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Yale University
Report to the Digital Library Federation
October 2004
A. Collections
Economic Growth Center Digital Library
This eighteen-month project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, digitizes a selection of Mexican state statistical
abstracts from the Yale University Library's Economic Growth
Center Library Collection. The process of digitizing the
materials into TIFF images, PDF documents, and Excel tables has
yielded a wealth of information about the costs and processes of
creating a statistical digital library from sources not born
digital. The project is being extended to digitize tables of
retail commodity prices from Nigerian states, to test the
applicability of the project's findings to a collection of
markedly different print quality. The project has made extensive
use of automated processes for metadata production of both Dublin
Core and Data Documentation Initiative records.
http://ssrs.yale.edu/egcdl/
Historical New Haven Digital Collection: A Teaching Tool
The Historical New Haven Digital Collection, a teaching tool
developed over the past two years, now contains over 1,500
images, 800 interactive maps and 90 statistical documents
relating to the city of New Haven in the 20th Century. The
teaching tool was originally developed in support of a Library
ELI (Electronic Library Initiative) supported class called 'New
Haven and the Problem of Change in the American City'. This past
summer the number of images in the collection was increased by
over 800 as the tool will be used in support of a course called
'Urban Legal History' in Spring 2005. Instructional materials on
the use of the maps are linked from the site as are outside
resources of interest to those doing research on New Haven.
http://www.library.yale.edu/newhavenhistory/
Internet Mission Photography Archive
IMPA is a new three-year project funded by Getty in which the
Yale Divinity Library is partnering with five other archival
repositories in Europe and North America to develop an online
database of missionary photographs taken between 1850 and World
War II. This database will be an important scholarly resource for
missions historians, art historians, scholars of religion,
historical sociologists, visual anthropologists, area
specialists, and geographers. http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/arc/digarchives/mission/
Lewis Walpole Digital Library
The Lewis Walpole Library Digital Collection has been enriched
with the addition of images from prints, drawings, paintings, and
text focusing on Horace Walpole and his house called Strawberry
Hill. Along with the vast array of caricatures and satires that
formed the original concentration of the Digital Collection, the
Strawberry Hill-related material marks another step in the
Library's efforts to make its holdings of British
eighteenth-century materials available electronically. The
Digital Collection is searchable alone or as part of the newly
developed Cross-collection Search.
http://lwlimages.library.yale.edu/walpoleweb/.
Manuscripts and Archives Digital Images Database
The Manuscripts and Archives Digital Images Database (MADID)
contains digital reproductions of photographs, posters, drawings,
text documents, and other images taken from the research
collections of Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
These images comprise only a small percentage of the department's
holdings, being those requested by departmental patrons over the
past several years. The database continues to grow as patrons
request the digitization of additional materials.
http://mssa.library.yale.edu/madid/
Peter Parker Collection, Medical Historical Library
Peter Parker was a medical missionary and diplomat to China in
the early 19th Century. Parker specialized in treating diseases
of the eye, particularly cataracts, but also performed general
surgical operations including the removal of tumors. In the
1830's he commissioned Lam Qua to paint portraits of his tumor
patients. These startling and somewhat gruesome paintings of
pathological subject matter provide the viewer with unsettling
insights into the more unusual cases Parker treated during his
tenure in China.
http://www.med.yale.edu/library/historical/parker.html.
Shoah Foundation Archives Collaborative Project
Yale University Library is participating in a Mellon
Foundation grant-funded pilot project with the Survivors of the
Shoah Visual History Foundation, Rice University and the
University of Southern California. The program has made the Shoah
Foundation's digital video archive of Holocaust testimonies
available on campus via the Internet. Using the Visual History
Archive (VHA), a web based tool, students, faculty and other
researchers can access and search the metadata available for the
foundation's cataloged testimonies. VHA users can request for
these digital format videos to be downloaded to a cache server at
Yale University from which the videos can be viewed on most
campus workstations.
http://www.library.yale.edu/mssa/vha
Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library
In 2003-2004, the YMTDL project added two significant
historical theses that should continue to attract considerable
contemporary attention:
Angoff, Nancy Rockmore (YSM Class of 1990)
Do Physicians Have an Ethical Obligation to Care for Patients
with AIDS?
http://ymtdl.med.yale.edu/theses/available/etd-05112004-084228/
Daniels, Daryl Keith (YSM Class of 1991)
African-Americans at the Yale University School of
Medicine:1810-1960
http://ymtdl.med.yale.edu/theses/available/etd-02052004-085604/
Also, the project added the first thesis with an original
electronic component, a movie created as the intervention for the
study:
Wong, Ileen (YSM Class of 2004)
Development and assessment of an innovative video to introduce
concepts of adherence in Soweto, South Africa
http://ymtdl.med.yale.edu/theses/available/etd-08202004-175255/
B. Services
Cross Campus Library Experimental Teaching & Learning
Space
Located in the Cross Campus Library, the Teaching &
Learning Experimental Space has been designed to serve as a
location to prototype services to help us explore how
collaborative spaces can support teaching and learning. Insights
will be helpful for design work for future Library renovations.
The initial configuration of the space will include a 'Technology
Troubleshooting Office', a 'Self-Service Media Lab' and an
'Experimental Collaborative Space'. Assessment of these services
is an important component of this testing; several feedback
mechanisms are in place and feedback will be gathered constantly
and analyzed.
http://www.library.yale.edu/cclexp
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MetaLib at Yale
MetaLib v3.11 was installed at Yale in Sept. This release is
much improved over the earlier version, and we believe will work
well in our environment. We are currently implementing the
product and are addressing issues such as: public interface
design, establishing resource categories, configuring and
describing resources, testing functionality that should enable
remote authentication against our Central Authentication Server,
and investigating proxy server options. We anticipate offering
MetaLib to the public at the end of the Fall semester. The
Library is keenly interested in offering the federated search
capabilities available through this product. Whether MetaLib will
also replace our dynamically generated web list of electronic
databases will depend on the flexibility of the resource
descriptive record in MetaLib.
C. Systems
Electronic Resource Management at Law School Library
The Law Library has begun to implement the Electronic Resource
Management (ERM) module from Innovative Interfaces. ERM will
provide a receptacle for administrative and licensing information
about electronic resources, and will allow integration with the
online catalog for display of access and usage information to
patrons. The Law Library has also purchased and begun to
implement III's WebBridge module, which enables openURL
functionality for the catalog and provides rule-based linking to
full-text resources or external related resources.
Rescue Repository
This project is meant to provide a central system in which to
store master digital information from several Library digital
collections. Since much of this material currently resides on
CDs, DVDs, various tape formats and other media, the Rescue
Repository is envisioned as a "safe haven" for this material. The
purpose is not to provide an OAIS-compliant digital preservation
archival repository, but rather a simpler solution to provide
breathing space (from concerns such as media decay, obsolescence,
damage, loss, etc.) while such a system is carefully planned,
designed and implemented over the next few years. The Rescue
Repository will be implemented as a simple file-level system
containing little more than the master files themselves residing
within a directory structure designed to emulate the hierarchy
from the original source collections, along with rudimentary
verification, validation and metadata information stored as
ancillary files also within the target directories. The first
phase of this project consisted of the generation of a
requirements document from the Rescue Repository Requirements
Task Force, consisting of representatives from several library
digital collections as well as Integrated Library Technology
Services staff. Representatives from several candidate
collections were canvassed as well. This phase was completed in
June 2004 and was followed by the implementation phase, which is
in progress.
Support for Finding Digital Images
In support of the American Studies Digital Imaging Project
(see below), a cross-collection search tool was created based on
the Digital Library application developed at the Beinecke Rare
Book & Manuscript Library. The Digital Library
Cross-Collection search provides web-based access to over 100,000
images from Library collections including those from the Beinecke
Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Visual Resources Collection,
Art of the Book Collection and the Lewis Walpole Library.
Work also continues in support of Luna Imaging Inc.'s Insight
software. Version 5.0 has been installed and is being used by
staff, students and faculty. The 'Personal Insight' module will
be prototyped for use on campus by staff and faculty. The Library
has developed a set of core fields for recommended use in the
cataloging of personal collections and instructional materials
are being developed to provide additional guidance for users of
Personal Insight.
http://images.library.yale.edu/dlxc/
A. Projects
New Project Announcements
Electronic Records Archive Project and Fedora
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission
has recently awarded a grant in the amount of $196,908 to support
testing Fedora's capabilities to serve as an electronic records
preservation system in the Yale University Archives, part of the
Manuscripts and Archives department of the Yale University
Library, and the Digital Collections and Archives of Tufts
University. Yale's Electronic Records Archive Project will work
in conjunction with Tufts to discover a method of capturing and
maintaining digital records using Fedora. The project is also
concerned with assessing the program's ability to trace the
authenticity of the information and to manage data of varying
sources and formats.
Update on Existing Projects
American Studies Digital Imaging Project / ELI (Electronic
Library Initiatives) Project:
Work continues in support of a $250,000 grant to facilitate
the design of teaching and study tools and the building of
collections of digitized images to support American Studies.
Through close collaboration among staff from the Library,
Graduate School and Academic Media & Technologies, the
project also aims to assess the impact of using these new digital
materials and information technologies on teaching and learning,
as well as on library service support. The project began in April
2002. Since then, six Working Groups have been created to explore
issues related to Management Software, Software Integration,
Collection Building and Organization, Copyright Guidelines,
Instruction and Assessment. An individual Faculty Support Team
composed of staff from across campus provides course-specific
assistance to each participating faculty member. These Faculty
Support Teams work closely with the faculty member and exist for
the duration of the supported course.
Three courses were supported in the spring of 2004 including
courses in History, English and African American Studies. Six
additional courses will be supported in the Fall 2004 and Spring
2005 including courses in Art, Law, Nursing, Forestry &
Environment Studies and English.
http://www.library.yale.edu/eli
OACIS for the Middle East (Online Access to Consolidated
Information on Serials)
This is an union catalog of serials from or about the Middle
East whose mission is to improve access to Middle Eastern serials
in libraries in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.
The OACIS catalog contains full bibliographical information and
precise holdings (with owning libraries identified) for journals
and serials related to the Middle East and published in numerous
languages. The system permits searching in English and Arabic. We
are beginning our third year of a Title VI Department of
Education grant to create this electronic resource. We now have
10 US, 1 German, and 2 Middle Eastern universities involved in
the project. This coming year, we will be collaborating with the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina on a digitization demonstration project
involving pre-1923 journals in Arabic and in French. We will also
conduct an InterLibrary Loan experiment to assess the ILL
prototype under development.
http://www.library.yale.edu/oacis/
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