This semester, DLS is happily hosting eleven SLIS digital librarianship fellows. Some faces are familiar ones, as several fellows from the first cohort have stayed on to either finish up previous projects or embark on new digital adventures. Many second-cohort fellows have begun their assignments, as well, making the DLS project room full of bodiesContinue reading “Shy of a dozen”

Congratulations to Jen Wolfe, and welcome to the world, Audrey and Calvin!!! Born: Sunday, Aug 17th, 10:23 am/10:24 am   Calvin James, 6lbs. 13 oz Audrey Claire, 4lbs. 7oz   –Mark F. Anderson Digital Initiatives Librarian

As I prepare to go on leave for the next few months, I’ve been relieved to see how well we’ve been able to plan for my absence, thanks to the Libraries’ ongoing commitment to growing a sustainable digital initiatives program. While a leave of this length would have been detrimental to our progress back whenContinue reading “Nurturing a sustainable program”

Today the Digital Library Services staff page was updated. Wow. The department has grown from three full-time staff to seven in the past year. The latest addition to our staff is Anne Shelley, a special projects librarian devoted to music and fine arts digital collection building. She started on July 1 and will spearhead workContinue reading “From trio to septet”

Digital Library Services welcomes Keo Hoang as its new Digital Initiatives Support Specialist.  Keo comes to DLS from Hardin Library for the Health Sciences and the Information Arcade, and he returns to the third floor of Main Library where he spent several years with Desktop Support. Keo will be providing support for and supervision ofContinue reading “New staff member”

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 threeContinue reading “Making tracks at Indy”

  The University of Iowa Digital Library now contains 100,000 items. To mark this milestonetemp, a 13th-century Bible manuscript page from the Special Collections Department of the UI Libraries has been scanned and uploaded to represent the transformation of information storage over the centuries, from handmade parchment to zeroes and ones. “Digital versions of rareContinue reading “Iowa Digital Library now contains 100,000 items”

It can be hard staying current in the emerging field of metadata librarianship, so when I heard that instructors from Brown University’s Women Writers Project would be giving a nearby workshop on TEI, the Text Encoding Initiative XML schema, I immediately signed up. Besides learning how to encode historic texts for possible digital humanities initiatives,Continue reading “Fellow travelers”

Funded by a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant , our new digital library fellows have been tracking their progress with a suitably 21st century learning tool: the blog. During the next two years of their program, these students will be blogging their way through a series of half-time clinical rotations in various departments andContinue reading “Educating the 21st century librarian”

On my drive to work this week the radio told of more soldiers dying in Iraq. Soon, an ambulance whizzed by me—off to save another life. Talk about work that really matters, I thought, as I tootled toward the University of Iowa Main Library for a day of helping lead the charge to digitize aContinue reading “Why digital collections matter”