The Office of Digital Collections and Research (DCR) of the University of Maryland Libraries supports the teaching and research mission of the university by facilitating access to digital collections, information, and knowledge. This is accomplished through enhancing access to selected library resources through the development, maintenance, and preservation of digital collections; by serving as a knowledge resource within the university for digital library issues and development; by participating in national and international initiatives which further the development of new forms of scholarly communication, tools, standards, and applications; and by providing training and support in digital library standards and formats.
The UM Libraries Office of Digital Collections and Research and the Gordon W. Prange Collection are proud to announce the launch of The Prange Digital Children’s Book Collection.
The online collection provides access to children’s books published in Japan during the early post-World War II years, 1945-49. Currently, 200 children’s books are available.
The University of Maryland Libraries and the National Diet Library of Japan (NDL) are working collaboratively to preserve and provide access to the Prange Children’s Book Collection in digital format and on color microfilm. Eventually, 8,000 titles from the Gordon W. Prange Children’s Book Collection will be available. Digitization of those volumes is ongoing and new titles will be mounted on a rolling basis.
Due to copyright restrictions, access to the full contents of the books are limited to the University of Maryland College Park campus. However, access to book records and thumbnails of book covers are available to all.
The 600th finding aid/EAD record was uploaded to ArchivesUM this morning. ArchivesUM is the database that manages the finding aids (indexes) to manuscript and archival collections at the University of Maryland Libraries using Encoded Archival Description (EAD). It also includes abstracts to collections for which complete finding aids are not yet available in electronic format. Access to complete finding aids allows researchers to better plan their research visits or make long-distance information requests, and to gain a clearer understanding of the relationships between collections at the University of Maryland. Placing finding aids online makes collections discoverable and allows researchers to easily prepare prior to visiting the University of Maryland. It also helps facilitate long-distance research requests.
The 600 EAD records can be broken down as follows:
Historical Manuscripts: 322
Literary Manuscripts: 61
University Archives: 89
Library of American Broadcasting: 10
National Public Broadcasting Archive: 68
Special Collections in Performing Arts: 49
World’s Fair: 1
Of those 600, there are 318 full finding aids and 272 are abstracts of either unprocessed collections, or collections for which we just have not mounted a full finding aid in ArchivesUM yet. That’s pretty good news for exposing our “hidden collections.”
I want to thank everyone who helps contribute to ArchivesUM, whether it is content, technical skills, design, or data entry.
Jennie Levine
The current (December 2007) issue of Outlook, the official magazine of the faculty and staff of the University of Maryland, features an article about UM’s Digital Collections portal. Written by Cassandra Wilson and entitled “UM Libraries’ Collections Go Digital,” the full text of the article is available online at http://outlook.umd.edu/search_article.cfm?id=2589.
