Digital Library Services

Looking at the “today in history” webpage from the Associated Press, I saw that today in 1854, the territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established.  There have certainly been jokes made at the expense of our Midwestern neighbors, but instead, a shout out to them on their birthday.  Below is a cartoon by Ding Darling from the Editorial Cartoons digital collection showing a nice gesture between Sioux City and Lincoln (however Omaha doesn’t seem too pleased about being left out):

I’m not entirely sure what the story was about the “Ashland Extension”, but I assume it had to do with extending rail service between the two cities.  Related to this, and on a personal level, I’m excited by the talk of possibly seeing passenger rail service return to Iowa City, with 2 daily trains running to Chicago.  Check out an article by Irving Weber describing the last time this was available:

–Mark F. Anderson
Digital Initiatives Librarian

Scheduled to launch in the fall, the UI Women’s P.E. digital collection has quickly become a favorite work-in-progress around the DLS offices, allowing those of us spending the summer in the library to enjoy vicariously the biking, camping and canoeing activities of students past.

The synchronized swimmers of the Seals swim team series provide additional inspiration as we try to adopt a more coordinated approach to our scanning processes. Temporarily Fellow-free until the June school session starts, we’re using the extra time to refine our reformatting procedures, work on instructional documentation, and train new student assistants with a goal of creating more uniform and consistent digital objects. The improved efficiency will help support our plans to scale up digitization and “get into the flow” of the Libraries’ processes, mainstreaming our work into the cataloging and preservation departments. This goal of precision, speed, and a coordinated, team-based approach is one that we’re sure the Seals and their sister athletes would approve.

–Jen Wolfe
Metadata Librarian, Digital Library Services

An impending collision, June 3, 1905

The impending cataclysm, June 6, 1922

Good luck old man!, June 11, 1926

Those ticklish moments before the parachute opens, June 7, 1928

Question: how to tackle him to ensure an easy conquest?, June 5, 1929 

They say the hardest part is to make a good landing, June 13, 1931

According to these early-20th-century editorial cartoons from our Ding Darling collection, graduation is a time of impending doom. But we’re sure the future is much brighter for our recent grads, especially for former DLS student assistant and newly-minted Master of Library Science Erin Sehorn-Elwell.

Entering the professional world will probably be less of a rude awakening for Erin and more of a well-deserved rest. For the past year that she’s been in our employment, just thinking about Erin’s schedule has made us feel tired. In addition to reformatting and cataloging up a storm in DLS, she’s also held part-time jobs in the Maps and Preservation departments, taught information literacy classes to undergrads, and served as president of the library school’s student organization, all while taking a full-time course load and raising a family. While we’re unhappy that she’s graduating and leaving us, we feel pleased that she’ll be moving on to bigger and better things (and also slightly relieved that she won’t be around to make us feel like comparative slackers).

Thanks to Erin for all her hard work, and good luck to all of 2008’s graduates.

–Jen Wolfe
Metadata Librarian, Digital Library Services

Just returned from Indianapolis and Midwest Users Group Conference for CONTENTdm, the digital asset management software that we use to power the Iowa Digital Library.  This was the third annual meeting, but really the first year that it’s been truly regional, attendance-wise.  It was really positive to hear how numbers had grown in those three years.  In ’06, there were 30 attendees, and 60 last year.  This year, 101.  It shows a growing user base that will hopefully have a greater influence on the system’s growth and development.  More regional meetings are planned for this year including ones in the southeast and mid-Atlantic.

We received an update from Claire Cocco, CONTENTdm’s product manager on some exciting enhancements to expect later this year, and Glee Willis delivered a great keynote on day two, encouraging digital libraries to stretch the system through customizations in order to best serve information users, showing examples from some of the leaders in the CONTENTdm community.

I particularly enjoyed the University of Louisville’s session on using the MyMaps feature of Google Maps to add overlays as browse interfaces through which to enter cartographic resources in CONTENTdm.  DLS’s own Wendy Robertson spoke at a presentation about workflows for migrating MARC catalog records to CONTENTdm, which was well received by the audience.

I participated on panels discussing digitizing scrapbooks and yearbooks and using CONTENTdm for art collections, and also brought along Jen Wolfe’s eye-catching poster depicting how DLS handles scrapbooks.  Nicole Saylor served on the conference’s planning committee and Brian Thompson attended the meeting as a way to become more familiar with the system and its community of users.  So, LIT was well represented.

There was even talk of an upper-Midwest CONTENTdm users group getting together later this year.  It’s nice to see this kind of organization, but my hope is that CONTENTdm users can maintain a similar level of activity and working together between meetings, perhaps by blowing the dust off the user group wiki, which can help all levels of implementation make the best use of the system.

One of the most beneficial pieces of the meeting was meeting new people and talking about the different ways in which we’re using the system for digital library activities.  We enjoyed some good food and a great record store in downtown Indianapolis (sorry Jen, never made it to Trader Joe’s), but now it’s back to work.

–Mark F. Anderson
Digital Initiatives Librarian