Monday, January 27, 2014

The 2013 MWDL Usage Report Has Arrived!

The 2013 Mountain West Digital Library usage statistics report is now available for your viewing pleasure!  We have seen tremendous growth in visitors and pageviews throughout the past year on both the MWDL website and our social media platforms.  In total, MWDL received over 113,000 visits and 94,000 unique visitors for a total of 425,000 pageviews.  Additionally, the launch of the Digital Public Library of America has nearly doubled our daily visitor average.  You can find more helpful MWDL usage statistics on our MWDL usage page.  In all, 2013 was a breakout year for MWDL and we plan to continue this momentum of growth well into 2014.  Thanks again to DPLA and all of our partners for making this possible!

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Data Mining and Historical Newspapers

It is always interesting to see how people are doing research with historical materials from digitized collections. One project that recently caught my eye is An Epidemiology of Information, which is a  Digging into Data challenge project. Here's an article about the project, which focuses on using digitized newspapers from Chronicling America to track information about the Spanish Flu from 1918-1919.

Monday, January 13, 2014

The power of the public library

Librarians love public libraries. It doesn't matter if we are academic librarians, law librarians, medical librarians, data curators, catalogers, or digital preservationists. We love public libraries because, for most of us, it was our first contact with the concept of libraries and probably why we chose to go to library school in the first place. Public libraries embody our cherished ethics: access to information, the right to read, and equitable service. They are one of the few places where anyone can go to find sanctuary, improve their mind, and engage with their communities.

Public libraries are also ubiquitous. As this heat map shows, public libraries serve 96.4% of the U.S. population. There are more public libraries in America than McDonalds or Starbucks. If that statistic doesn't give you more faith in humanity, I'm not sure what will!


Every library in America mapped http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/06/every-library-and-museum-america-mapped/5826/

I blog about this statistic not just because I love public libraries but because over the next several months, MWDL will be providing digitization and training services to public librarians who want to make their special collections and unique artifacts available online. Town by town, these local collections make up the history of our region, and MWDL is so excited to help get these local treasures digitized and on the web for all to enjoy!

Copyright Week!

This week is Copyright Week, with many opportunities to extend your understanding of copyright issues. For a rundown of events check out the ACRL news post, Copyright Week Explores Principles of Copyright Policy. Check out the Copyright Week website for a full listing of readings.

Metadata issues - we want your feedback!

I've recently set up a google site designed to track metadata issues. The issues could be items we want to address in a new version of our MWDL Application Profile, issues we would want clarified on our general guidelines page, or even ideas for additional training. I've loaded in a few issues and questions, but would really like your feedback! You can add comments to the issues list or simply e-mail me if you have items to add.

Also, with the start of a new year, the ingestion queue has been revised. Let me know if you have any questions about the MWDL ingestion process.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Best Practices for Linked Open Data

Via InfoDocket, here is the Best Practices for Publishing Linked Data from the Government Linked Data Working Group. This looks like a good outline of considerations to follow when diving into Linked Data!

Monday, January 6, 2014

Fresh Metadata from Brigham Young University Library

We've had some harvesting issues with Brigham Young University, so one of my major projects in December was working with our Primo team to get fresh metadata in for all of BYU's collections. This project is now complete, and the metadata is all fresh and new! It makes me feel like MWDL has done a bit of cleaning and redecorating for 2014!

You can browse these great collections from the partner page for the Harold B. Lee Library and also the partner pages from Brigham Young University - Hawaii and Brigham Young University - Idaho

Coming up next: more new collections from a variety of partners that we'll be announcing soon. BYU also has many new collections that I'll be reviewing and adding in the coming weeks. It is great to start out 2014 with many new collections to add to the Mountain West Digital Library!

Thursday, January 2, 2014

MWDL Resolutions for 2014


Happy New Year! Here at MWDL we always have big plans brewing, but 2014 is looking especially bold and action-packed.  Below are some of the resolutions that are driving our plans for 2014:

1. To make the unique, historic items of collecting institutions in the Mountain West widely available and searchable to all users (who said all of our resolutions had to be new?)
2. To help more archives, libraries, historical societies, and collecting institutions digitize their materials and make those materials available online.
3. To provide more digital library training to our partners both in-person and online.
4. To provide a platform for our partners to meet, collaborate, and inspire one another.
5. To be innovative in the ways we reach out to potential users and potential partners.

Stay tuned to see how we accomplish these resolutions in 2014!