This week is Preservation Week! There are many resources to discover. One great way of finding great learning materials and online commentary is to follow the #PreservationWeek hashtag on twitter. There's also a Preservation Week Facebook Page.
Here are some more resources:
Current and Past Webinars from ALCTS for Preservation Week
News and ideas for the hubs and partners of the Mountain West Digital Library
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
Interviewing for a new Web Development Assistant
The Mountain West Digital Library has an opening for a Web Development Assistant. Since Nick Hayen is about to graduate from the University of Utah, we will shortly be saying our fond farewells as he begins a new career with his master's degree in Middle Eastern History. Way to go, Nick! We will be hiring a new University of Utah graduate student in the next few weeks to maintain and improve the MWDL web portal at http://mwdl.org, manage usability studies, assemble Google Analytics usage statistics, improve the search engine optimization of the MWDL website, and work on special projects with the MWDL librarians and interns. This is a 10-hours-per-week position guaranteed through December 2014. Please pass the word along about this position opening. For more information, please see the posting at https://utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/31325.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
MWDL's Cool New Look
The Mountain West Digital Library is proud to introduce the launch of its brand new homepage design! This redesign features new exhibit and topic browse sections to showcase some of MWDL's most popular items and events. We have also changed some of the styles and fonts throughout the website, so be sure to browse around the site to get the full experience. Don't forget to "refresh" the page or clear your browser cache to ensure you can view all of our new dynamic changes. Thanks to everyone who made this change possible and to our partners and funders for their continued support!
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
MWDL partners get national press for DPLA's one-Year Anniversary
The Digital Public Library of America celebrated its one-year anniversary on April 18, 2014 and has received significant press in celebration of this landmark occasion. In only one year, DPLA has tripled the size of its collections, growing from 2.4 million items to more than 7 million. Even more impressively, DPLA now aggregates items from more than 1300 institutions in the United States, up from 500 since their launch date in 2013.
MWDL items and partners have received wonderful press from DPLA's anniversary as well. In the past two weeks, MWDL partners have been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times ArtsBeat blog. The following 1906 image from the Murray Museum in Utah has been featured in both national publications:
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| The Murray Fire Department in a 1906 parade |
The Montana Memory Project has also received attention as a new state and new partner for MWDL and DPLA. In addition to being featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the NY Times ArtsBeat blog, MMP was a featured new partner in this DPLA blog post alongside the J Paul Getty Trust, the California Digital Library, and the U.S. Government Printing Office.
Congrats to the Digital Public Library of America on their one-year anniversary and the well-deserved press it has garnered!
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
MWDL has over 900,000 records!
It is time to celebrate! MWDL has over 900,000 records!
We have 903329 records in MWDL right now! Now, the big question is, when will we hit one million items?
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| Boy clearing hurdle (ca. 1911), University of Nevada, Reno Special Collections |
We have 903329 records in MWDL right now! Now, the big question is, when will we hit one million items?
Friday, April 11, 2014
Free Digitization Training for Public LIbrarians in Utah
The Mountain West Digital Library (MWDL) is pleased to announce a free training and partnership opportunity starting this summer for Utah public librarians in “Digitization and Digital Exhibits at Your Library.” Utah public librarians and other public library staff are invited to participate in training in a workshop setting with a small group of their peers, where they will learn valuable skills in setting up digital collections and online exhibits.
The training has been tailored for librarians and other staff in Utah public libraries that hold special collections of historical, cultural heritage, and/or genealogical materials about their communities or region. Following a one-day workshop, each participant will be paired with an experienced hosting hub, whose staff will provide digitization services and technical support to help participants to share their materials via digital collections and online exhibits. Alternatively, digitization may be done at the participant's library, with assistance from MWDL staff and partners.
The digital materials will be shared for public use under Creative Commons license via the Mountain West Digital Library portal at http://mwdl.org and via the Digital Public Library of America portal at http://dp.la. The exhibits will be included with DPLA Exhibitions at http://dp.la/exhibitions.
The Public Library Partnership is made possible by generous funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a Global Libraries project managed by the Digital Public Library of America, the nation's first digital library. The Mountain West Digital Library is one of four digital collaboratives around the country that are working with DPLA in this pilot project to develop and implement public library training curricula for digital skills training, which will be shared publicly as models for future use.
Participants may choose from a workshop in May, July, or August 2014. The ideal candidates for this training and support will be public librarians or other public library staff who work with locally held materials about history, genealogy, and similar unique content. One staff member per library will be given priority, and approval from the library director is required. Travel stipends are available. For more information and to apply, go to http://mwdl.org/events/plp2014/workshop.php.
MWDL staff and hubs representatives will be at the UALC Booth, #108, during the upcoming ULA conference, so please stop by! Also, feel free to email or call Anna Neatrour ((801)587-8883, anna.neatrour@utah.edu) or Rebekah Cummings ((801)58708893, rebekah.cummings@utah.edu) if you have any questions about this training opportunity.
- Selecting appropriate materials for digitization and sharing
- Digitizing materials according to widely-accepted guidelines
- Describing the content with metadata and assigning appropriate rights for access and reuse
- Uploading digital materials to a digital asset management system for online sharing
- Creating digital exhibits among themes of national and regional intertest
The training has been tailored for librarians and other staff in Utah public libraries that hold special collections of historical, cultural heritage, and/or genealogical materials about their communities or region. Following a one-day workshop, each participant will be paired with an experienced hosting hub, whose staff will provide digitization services and technical support to help participants to share their materials via digital collections and online exhibits. Alternatively, digitization may be done at the participant's library, with assistance from MWDL staff and partners.
The digital materials will be shared for public use under Creative Commons license via the Mountain West Digital Library portal at http://mwdl.org and via the Digital Public Library of America portal at http://dp.la. The exhibits will be included with DPLA Exhibitions at http://dp.la/exhibitions.
The Public Library Partnership is made possible by generous funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a Global Libraries project managed by the Digital Public Library of America, the nation's first digital library. The Mountain West Digital Library is one of four digital collaboratives around the country that are working with DPLA in this pilot project to develop and implement public library training curricula for digital skills training, which will be shared publicly as models for future use.
Participants may choose from a workshop in May, July, or August 2014. The ideal candidates for this training and support will be public librarians or other public library staff who work with locally held materials about history, genealogy, and similar unique content. One staff member per library will be given priority, and approval from the library director is required. Travel stipends are available. For more information and to apply, go to http://mwdl.org/events/plp2014/workshop.php.
MWDL staff and hubs representatives will be at the UALC Booth, #108, during the upcoming ULA conference, so please stop by! Also, feel free to email or call Anna Neatrour ((801)587-8883, anna.neatrour@utah.edu) or Rebekah Cummings ((801)58708893, rebekah.cummings@utah.edu) if you have any questions about this training opportunity.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Ingestion Update and Metadata Office Hours
We are continuing to add more new collections to the Mountain West Digital Library!
You can see the list of partners under Montana grow larger as we add more collections from the Montana Memory Project. We have even more collections to add, so that list will be getting even longer.
We've recently added additional collections from the Idaho State Historical Society, the Roland Onffroy Collection and the Idaho Statehouse Images.
Coming soon are more collections from Brigham Young University, Utah State University, the Arizona Memory Project.
One new thing that we are also starting in response to feedback about MWDL partners wanting more metadata training is some informal metadata office hours, to be held on the first and third Thursday each month. Join me for Tuesdays with Metadata if you want to check in about any metadata related issue!
You can see the list of partners under Montana grow larger as we add more collections from the Montana Memory Project. We have even more collections to add, so that list will be getting even longer.
We've recently added additional collections from the Idaho State Historical Society, the Roland Onffroy Collection and the Idaho Statehouse Images.
Coming soon are more collections from Brigham Young University, Utah State University, the Arizona Memory Project.
One new thing that we are also starting in response to feedback about MWDL partners wanting more metadata training is some informal metadata office hours, to be held on the first and third Thursday each month. Join me for Tuesdays with Metadata if you want to check in about any metadata related issue!
Roland Onffroy Collection
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
MWDL Hubs Meeting Recap
Last month, MWDL hosted our first ever Hubs Meeting at the Utah State Archives in Salt Lake City, UT. We had 30 representatives from 20 different institutions in Utah, Nevada, Montana, and Idaho. The purpose of the meeting was to determine the future mix of services that will be offered throughout the Mountain West Digital Library network and who will ultimately provide each service - the partner, hub, or MWDL.
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| Our current infrastructure |
In addition to the discussions, we sprinkled in digital library training on assigning rights in metadata records, linked data, and digital preservation. Cory Lampert from UNLV once again blew our minds with the possibilities of Linked Data and Emily Gore from DPLA gave us a crash course in rights metadata for digital libraries. Spoiler alert: digital copies of objects out of copyright are not copyrightable! See this Wikipedia article for the legal reasons behind this.
One of the most important products of the Hubs Meeting was the tremendous feedback we received from our hub representatives. If you are a hub rep that couldn't making the meeting or a partner interested in the possible direction of MWDL, here is a summary of the feedback we received regarding future services provided in our network. If you have more to add, feel free to comment below:
MWDL Hubs Services Recap:
The feedback from the Services Breakout is that hub representatives are generally content with the current tiered services model but foresee sustainability issues if MWDL continues to accelerate its growth, which we anticipate with our new funding, capacity, and visibility as a DPLA service hub.
When asked what services hub representatives would like to see MWDL provide, the most cited service was centralized metadata training for new partners. MWDL is responding to this concern by initiating metadata office hours with Anna Neatrour where she will answer any and all metadata questions for our MWDL partners. Anna will host “Tuesdays with Metadata” the first and third Tuesday of the month from 1:00-2:00 pm starting on April 8th (MST). The staff at MWDL is also considering hosting quarterly metadata training sessions in-person and/or online and metadata webinars via Adobe Connect.
Hub representatives also expressed that they would like to see MWDL provide a consortial option for digital preservation for our hubs that do not already have a digital preservation solution in-house. MWDL will continue to explore options and inform the network on possible solutions.
When the hub representatives discussed how our hub model should evolve, many hub managers thought an “a la carte” suite of services would be more appropriate than the current three-tiered hub model. Regarding new service models, the hub representatives were generally supportive of an MWDL repository as a fallback option for new partners without an obvious hub to rely on. Hub representatives, however, cited concerns about overloading the MWDL staff or about weakening relationships between potential new partners and their geographic hub.
Many hubs also expressed a desire for enhanced usage statistics to share with their administration. In response, the staff at MWDL will provide training in Google Analytics via webinars to teach partners and hubs how to acquire better data. Hand-in-hand with the concern for better usage statistics was a desire for advocacy/ internal marketing materials that could be shared with administration.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the Hubs Meeting. We hope to see the rest of you at the Partner Summit this fall!