WebJunction is hosting a free two-hour symposium that will feature four presentations on current trends and practical approaches to library digitization and preservation projects.  Guest panelists will address:

• Designing a digital preservation system using a framework that includes all stakeholders, from library administrators to archivists to IT workers to vendors.
• The difference between access and preservation tools, and why we need to consider both.
• Harvesting social networking Web sites for preservation.
• The organizational “long view” of preservation resources, technology, costs and policies.

Panelists include:

• Sarai Lastra, Vice Chancellor of Information Resources/Director of Virtual Library at Universidad del Turabo, Puerto Rico.
• Sarah McHugh, Statewide Projects Librarian, Montana State Library, including Montana Memory Project.
• Amy Rudersdorf, Director of the Digital Information Management Program, State Library of North Carolina and lecturer at San Jose State University, School of Library & Information Science.
• Taylor Surface, Senior Product Manager, Digital Collection Services, OCLC.

Visit the event site to register and for more details >>

Does your library subscribe to the OCLC FirstSearch Base Package?  Or does your library have access to the OCLC FirstSearch Base Package through your state library’s subscription, or a group subscription?

If so, you are eligible to receive CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software at no additional cost to your library.

With CONTENTdm “quick start,” your library will receive:

(1) CONTENTdm software hosted by OCLC
(2) Three downloadable Project Clients for building your digital collections
(3) 10GB of storage for up to 3,000 digital items

This entry-level, hosted version of CONTENTdm will support your efforts to increase access to your library’s digital content via the Web.

NEXT STEPS

To learn more, please join us for a “live” Webinar on Tuesday, September 28 from 3:00-5:00 PM Eastern | 12:00-2:00 PM Pacific.

Or visit CONTENTdm “quick start”

If you have questions about your library’s eligibility, please email us at contentdm@oclc.org.

What is CONTENTdm?
OCLC’s CONTENTdm is used by nearly 2,000 libraries, museums, archives and other cultural heritage organizations worldwide.  It can make everything in your digital collections available to everyone, everywhere.  No matter the format—local history archives, newspapers, books, maps, slide libraries or audio/video—CONTENTdm can handle the storage, management and delivery of your collections to users across the Web.

Institutions increase visibility, accessibility of unique digital collections

DUBLIN, Ohio, August 11, 2010—Repository managers from libraries, museums, archives and other cultural heritage and research institutions can now contribute metadata records for digital materials to WorldCat using the new, enhanced WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway, increasing visibility and accessibility of special collections, institutional repositories, and other unique digital content to Web searchers worldwide.

In July 2009, OCLC introduced the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway to users of OCLC CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management software.  Based on the OAI protocol, the Gateway enabled CONTENTdm users to upload the metadata of their digital collections to WorldCat.  Recent enhancements to the Gateway now make it possible for any OAI-compliant repository to contribute metadata to WorldCat to gain broader visibility for their digital content.

The enhanced WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is freely available to institutions interested in increasing the visibility of their digital content through WorldCat, the comprehensive source for discovery of materials held by libraries, museums, archives and other cultural heritage and research institutions.  Visibility is increased through WorldCat.org, the Web destination for discovery of collections, and also through partnerships with Google, Yahoo! and an active and growing library developer network.

“OCLC and its member libraries are striving to develop WorldCat.org into a premier public resource for the integrated discovery of open access digital primary source and cultural heritage materials,” said Claire Cocco, Director, OCLC Digital Collection Services.  “The goal is to provide the necessary infrastructure, services and support to help maximize the visibility and integrated discovery of open repositories for all libraries, museums and archives.”

Designed for self-service use, the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is a Web-based tool that enables repository managers to customize how their metadata displays in WorldCat.org and determine their metadata harvesting schedule—monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually.  Additionally, it applies their institution’s “holdings symbol” to their records, thereby highlighting the unique information resources their institution is contributing to WorldCat.

“The Digital Collection Gateway has been very well constructed by the folks at OCLC,” said Mark Phillips, Assistant Dean for Digital Libraries, University of North Texas.  “Exposing digital collections through WorldCat is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be done to have this content understood and treated as first order content in libraries.”

There are more than 25 million metadata records for digital items currently accessible through WorldCat.org, most of which were contributed as part of OAIster, a union catalog of records representing open archive resources from around the world.  The number of digital records in WorldCat and their use continues to grow.  Since 2006, there have been more than 600 million visits to WorldCat.org and more than 36 million click-throughs to libraries.  With WorldCat.org, users are only three clicks away from an institution’s digital content.

“We are a museum and this helps us cross paths with library users,” said Tamara Georgick, Director of Information Technology at the Washington Historical Society.  “It is a much wider audience than we could reach on our own.”

To date, more than a half million metadata records have been entered into WorldCat through the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway.  A record for a thesis titled, “資料挖掘之導入與影響－以銀行業為例 (The Implementation and Impact of Data Mining),” from the National Chengchi University’s library marks the 500,000th record entered into WorldCat using the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway.  National Chengchi University is a public university located in Taipei City, Taiwan and is renowned for its teaching and research in the social sciences, business, communication, liberal arts and for its MBA programs.  The milestone record is from the National Chengchi University Theses and Dissertations Full-Text Imaging System.  The University’s library staff is harvesting the metadata from its theses and dissertations collections and its institutional repository into WorldCat to help increase the visibility of their collections worldwide.

More information about the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway can be found at www.oclc.org/gateway, or send an e-mail to digitalcollections@oclc.org.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 171 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials.  Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it.  OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources.  Search WorldCat on the Web at www.worldcat.org.  For more information, visit www.oclc.org.

OCLC, CONTENTdm, WorldCat and WorldCat.org are trademarks/service marks of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

Third-party product, service and business names are trademarks/service marks of their respective owners.

The organization names below are linked to each organization’s record, if available, in the OCLC WorldCat Registry.  OCLC’s WorldCat Registry allows libraries worldwide to manage and organize their data for vendors and third parties by creating and maintaining a comprehensive institutional profile in a single, Web-accessible location.

South Carolina Digital Library
(http://www.scmemory.org)
South Carolina Digital Library

The South Carolina Digital Library (SCDL) is a collaborative effort that includes South Carolina’s schools, libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.  SCDL’s mission is to encourage our collaborators to create, maintain, and promote digital collections that represent South Carolina’s historical and cultural resources while following state-level guidelines that are based on national standards and best practices.

AV/AR audio video collection
(http://www.digital.butlercenter.org/cdm-p1532coll1/index_p1532coll1.php?CISOROOT=/p1532coll1)
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. Central Arkansas Library System (http://www.worldcat.org/registry/Institutions/8333)

The AV/AR audio/video collection is a rich source of oral history and other recorded material for Arkansas.  It contains oral history interviews, lectures about Arkansas, and various kinds of film footage have been indexed with subject descriptions that provide a variety of sources relating to a specific topic.

Edgar R. McGuire Historical Medical Instrument Collection
(http://ubdigit.buffalo.edu/collections/lib/lib-hsl/lib-hsl001_MedInstr.php)
University at Buffalo, SUNY (http://www.worldcat.org/registry/Institutions/104409)

The Edgar R. McGuire Historical Medical Instrument Collection was established in 1985 by Mrs. Annette Cravens in memory of her father, chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Buffalo from 1914 until his death in 1931.  This collection contains images of instruments illustrating past medical and dental procedures.

Postcards of Oshkosh
(http://www.oshkoshpubliclibrary.org/postcards.html)
Oshkosh Public Library (http://www.worldcat.org/registry/Institutions/16629)

This collection consists of postcards with views of businesses, churches, parks, city streets, country roads and other structures throughout the city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  According to postcard dealers, these small town views are highly sought after cards.  Dating of the cards for year or era was determined by postmarks and identifying certain features present on the postcard.

OCLC has released CONTENTdm 5.4, the latest version of the popular CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software that includes the new CONTENTdm Flex Loader along with other enhancements.

Designed to complement the CONTENTdm Project Client, Flex Loader is a new Windows desktop application.  It enables users to efficiently batch import large quantities of XML data in the METS/ALTO newspaper format, or the METS/ALTO monograph and eBook format, to their CONTENTdm collections.  XML file formats supported by Flex Loader include the NDNP (National Digital Newspaper Program) and CCS (Content Conversion Specialists) docWorks newspaper and monograph.  Compound object-level metadata and page-level metadata mapping is supported, along with support for newspaper article segmentation.

Other highlights of CONTENTdm 5.4 include new options for editing metadata for compound objects.  All pages of a compound object can now be viewed and edited in a spreadsheet, giving users improved efficiency when editing compound objects.

Additionally, the Upload Manager has been improved to allow users more control of the upload process.  As the upload queue is being processed, progress indicators show detailed progress of each item and the entire queue.  Users also have the option to cancel the upload—either a single item or all items—and return items to the project workspace.  Status of the upload persists across sessions of the Project Client, letting users continue to work while uploads progress in the background.

For those CONTENTdm users with very large digital collections, CONTENTdm 5.4 includes a new version of the FIND search engine, used by CONTENTdm (and WorldCat.org) for indexing and searching.  The new version supports long-term scalability for sites with rapidly growing full-text collections by supporting automatic index partitioning along with tools for configuration and monitoring.  This integrated feature will support scalability for growing collections now and in the future.

The 5.4 release, including the new Flex Loader, is available to current CONTENTdm licensees at no additional charge.

CONTENTdm is used by more than 2,000 institutions worldwide to manage millions of digital items.  To see how some of these institutions are using CONTENTdm, visit www.oclc.org/contentdm/collections/.

Guest panelists will address:

• Designing a digital preservation system using a framework that includes all stakeholders, from library administrators to archivists to IT workers to vendors
• The difference between access and preservation tools, and why we need to consider both
• Harvesting social networking websites for preservation
• The organizationsl “long-view” of preservation resources, technology, costs and polices.

Panelists include:

• Sarai Lastra, Vice Chancellor of Information Resources/Director of Virtual Library at Universidad del Turabo, Puerto Rico
• Sarah McHugh, Statewide Projects Librarian, Montana State Library, including Montana Memory Project
• Amy Rudersdorf, Director of the Digital Information Management Program, State Library of North Carolina and lecturer at San Jose State University, School of Library & Information Science
• Taylor Surface, Senior Product Manager, Digital Collection Services, OCLC

The Symposium will be held on August 25, 2010 from 2pm – 4pm Eastern Time.  Register today!

The organization names below are linked to each organization’s record, if available, in the OCLC WorldCat Registry.  OCLC’s WorldCat Registry allows libraries worldwide to manage and organize their data for vendors and third parties by creating and maintaining a comprehensive institutional profile in a single, Web-accessible location.

American Civil War Collection (http://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm4/index_sie_civilw.php?CISOROOT=/sie_civilw)
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (http://www.worldcat.org/registry/Institutions/918)

This digital collection was created by Lovejoy Library in 2009.  It contains an assemblage of handwritten letters, song sheets, and military orders.  Spanning the entire period of the American Civil War (1861-1865), these items gathered together provide a unique and insightful glimpse into the era.  The project was made possible by Dr. Richard L. Millett, Emeritus Professor of History at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville who donated the use of his collection to the Library.

Dallin Aerial Survey Company, 1924-1941 (http://digital.hagley.org/cdm4/index_p268001uw.php?CISOROOT=/p268001uw)
Hagley Museum & Library (http://www.worldcat.org/registry/Institutions/45081)

This digital collection includes more than 7,500 of the approximately 12,000 images in the Dallin Aerial Survey Company collection.  The company specialized in aerial images of factories, private estates, schools, country clubs, towns, airports, rivers and many other sites and some news events of the day.  The majority of the photographs concentrate on the Mid-Atlantic region, although Dallin did make trips to other locales within the United States.

NC State Publications Collection (http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/govdocs/cdm/index.html)
State Library of North Carolina (http://www.worldcat.org/registry/Institutions/56690)

The North Carolina State Publications Collection is a project of the North Carolina State Publications Clearinghouse and the State Library of North Carolina.  It contains both current and historical state publications produced by the various state agencies (Department of Public Instruction, Department of Cultural Resources, etc.) that make up North Carolina State Government.

C.K. Berryman Cartoons (http://clio.lib.olemiss.edu/archives/berryman.php)
University of Mississippi (http://www.worldcat.org/registry/Institutions/1619)

The 26 original pen-and-ink drawings by political cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman in this collection appeared in print on the editorial pages of the Washington Star.  Dating from 1924 to 1941, they all feature U.S. Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi.

You may register for the sessions listed below on the OCLC Web site at https://www3.oclc.org/app/ala_registration/.

Many members of the CONTENTdm team will be available at ALA Annual to discuss your organization’s digital collection environment and plans.  If you wish to set up a one-on-one meeting, send us an e-mail at contentdm@oclc.org.  Otherwise, stop by the OCLC booth # 3717 to speak with a team member or to see ongoing CONTENTdm demonstrations.

For those of you unable to attend ALA, but interested in learning more about CONTENTdm, please feel free to e-mail us at contentdm@oclc.org.

The organization names below are linked to each organization’s record, if available, in the OCLC WorldCat Registry.  OCLC’s WorldCat Registry allows libraries worldwide to manage and organize their data for vendors and third parties by creating and maintaining a comprehensive institutional profile in a single, Web-accessible location.

Albertsons Library Digital Collections
Boise State University

This collection contains photos, documents, maps, and other resources from the Special Collections at Albertsons Library at Boise State University in Idaho.  The materials document the history, culture, and people of Idaho and the American West.

Dakota Lithographs and Engravings
North Dakota State University, Institute for Regional Studies & University Archives

The Institute for Regional Studies has acquired over time a small collection of original lithographs, engravings, and woodcuts published in nineteenth-century periodicals that help document the early settlement era in North Dakota.  The collection includes images of the bonanza farm era, Indians, weather, politics, and small-town life.  Almost the entire collection has been digitized and is available online.  The high resolution image versions have been mounted for this collection, enabling the researcher to view each image in greater detail.

Utonian Yearbooks
University of Utah

The Utonian is the annual yearbook of the University of Utah.  This collection created by the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University includes digitized versions of the Utonian from 1905 to 1981.  The yearbooks are all full text searchable and are presented using JPEG2000 images.

Fort Wayne Area Economic Development
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne; IPFW

The Fort Wayne Area Economic Development digital collection highlights the planning and economic development documents and reports, maps and data for Fort Wayne and northeast Indiana.  The collection is a collaborative project between the IPFW Community Research Institute and IPFW’s Helmke Library.

Register for the Users Group Meeting at ALA Annual >>

Eastern Regional CONTENTdm Users Group Meeting: Proposals due June 1, plus registration will open soon
The third annual Eastern Regional CONTENTdm Users Group Meeting will be held at the United States Military Academy Library at West Point (New York).  Sponsored by OCLC, Lyrasis and Nylink, this event will include a pre-conference on August 4, 2010, and presentations and poster sessions on all aspects of using CONTENTdm, building digital collections and and best practices will take place August 5 – 6.

Visit the event site for more details >>

New free webinar—OCLC 101: A guide to your cooperative
This free webinar offers an overview of the benefits of membership in OCLC, valuable resources and opportunities for participation.  Designed for anyone who wants to learn more about the OCLC cooperative, this session is open to all.  Join us as we review everything from WorldCat to Web-scale Management Services, valuable support and training resources, comprehensive research and advocacy initiatives and much more!  We are offering this webinar on Thursday, June 3, 2010, from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. (ET).

Register for OCLC 101 >>

Last chance to register for the June 10 session on Introduction to Funding for Digital Programs
This course is designed to help institutions develop a strategic funding plan for their digital programs.  In addition to exploring the options, both internal and external, for funding, suggestions for developing a successful grant proposal will be discussed.  This course provides basic information and is appropriate for libraries, archives, museums and cultural heritage organizations.

Register today for this course >>