LSC555 IS Webliography

LSC 555 Information Systems Webliography: Digital Libraries
by
Elizabeth Besteder

| Research | Sample Digital Libraries | Sample Software Companies |

Organizations Dedicated to Research in Digital Libraries
- D-Lib Magazine
  produced by the Corporation For National Research Initiatives on behalf of the Digital Libraries Initiative under Grant No. N66001-98-1-8908
  The Web site is a general and broad resource for information about digital libraries. It allows visitor to view full text articles of its current and back issues. It also provides information about meetings, conferences, and workshops. Some of the links on this website, such as "archives," do not work.
- Digital Library Federation
  by Council on Library and Information Resources.
  This site provides information about developing digital collections and managing networked information. The Digital Library Federation is a consortium of libraries and related agencies. The mission DLF is to: Identify standards and best practices for digital collections, coordinated leading-edge research-and-development, and help start digital libraries in organizations that need but cannot develop them individually. Banner on left hand side is hard on the eyes because it is purple with green boxes and yellow titles.
- Jodi: Journal of Digital Information
  by University of Southhampton, UK and supported by the British Computer Society and Oxford University Press
  This site is for a peer-reviewed web journal that publishes papers on the management, presentation, and uses of information in digital environments. The user interface allows you to search by theme and has a drop down box for special issues. However, there is no way to a keyword search through the articles and their quick search link takes you to google.
- Center for Research and Development of Digital Libraries
  by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  The Center for Research and Development of Digital Libraries (CRADLE) is a federation of parties interested in the migration, management, and accessibility of digital information. The information contained on this site serves as a test bed for the development of digital libraries. The site has links to dissertations, government statistics, published papers, student resources, and transcripts of seminars. The the interface of the web page is divided up into too many small sections which makes it hard to look at, but this style of layout also allows visitors to get access to the information they want without having to click through many pages.
- Stanford Digital Library Technologies.
  by Stanford University.
  The Stanford Digital Library Technologies Project is Phase II of a Federally funded Digital Library Initiative. The program strives to design and implement the infrastructure and services needed for creating, dissmeinating, sharing, and managing information in a digital library. This website offers a great deal of information research in the development of digital libraries. It is supported by the Library of Congress, The National Science Foundation, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and many other government organizations. The small print used for the table of contents on the left side of the page makes it difficult to read
- Cornell Institute for Digital Collections
  by Cornell University.
  Established in 1997 this sites mission is to explore the use of emerging technology to expand access to cultural and scientific source and to support the use of these resources. This page has a great deal of information and many links to other pages. The one weakness of this site is it was last revised in 2003, which means some of the information may be dated.
- Delos: Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries
  by Istituto di Elaborazione dell'Informazione.
  This site is sponsored by the European commission's "Information Society Technologies 5th Framework Programme. Delos seek to promote digital library research and development in Europe. The website contains learning activies and Delos publications. Unfortunatly, the links on the left had side do not work well. When you put you mouse over the link a scroll bar should come down with a list of the different subcatagories under the link title, but this does not happen.
- Digital Preservation Coalition
  by Digital Preservation Coalition, est. 2001
  The mission of DPC is to address the urgent challanges of securing the preservation of dighital resources in the UK. The website provides guides on producing digital collections and various reports. The one weakness of this site is you need to have a membership to get access to all of the areas on the site.
- Digital Libraries Initiatives.
  by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and supported by the National Science Foundation.
  Digital Libraries Initiatives focus is to dramatically advance the means to collect, store, and organize information in digital forms. This site has versions in 9 different languages and links to University Digital Libraries. The site does not give any information about when it was last updated.
- Center for the Study of Digital Libraries.
  by Texas A&M University.
  This site is a response to United States government's National Challenge Program for research in information infrastructure technology. This site give experience knowledge to help libraries transfer collections of all types into digital libraries. The Front page has a very clear and simple design. The one weakness of this site is it is supported by a private corporation, Hewlett Packard, which could have some effect on the content of the web page.
- Digitization and Preservation Online Resource Center
  by OCLC
  The Digitization and Preservation Online Resource Center provides information about preserving and managing digital collections with microfilming, digitzing, and archiving services. The site has a great deal of authority since it is produced by OCLC; however, because it is by OCLC it might give biased support for products produced by OCLC.
Sample Digital Libraries.
- Perseus Digital Library.
  by Tufts University.
  The Perseus Website provides access to a digital library of works on the humanities. It also has links to other digital libraries or collections on the web. The web site offers a text and graphical version. The web site has a large map on the front cover with dates and places of topics mentioned in the collection. The space used for the map could have be used for something more clear or useful.
- The Online Books Page.
  by John Mark Okerbloom and The University of Pennsylvannia.
  Online Books provides access to over 20,000 free books online. It has special books on feature each month and has an archive of foreign language and specialty books. In addition, the website gives information about becoming involved in Online Books and encourages readers and writers to get involved by making suggestions and/or giving permission to have their books put online. The site has a clear and easy to use interface; however, it is only text based and contains no pictures.
- California Digital Library
  by The University of California
  The California Digital Library is on of the largest digital libraries in the world. The site address above is just a site describing their digital library program and collection. In order to search their catalog you must go to services and collection and then to California Digital Library. This site provides information on digital library research, collection, and programs as well as being an extensive online library. The only weakness of the page is that you have to click a few times to get to their catalog and they do not have a quick search box on the front of the page.
- Digital Collections and Programs.
  by The Library of Congress.
  The opening page of this website gives a summary of the Library of Congress's Digital collections. On the right side of the page there are links to these various digital collections like the "American Memory Project" and "Thomas: Legislative Information." This web page also gives information about digital reference at the Library of Congress. The summery of the website also mentions the standardized metadata used by the Library of Congress and gives a link for more information about METS schema and Library of Congress Standards. There is a quick search button at the top of the page that allows you to search either the archivists page of the entire library of congress website. It would have been nice if they had a quick search button that allowed you to search only in their digital collections.
- National Science Digital Library.
  by The National Science Foundation.
  This site provides access to a large collection of resources and services for science education. One of the goals of the site is to provide information to students of all levels. To accomplish this the website has specialized portals available that are organized for the needs of specific audiences, such as grade or middle school students. NSDL provides educational resources for science technology, engineering, and math. It as an attractive interface that is colorful and well orgainzed. The interface is very useful for adults, but not be very well suited for younger children, because some of the subject headings are verbose. I imagine that their audience specific portals are designed with interfaces to match the age group that they are targeted for .
Sample Software Companies
- Touch and Turn
  by Touch and Turn a Swedish based company in Stockholm
  Touch and Turn produces a virtual browsing software that allows readers to view a very realistic picture of a book online. The software can be used to allow scholars to read rare and antique texts as if there were physically in front of them. Onhe website you can download there software "Library Reader" for free and they have new sample and free books available every month. Most of the books on their site are rare and of historical significance like the "Prose Edda," and "Hokusai Manga," featuring images of Japanese art. Touch and Turn can provide solutions to museums and libraries for rare book exhibts. It seems that they make most of there money selling the books/texts they offer online rather that there software. Except for the few texts they offer free each month it cost 25 Euro to download on of the digital editions of a rare book.
- MARIAN Digital Library Information System
  by Virginia Tech Computing Center for VT Information Systems.
  The Marian software is an indexing, search, and retrieval system optimized for digital libraries developed by Virginia Tech. The website allows you to download a copy of the software for free. The software available is for running an online public access catalogy system for a digital library collection. The bottom of the web page also contains a bibliography of sources about MARIAN or that were used to help develop the program. The links on the page are not organized well and look a little like they are scattered on the page.
- Parity Comptuing.
  by Parity Computing.
  Parity Computing is a software company focused on creating digital library solutions. Their clients included Elsevier, NIST, and ACM. The website gives information and descriptions of their various products like their "Digital Library Platform." This program is a turnkey solution for transforming your physical materials into digital data. The site is well organized. Like all commercial sites it is has a biased view and some of it is difficult to know where to click on a couple of the links at the bottom of the page.
- DAX Archiving Solutions.
  by DAX Archiving Solutions located in Haarlem, the Netherlands.
  This website gives information about DAX software, which specials in providing solutions for archiving video, audio, and pictures. Their software is useful for media and newsrooms as well as libraries that would like to create digital collection of audio and visual images. DAX originated as a product of the Chess group of companies an innovative design center for high-end computer systems. Their site is well laid out and useful to anyone wanting to find more out about the company. Like most commercial sites it is only a good source of information if you want to gain knowledge about their product, but does not give information about any of their competitors.