University of Washington Libraries

Report to the Digital Library Federation
Fall, 2003

Table Of Contents

I. Collections and services

II. Projects and Programs

III. Specific digital library challenges

I. Collections, services, and systems

A. Collections

Faculty Collections

Ethnomusicology

Over 250 photographs of musical instruments from around the world. The growing collection is housed in the University of Washington Ethnomusicology Division which invites one or more international artists to campus each year to share their musical traditions through teaching and performance.

http://content.lib.washington.edu/ethnomusicweb/index.html

WTO Seattle Collection

A collection of interviews and images depicting the protests of the WTO ministerial meeting held in Seattle on November 29 - December 3, 1999. The collection illustrates the efforts to bring activists to Seattle as well as the diversity of the protests. Originally reported in the 07/01/01 issue of the DLF Newsletter, the project is now complete.

http://content.lib.washington.edu/WTOweb/index.html

University Libraries Digital Collections

19th Century Actors Collection

610 cartes-de-visite studio portraits of entertainers, actors, singers, comedians and theater managers who were involved with or performed on the American stage in the mid- to late 1800s. Many are posed in costume and represent characters from popular theatrical productions of the time.

http://content.lib.washington.edu/19thcenturyactorsweb/index.html

McKenney and Hall Indian Tribes of North America

Text and 121 hand colored lithographs from: The history of the Indian tribes of North America, with biographical sketches and anecdotes of the principal chiefs. Embellished with one hundred and twenty portraits, from the Indian gallery in the Department of war, at Washington. By Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall. Philadelphia, E. C. Biddle, 1836-1844.

http://content.lib.washington.edu/mckenneyhallweb/index.html

Portraits Database

An ongoing database of over 200 historical portraits of men and women well known in the Pacific Northwest region and also nationwide. These include, among others, architects, artists and writers, government officials and politicians, historians and educators.

http://content.lib.washington.edu/portraitsweb/index.html

J. Willis Sayre Collection

9,856 images collected by drama critic and theater promoter J. Willis Sayre. They consist of autographed portraits of actors, vaudeville performers, movie stills, singers, dancers, musicians, comedians and acrobats representing American theater history primarily from the 1890s and onward. Some are publicity stills from New York and East Coast photographers, others represent works by Pacific Northwest and West Coast artists.

http://content.lib.washington.edu/sayrepublicweb/index.html

Van Olinda Photograph Collection

420 photographs depicting early pioneer activities, industries and occupations, recreation, street scenes, Native Americans, and boat traffic on Vashon Island, Whidbey Island, and other Puget Sound communities from the 1880s to the 1930s. Photographed primarily by Oliver S. Van Olinda, a career newspaperman and resident of Vashon Island, Washington.

http://content.lib.washington.edu/Vanolindaweb/index.html

Washington State Pioneer Life Database

A collection of writings, diaries, letters, and reminiscences drawn from various sources within the Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives collections that recount the early settlement of Washington in the 19th century, the establishment of homesteads and towns and the hardships faced by many of the early pioneers.

http://content.lib.washington.edu/pioneerlifeweb/index.html

B. Services

Digital Reference Services

The University of Washington Libraries provides digital reference services through email, web forms, and an online, interactive “chat” service. The Libraries was one of the first 16 libraries to join the Library of Congress’s Collaborative Digital Reference Services project (CDRS) in the spring of 2000. When CDRS joined with OCLC to become QuestionPoint in 2002, the UW Libraries joined as part of a Washington State group. We participate as both a local and global partner.

The Libraries began offering an online interactive (“chat”) reference service in collaboration with Cornell University in January, 2002, using software from 247ref.org. The service is available five days a week from 7:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. The morning hours are monitored by Cornell staff, while the UW picks up the late afternoon and evening hours.

EthoMed

EthnoMed is a website containing medical and cultural information on immigrant and refugee groups. It contains information specific to groups in the Seattle area, but much of the cultural and health information is of interest and applicable in other geographic areas. The objective is to make information about culture, language, health, illness and community resources directly accessible to health care providers who see patients from different ethnic groups.

http://www.ethnomed.org/

PrimeAnswers

We are developing a digital knowledge base of critically appraised information to assist primary care providers in using the best available evidence in their daily management of patients. The specific aims of the project will help us determine if a simplification or reduction in the barriers to access and speed of information retrieval can enhance patient care. PrimeAnswers is a critical component of a broader initiative at the University of Washington to create a Clinical Digital Library that integrates fragmented knowledge dispersed across heterogeneous sources for health care providers.

http://www.primeanswers.org/

Orbis Cascade Alliance

Orbis and Cascade, two successful academic library consortia, have merged to create the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a private & public collaborative venture serving faculty and students in Oregon and Washington. This alliance combines the services of both organizations to greatly expand the scholarly information made available to students, faculty, and staff. Members include 26 colleges, universities, and community colleges throughout Oregon and Washington. The new union catalog will include over 22 million books, sound recordings, films, maps and more.

http://cascade.lib.washington.edu/

II. Projects and programs

A. Projects

Digital Scholarship Retreat

On March 9-11, 2003 the University of Washington Libraries hosted a retreat on digital scholarship. Made possible through the generous funding of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the retreat was a watershed conversation among UW scholars who are deeply engaged in scholarship and the creation of knowledge that was not possible before digital technology. These scholars engaged in the questions surrounding what academic support is needed for technology-enabled scholarship with a particular emphasis on the social sciences and humanities. The conversation was scholar driven and led. Academic, library, and technology planners and leaders participated in the visioning process as well.

http://www.lib.washington.edu/digitalscholar/

DSpace

The University of Washington is one of the original members of the DSpace Federation. DSpace was implemented in early 2003 and currently has one user community: the Early Buddhist Manuscript Project. Potential communities continue to be identified and policies defined.

Crossing Organizational Boundaries

This IMLS-funded project is a community-based partnership that is developing separate online searchable databases of images and metadata for Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), UW and each of ten Association of King County Cultural Heritage Organization (AKCHO) member groups in the King County, WA area. Each organization is creating its own website and searchable database of its images, to which it will retain ownership and control. The entire collection of websites will also have its own "super website," a comprehensive online photo research collection for a single metropolitan area, where scholars, K-20 students and lifelong learners will be able to access all these databases in a single search. The Crossing Organizational Boundaries project has created a training program to enable AKCHO-member group staff and volunteers to learn how to research and create metadata, select images for digital projects, address copyright and intellectual property issues, and choose a fulfillment house or e-commerce solution for image sales. The project is utilizing CONTENTdm.

http://content.lib.washington.edu/imls/

William Brumfield Russian Architecture WebArchive

As a pilot project, we are creating a database of 3,000 representative images of Russian architecture; images range from the earliest extant church architecture through post-Soviet buildings photographed by Professor of Slavic Languages William C. Brumfield. The Brumfield WebArchive project extends beyond standard digitalization and cataloging to create an innovative digital image resource using GIS software to enable comparisons of architectural styles, materials and other attributes across time and geography.

III. Specific Digital Library Challenges

Digital Rights Management

As we engage in more and more projects with faculty, the ownership of materials and systems created becomes more problematic. We have developed license agreements with faculty in order to obviate problems down the road as rights management relates to collections; however, the issues of systems developed with the help of library paid staff and equipment as part of a grant-funded project still remain to be ironed out.

Archiving “Born-Digital” faculty scholarship

While we are certainly not alone, the UW Libraries is increasingly being called upon to accept and preserve documents, web sites, images and other born digital materials that we are unable to guarantee will be available in the near term, much less in the long term. Policies related to the acceptance of these materials in the absence of cost-effective means to migrate the documents over time still need to be developed.