The new year brings new changes to the digital library program at Iowa. Our department, formerly known as Digital Library Services (DLS), is now Digital Research & Publishing (DRP). The title change is an outgrowth of a larger Libraries reorganization and reflects a renewed emphasis on aiding scholars at work on digital research and publishing. The move away from Digital Library Services reflects the fact that these days “digital library services” could describe any number of things the Libraries provide.
Digital Research & Publishing will still administer the Iowa Digital Library, a collection of roughly a half-million digital objects, and Iowa Research Online, the campus institutional repository. With even broader library production support from Preservation and the newly named Cataloging-Metadata department, the Libraries is able to grow its capacity to reformat and process digital objects and generate metadata.
Since the beginning of fall semester, DRP has been co-located with the new Digital Studio for Public Humanities. This synergistic arrangement is aimed at creating deepened support for digital humanities research. We are also working with our library colleagues and other campus partners to identify larger infrastructure and service needs in support of geospatial and numeric data research, data management planning, and emerging forms of web publishing.
One of the best bits of news is the arrival of new DRP staff.
Shawn Averkamp is our new Data Services Librarian. She specializes in transforming source data and metadata for online use and reuse. She will also assist researchers in a variety of digital projects. Since 2009, Shawn worked as a metadata librarian at the University of Alabama Libraries, Tuscaloosa. There she collaborated with staff and researchers on metadata planning, creation, maintenance, and migration. Prior to her stint in Alabama, Shawn was a digital librarianship fellow at Iowa and served as a temporary librarian in DLS where she worked on projects involving metadata reuse, digital humanities, and institutional repository management. We are pleased to welcome her back to the UI Libraries and to the Midwest.
Christine Tade joins DRP after leading metadata production coordination in what was the rapid-cataloging department. Her efforts to train and manage catalogers handling digital library metadata production were instrumental in helping grow the Iowa Digital Library. A 27-year veteran of the Libraries, Christine will be doing a variety of digital libraries work, including managing a growing number of crowdsourcing projects in addition to the current Civil War Diaries & Letters transcription project. She has long been a close collaborator on digital library projects and we’re very happy to have her expertise in DRP.
Matthew Butler, the new multimedia consultant in the Library Information Technology unit, is a regular contributor to DRP initiatives. He assists with projects that involve audio and video, as well as 3D imaging and web delivery of streaming media. For the past 6-plus years, Matthew was the AV Specialist at the Iowa City Public Library where he produced video, did web development, and taught classes on the use of technology in libraries. We’re excited to have his expertise on a variety of research and teaching initiatives at the Libraries.
—Nicole Saylor
Head, Digital Research & Publishing