Digital Collections at 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 University of Maryland Libraries were part of a 14-library pilot project with PALINET and the Internet Archive to digitize a selection of rare and significant books from the participants’ collections and make the electronic versions available via the Internet Archive’s website.
The program is funded by the PALINET membership and supported in part through a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The development of a mass digitization service is the first component of PALINET’s collaborative
digital collection strategy. The initial focus is on mass digitization of text.
The University of Maryland Libraries submitted eleven reels of microfilm containing the university’s course catalogs from 1859 through 1945 as part of the pilot project. These course catalogs document the early history of the Maryland Agricultural College through the end of World War II and online access to them will be a valuable asset to both researchers and to staff.
Links to the PDF files of the catalogs are available on the University Archives website. As additional catalogs and other materials are added to the Internet Archive, they will be available through the Internet Archives’ University of Maryland portal.
For more information about the PALINET Mass Digitization Collaborative, please visit PALINET’s website.
On July 9, DCR co-managers Dave Kennedy and Jennie Levine hosted a presentation at the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Digital Library Conference (MADLC) entitled Implementing a Digital Repository with Fedora. The talk focused on the development and implementation of the University of Maryland’s Digital Collections repository, based on the Fedora digital asset management platform.
The presentation explored the technical and organizational issues faced in mounting a relatively complex architecture with limited resources, as well as the various metadata schemes used in the system and the development of an API, object and content classifications, and web services. Issues of migration, authentication and archival storage featured prominently in the discussion. The presentation concluded by addressing future enhancements and plans for development, as well as stumbling blocks and lessons learned from the process of building a digital collections repository.
The PowerPoint slides of the presentation are available for viewing here.
The decision was unanimous. A Treasury of World’s Fair Art and Architecture has won the Worldwide Books Award for Electronic Publications given by the Art Libraries Society of North America. Patricia Kosco Cossard, Architecture, Planning, and Preservation Librarian, is the collection’s creator. The digital library provides access to artifacts, virtual tours and contextual essays covering a broad number of world’s fairs. The awarding committee said Cossard’s work was a grand undertaking and a significant contribution to the arts area disciplines.
