Digital Libraries - General Resources

American Library Association: Task Force on Digitization Policy: Tasked with developing a "coherent body of policy to guide decision-making", this group is working on digitization principles, which is also the name of its blog. Note: currently lost in the ALA website transition.
American Memory: Technical Information: Technical information and background papers from the Library of Congress experiences. Lots of good stuff on technical practices, scanning, markup, workflow, and rights management.
Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS): The AHDS mission is to "collect, preserve and promote the electronic resources which result from research and teaching in the arts and humanities". In addition, the AHDS also maintains an excellent collection of general resources, including case studies, Guides to Good Practice (several), and a section on copyright. Also has a visual arts section.
Best Practices Guidelines for Digital Collections: A 76-page PDF from University of Maryland Libraries. Almost a textbook.
Canadian Heritage Information Network: Many useful resources, and a database of 2 million+ Canadian objects.
Council on Library & Information Resources: CLIR is concerned with knowledge creation and distribution in whatever format, and has many Reports (freely available in PDF) on digital library matters, and frequent DL content in its online journal CLIR Issues.
DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries: A European research consortium, with pages on their own work and workshops (lots of material online), as well as general DL conferences, journals, Websites, etc.
Digital Libraries Initiative 2: Links to funded projects and other resources.
Digital Library Federation: Under the umbrella of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), the Federation includes the L of C, NARA, NYPL, RLG, OCLC, CNI, and a host of university libraries. The DLF Publications section leads to a wealth of online reports, conference presentations, handbooks, guides, and so on.
Digital Toolbox: From the Collaborative Digitization Program, Colorado, including general resources, as well as pages on imaging, metadata, audio, EAD, laws, preservation, project management, funding, and so on.
A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections: 2d edition. Maintained by the National information Standards Organization (NISO), with resources supporting stated principles.
Harvard University Library, Library Digital Initiative: The LDI provides some funding as well as technical and other kinds of support for digital library initiatives throughout Harvard. The site includes presentations and papers which, although developed for the Harvard community, are very good introductions to topics such as repository services, naming, and so on.
Ockham Initiative: The Ockham Initiative seks to promote open standards and collaboration, and to bridge the divide between the digital library research community and traditional libraries.
Open Content Alliance: "The collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content." Conceived by the Internet Archive and Yahoo. Boston Public Library is a contributor.
Unesco/IFLA Directory of Digitized Collections: The emphasis is on heritage sites, but the directory is really eclectic.

- top of page -