encyclopedias, and textual documents. This last browse was added in order to facilitate e-book download and reuse. Specific themes are offered with a direct access corresponding to events like exhibitions, French book fair … After one or two years they are integrated into the general French culture library. An example of such a theme is Utopia organized in conjunction with an exhibition at BnF and New York Public Library. a) single items on demand b) A range of collections, inc. Medieval MSS, Broadside Ballads, 18th & 19thC journals (ILEJ) see http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dig-inits.htm To this point, the emphasis has been on digitising some of the BL's major collection items such as the Electronic Beowulf, the Gutenberg Bible, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Diamond Sutra etc. Emphasis is now turning to creating a collection of learning materials on the theme of a national sense of place which will be made generally available on the Internet - called In Place. This has just been awarded a £3million grant. The BL is also underway in a number of partnership ventures with commercial publishers; the pattern of these varies, but the BL will generally receive a copy of the resulting digitised product for onsite use plus a share of revenues. http://coloradodigital.coalliance.org/ Cultural heritage institutions in Colorado have selected a very wide array of material to be digitized. Many of the projects pull related collections from more than one institution for an online exhibit or display (for example, two institutions are working together on documents and photographs about the only World War II Japanese Internment Camp in Colorado.) The range of topics covers history, science, and social science. A list of the projects is attached in Attachment A. While most of the projects are creating website exhibits of the digitized material, they are all also contributing metadata about the images to Heritage, so that each image across all the exhibits, from all the collections, can be retrieved by major search indexes such as author, title, and subject. This interoperability solution works across all our cultural heritage partners without mandating that a museum, library, or historical society change the way they produce metadata, because we have produced cross-walks from all our major metadata systems into a Dublin Core format used by Heritage. Hence, the collections are organized and available both through a catalog search, and a web site. Further, Heritage is Z39.50 accessible, and all Heritage holdings will be retrievable via the Colorado Virtual Library, resulting in a user search on any topic retrieving citations for books, journals, videos, microforms, websites, and digital versions of primary resource collections such as photographs, diaries, manuscripts, costumes, etc. Heritage is available from the CDP website. The Colorado Virtual Library is http://www.aclin.org. http://www.lib.helsinki.fi/hyk/hul/indexe.html As a national and university library the researchers is our main user group. This has to be taken into account in our collection policy for digitization, which includes choises of collections and their extent. Researchers do need large collections with advanced search possibilities. That is why the main objective of our library today is to digitize whole collections rather than single items. Below is some examples of our projects. Also the single item approach is used. The Library has chosen to digitize various materials which include photographs, posters, newspapers and oral history interviews recorded on audio-cassettes. All the items which have been digitized so far were collections because it is more meaningful to present a complete entity rather than single items which would be of limited significance. Each of the following has been organized, arranged, and have a finding tool such as list or guide. In the case of the the oral history interviews, they are accompanied by a print transcript (not digitized). Here are some exemples: a- The Moore collection of photographs: these are the earliest photographs (70 in b&w) taken of the University campus, buildings, activities, events, etc. between the late 1980s and 1915. They have a noteworthy prominence in documenting this early period of the University history. They are accompanied with a list. b- The Blatchford collection of photographs. 800 sepia photographs taken during late 19th - early 20th centuries, of Lebanon and other countries of the region. This collection has a guide with an introduction, preliminary list, description of each photograph, and a detailed index linked to each item. It is a collection of inestimable value. c- The political posters collection includes 364 posters representing all political currents, movements and parties in the country, and depicting various aspects of the Lebanese Civil War. They belong to the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. d- The leading local newspapers (An-Nahar, As-Safir, and L'Orient-Le Jour) are the ones which are mostly read and often cited. They are now available in the Library website. e- The oral history interviews (about fifty) were carried out by the University with major leading political and cultural figures from Lebanon and many other Arab countries. They have been digitized (mainly to preserve the quality of recording) but are not available to the general public due to access restrictions. http://www.kb.nl/kb/100hoogte/hh-en.html From 1996 onwards he have digitised illuminations form medieval manuscripts, historical maps, watermarks, early 20th century newspapers, 16th/17th century travel books, parliamentary documentation etc. Most of them belong to larger collections. Our website www.kb.nl provides access to most of these collections. At the moment we are concentrating on getting funds for the digitisation of larger collections (more newspapers, 19th century literary and/or historical publications, the proceedings of our Parliament since 1813 etc.) http://www.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/ The Kyoto University Library has been digitizing the collections of rare materials, such as the National Treasures of Japan, the Important Cultural Assets of Japan, and other special collections it has collected. The lists of special collections which contains bibliographic information are being provided to users as well. The American Memory Historical Collections, a major component of the Library's National Digital Library Program, are multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and text from the Library's Americana collections. There are currently more than 90 collections in the American Memory Historical Collection. In addition, the Library's American Memory Project raised funds from Ameritech to enable 30 other American institutions to add some of their materials to those that the Library has digitized. The American Memory collections cover the breadth of U.S. history, from the nation's founding, the wars it has fought, the Great Depression and the great inventors to baseball, the civil rights and women's suffrage movements, modern music and theater, the conservation movement and photography. The online papers of Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln bring to life these men and their times. In FY2000, the Library=s successful collaboration with Russian archival institutions culminated in Meeting of Frontiers, a multimedia English-Russian digital library presentation that tells the stories of American exploration and settlement in the West, the parallel exploration and settlement of Siberia and the Russian Far East, and the meeting of the Russian-American frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Another collection of digital materials is the Library=s online Exhibitions area. These materials represent most of the exhibitions that have been displayed at the Library over the last few years or are currently on display. Some of these are special exhibitions of Library of Congress materials. Others are of materials that were loaned by other institutions for a short time specifically for a special exhibition. The Library is also digitizing many of its publications which are available on its website. The largest initiative has been scanning individual technical papers presented at meetings of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). Through a partnership agreement with the Institute the papers are deposited at the Linda Hall Library immediately after the meetings. Most are in the format submitted by the author and are predominately a computer-generated printout with or without illustrations and photographs. Approximately 5,100 papers (53,000 pages) have been scanned, converted to PDF format, catalogued, and added to the OCLC database. A link from the bibliographic record in the online catalog allows in-house users to immediately access the digital copy rather than retrieve the hard copy from the stacks. While preservation of the paper artifact is not the primary goal in this initiative, it nonetheless serves to reduce the use of the paper original. The History of Science Department with curatorial responsibility for the rare books collection has worked on a variety of digital projects. Users of the web have made extensive visits to three electronic catalogs of exhibits mounted locally but also exhibited internationally via the library’s homepage. These exhibits can be viewed by clicking on "Events and Exhibitions" (www.lindahall.org) As a result of these web exhibits the library has received many requests for use of images from the works represented as well as from related works. The extend of increased remote usage of the collections directly from the web exhibits was not anticipated but has been welcomed and has encourage thinking about creating an archive of images from various special and unique holdings. Document delivery of rare books has been accomplished in recent years by scanning partial or complete works and sending via electronic media to the requestor. These books will be made available on the web in the near future since there are no copyright restrictions on these materials. Several hundred images from scattered items in the collections or from photos taken on the grounds of the Urban Arboretum which surronds the library have been created by scanning 35mm color slides onto Kodak Photo CDs. These images, not ordered or catalogued or available via the web, have been used to respond to outside requestors and to use in library brochures and publications. These thus serve internal and external purposes. The highest priority for digitization is put on the materials relating to Korea and Korean and materials free of copyright restrictions. Both single items and collections are digitized. Digitized items are arranged in ways that are easy for users to access and linked to the library online catalogue records. Enclosed are the examples digitized by the Library. At present, the library digitizes in general manner imaging the original using the scanner and stored in TIFF file . http://www.natlib.govt.nz/flash.html The first initiative, in 1996, was Timeframes (http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz), a reactive service whereby the Library digitised individual items in response to external user requests. While the scope of Timeframe shas widened in recent years it still remains an essentially boutique digitisation process. In 1999/2000 the Library undertook a digitisation project of a complete collection comprising approximately 4,000 items. The Ranfurly Collection is a digital database of the drawings, photographs, diaries, and illustrated reports created by Lord Ranfurly, Governor of New Zealand between 1897 and 1904, and his entourage. The database, which can be both browsed and searched, is a rich source of information about New Zealand society at that time and also includes material from Ranfurly's extensive tours in the Pacific Islands. This project had a number of deliverables including analysis of the potential of the Library’s standard, MARC based library package to store and display the essentially hierarchical structure of the material represented in the Ranfurly collection. Although qualified, this proved to be a successful exercise (http://tepuna.natlib.govt.nz/abouttp/abranfurly/about.html#search). A second deliverable of the Ranfurly project was as a proof of concept for the delivery of online collections described in Encoded Archival Description (EAD), the emerging standard for the description of unpublished, archival type collections online. This exercise was highly successful and EAD has since been agreed upon as the metadata standard for unpublished, archival type collections within NLNZ (http://tepuna.natlib.govt.nz/abouttp/abranfurly/about.html#browse). The third deliverable of the Ranfurly project was to increase the Library’s expertise in the digitising of a range of original objects, including photographs (both singly and in albums), drawings and prints (both singly and in sketch books which also had calligraphic opening pages) and manuscripts (2,970 pages of letters, account books, diaries and scrapbooks in varying formats). This part of the project formed a steep learning curve for the Library’s in-house imaging team including liaising with the conservation unit for cleaning of items suffering from mould, dirt, dust, staining etc. In 2000 the Library proceeded with another EAD project, this time with a view to working through the issues associated with the delivery of sound over the web, in this instance as a result of an oral history project. Again, a steep learning curve resulted in a highly satisfactory online project (http://tepuna.natlib.govt.nz/abouttp/abkilbirnie/about.html). In 2001 the Library has undertaken a project in bulk digitisation, this time using the web to deliver a range of 19th century New Zealand newspapers. Twenty titles have been digitised from 35mm preservation grade microfilming comprising over 600 reels and approximately 305,000 images. This project required the Library to use an external contractor, Preservation Resources in the United States, and required an increase in formal project management fitting with the size of the project (http://periodicals.natlib.govt.nz). From this can be seen a gradual development in the Library’s digitisation program to a mix of ad hoc individual work, boutique collections based work and bulk digitisation. We have chosen to digitize collections rather than single items, in so far as our present choice is ’one item in 12 volumes’, which we define as a collection. Among our digital products are photo-databases, poster databases, document databases with information on special topics and databases which contain a mixed bag of photo, film, sound, bibliographical description and written material. We standardize certain elements in the bibliographical descriptions within each project whilst allowing for diversty within each type of material. We hope in the future to allow for standardized search across the databases. We are also participating in the EU-project ONE-2. In this project the focus is on developing and testing the Z 39.50 protocol. However, according to our experiences so far, we presume it will take time to implement solutions which allow searching across different databases covering different kinds of material in an efficient and user-friendly way. RLG Cultural Materials includes collections of digital reproductions of documents, images, sound, motion, and objects. Description varies, depending upon local practice, but is mapped to a common schema for inclusion in the combined resource. All descriptive records are represented by at least one digital object. The Russian State Library is engaged in the ORELProject http://www.rsl.ru/r_frame.asp
http://orel.rsl.ru/ The Open Russian Electronic Library is a pilot project of the RSL electronic library under creation now. Desirous of presenting the unparalleled holdings of the greatest library of the Eastern hemisphere OREL is open to collaboration with all those aiming at the goal of filling the Russian sector of the network with the Russian language literature of full value. The project pursues the following objects: Revealing the wealth of the invaluable stocks of the Russian State Library, Russia’s biggest library. To solve the problem the OREL places its collections of electronic versions of books, articles, abstracts, printed music, of holdings of representational, military and other departments of the RSL at public disposal and in particular a collection of Cyrillic books dating from the 15th to the 16th century gathered with European libraries taking part. Presenting electronic versions of prime works of the Russian classical literature brought together by connoisseurs of the Russian belles-lettres from their amateur libraries to Russian readers. Filling the Russian sector of the Internet (Runet) with valuable pedagogical and educational writings, in the first place, with those involved in the standing problem of bringing up the personality of the Internet user. Culture of a nation begins with its education. Employing the Internet as a mighty means of providing systematic knowledge. Affording access to the full courses of educational programmes in mathematics, Russian language and literature and so on (first and foremost school programmes). The best teachers who have proved themselves to be specialists and professionals must pick out the books deserving of being placed for good on the RSL site in electronic shape. I dare say it is just in the Russian State Library as well as in the Russian national library that any reader is certitled to count on the access to best books written in Russian. Having both necessity and inevitability of transformations of the Russian society I reiterate the thought which is by no means new about the need to change the mass consciousness. Considering immense spiritual values of the Russian culture in literature, music, painting and so on the OREL has chosen priority directions electronic documents on which one to be composed first of all by RSL employees or to be elicited from other quarters. Russia. History and culture Moscow. History and culture School textbooks Bibliography and librarianship Reference books and encyclopedias "Memory of Russia" programme http://www.rsl.ru/e_pub2.htm http://www.rsl.ru/e_pub4.htm# The "Memory of Russia" programme was launched in 1995. It aims to preserve the most valuable and rare books, manuscripts, maps, artwork and musical publications and at the same time to raise the public awareness and use of those materials. The "Memory of Russia" is part of the UNESCO's "Memory of the World" and therefore uses its methods and principles of document selection. Slavic publications (books) in Cyrillic characters from the 15th - 1st quarter of the 16th century. http://sun450.agir.ru/memory/ The Khitrovo Gospel was kept in the vestry of Troitse-Sergiev monastery. In 1920 all the collections of that monastery together with the book collection from the vestry were transferred to the RSL where they are still held. The Khitrovo Gospel is dated as end of the 14th - beginning of the 15th century. This is one of the four gospels of Rublyov circle. The experts say that four miniatures in the Gospel were painted by Andrey Rublyov, and the ornaments were painted either by him or by artists from his school. First maps of Russia. An outstanding collection of maps and atlases in the RSL represents 300 years of Russian cartography development. "Book of Drawings of Siberia" - a manuscript by Semen Remizov (born in Tobolsk) is a very rare cartographic publication. Another unique book is the hand painted "Atlas Compiled for the Benefit and Use of the Young People". A real monument of cartography is the "Map of Ingermanland and Karelia", 1740. Especially valuable is the collection of maps drawn by Peter the Great's land sur-veyors: I. Islenyev, I. Truskot, F. Cherny, Y. Shmidt and published by the geographic department of the Imperial Academy of Science in 1769 -1796. All these publications (books) are objects of scientific and historical analysis, but due to the poor state of their preservation they can not be actively included in scientific cir-culation. Their digitisation may help to solve these problems, and will provide for the more convenient use on the basis of modern technologies. The RSL collection of political, information and advertising posters by its size, completeness and uniqueness holds the leading place in this country. The collection contains posters of the first years of the Soviet rule by V. Mayakovsky, D. Moor, V. Deni and other, WWII posters (including the TASS Windows), selection of posters by famous Russian artists: M. Vrubel, I. Bilibin, B. Kustodiev, Y. Pimenov etc. The con-ditions of storage of the collection do not allow to provide full access to a big number of posters potentially interesting for the researchers. The creation of iconographic database "Russian and Soviet Posters" will help to solve this issue together with the is-sue of preservation. 5. Russian Cheap Print. http://www.rsl.ru/SCIENCE/EXAMPLE/LUBOK.HTM The RSL collection of the popular cheap prints is the best in the world. The earliest prints of the collection date back to 17th century. A very interesting part of the collection are selections of popular prints from the time of the was with Napoleon in 1812, and the prints representing folklore themes. All the prints exist only in one copy, most of them are very worn due to intensive use. An optical disc representing one of the most interesting genres of the Russian folk art, culture and history will be interesting both for the art experts and for the general public. 6. Project meeting of frontiers Meeting of Frontiers is a bilingual, multimedia English-Russian digital library that tells the story of the American exploration and settlement of the West, the parallel exploration and settlement of Siberia and the Russian Far East, and the meeting of the Russian-American frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. It is intended for use in U.S. and Russian schools and libraries and by the general public in both countries. Scholars, particularly those who do not have ready access to major research libraries, also will benefit from the mass of primary material included in Meeting of Frontiers, much of which has never been published or is extremely rare. This pilot site was developed in the first ten months of 1999 at the Library of Congress by a team of Library staff and American and Russian consultants. It is intended to demonstrate the educational and cultural potential of international cooperation in the development of digital libraries and to serve as the basis for an expanded project that features collections from additional partners in the United States, Russia, and other countries. http://www.sil.si.edu/newstart.htm SIL has mounted digital editions from the following collections: Bureau of American Ethnology reports. These are early 20th century anthropological reports on Native Americans. [illustration from Hairpipes] Rare Natural History Texts; [illustration from Spalowsky and Spix] Selections from our large collection of industry catalogs from the 19th and early 20th century. [illustrations from sewing machine catalogs]. Early texts in the history of science from our Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology. [illustrations from Brahe and Besson]. For industry catalogs we approach our digitization efforts on a collections bases, e.g. sewing machine catalogs or scientific instrument catalogs. For the other areas, we base our efforts on selecting individual texts though we attempt to select texts that compliment or fill-out existing materials on the web. The Library is digitizing special collections and local history materials on a collection basis. Included are text materials (city directories, local history publications), atlases, maps, pictures, postcards and souvenir viewbooks. We are planning to start digitizing theatre collection materials including set and costume designs, photographs, programmes and other archival materials. They are organized for the most part into format databases (atlases, maps, etc.). Some materials such as the directories and publications have also been OCRed and are provided full text searching. Primarily early Irish manuscript manuscript material. Book of Kells, Book of Armagh, Book of Durrow, Book of Leinster, mediaeval Irish language medical texts. A combination of single items, each of immense value, and collections. The collection selected for the pilot project is a collection of 1,500 Delaware postcards, 1890s to 1950s, held in Special Collections. The originals are organized geographically. http://www.library.utoronto.ca We are involved in various digital projects. These range from a Books on Demand project in partnership with a Japanese Book Company (approximately 13,000 out- of- print monographs scanned) to special collection materials on Canadiana. Specific examples of these projects include the following: University of Toronto English Library. Sizable full text collection of poetry, drama, prose and non fiction works, together with criticism and theory resources, glossaries, a history of English and English composition resources. The collection materials that the Vatican Library are digitizing include: samples (one frame) of each manuscript being electronically catalogued; the entire collection (eventually) of prints for the prints catalogue; and the entire collection (eventually) of medals and coins from the medals collection. The items are, of course, organized according to the order of the cataloguing of their description.
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