IX. Digital Libraries and the Scholarly Record

Action 59. The University should develop a program of digital library research, and engage in national initiatives, to address the issues of user services, creation and management of digital collections, the federation of distributed digital libraries, and the design of digital library systems.

The IU Digital Library Program is a collaborative effort of the Indiana University Libraries, The Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, and the University research faculty with leadership from The School of Library and Information Science. In Spring 1999 the IU Digital Library Program submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation Digital Library Initiative, Phase 2 (DLI2) for development of the Digital Music Library. Indiana University is lead institutional on the project, which has six collaborating institutions: Northwestern University, University of Massachusetts, University of Illinois, Oxford University, King's College in London, and Waseda University in Tokyo. Other IU participants in the project include faculty from the School of Library and Information Science, the School of Music, and the School of Law. IU is awaiting a funding decision on this proposal.

As part of a program of research and development, a number of exploratory digital library research projects are also being undertaken. These include a demonstration project for digital media delivery across wide-area, high performance networks, and a prototype digital publication and electronic pre-print service, which will serve an interdisciplinary and international scholarly community centered at IU.

Action 60. The University should develop a digital library infrastructure that will provide a common technical and organizational base for new and ongoing digital library programs.

UITS and the University Libraries have undertaken the ongoing upgrade and improvement of the University's digital library infrastructure, to assure that it remains current in technology and optimally useful to IU faculty and students. This has included establishment of the Digital Media Image Center in the Main Library at IUB. The Center includes a wide array of digitization hardware, software, and media source equipment, which has played a key role in a number of digital collection projects, among them:

• Digital Stardust-Hoagy Carmichael Online. This is a digital library collection containing significant portions of Indiana University's entire collection of materials pertaining to the life and career of songwriter Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael (1899-1981). Included in the online collection are sound recordings, photographs, sheet music, playscripts, correspondence, and other materials from the world's largest holding of Hoagy Carmichael materials. Digital Stardust is a collaboration of the Archives of Traditional Music and the IU Digital Library Program, with support from UITS.

• Hohenberger Photograph Collection. The IU Lilly Library houses a collection of some 9,400 photographic negatives made by Brown County photographer Frank Michael Hohenberger (1876-1963). There are many images of Brown County and southern Indiana, as well as many from Hohenberger's travels. Beginning in 1999 several hundred photographs from the collection were digitized and made available via the Web, accompanied by an electronic index and finding aid to the entire collection, and a digitized biography and commentary on Hohenberger's work. Work on digitizing the collection will continue in the coming year. The Hohenberger project is a collaboration of the Lilly Library and the Digital Library Program, with support from UITS.

• Digital Photography Collection of the Gary Works. IU has undertaken a project to digitize and present on the Web the US Steel Photograph Collection, a series of 1,900 photographs of the Gary Works steel mill and the corporate town of Gary, Indiana. The photographs document the construction and growth of a town conceived and built by United States Steel Corporation and documented by US Steel photographers between 1906 and 1941. The images record many aspects of this planned industrial community: the steel mill, the city, and its citizens. The Gary Works project is a collaboration of the IU Digital Library Program and the Calumet Regional Archive at the IU Northwest campus, with the support of UITS.

Action 61. The University Libraries, with UITS, should provide students, faculty, and staff at all campuses with convenient and reliable access to a comprehensive and coordinated collection of electronic information resources, on the campuses and off.

Several projects in the past year have involved the integration and coordinated delivery of electronic information resources. In the process of developing these projects (e.g., the Hoagy Carmichael collection) the need was identified for staff expertise in the design of information resources and computer interfaces.

A key to addressing this need is the allocation of proper staff resources to the design and development of digital library services. Position requirements have been identified and a search is under way to fill the position of Content Analyst and Interface Design Specialist in the Digital Library Program.

Action 62. The University should develop within its digital library program an "electronic reserve" service so that faculty can assemble and make available content in all media and formats: text, image, audio, or video; published or unpublished; digitized representation or original digital artifact; etc.

It is essential that the Library's electronic reserve system be compatible with and ultimately integrated with the overall library management system (online public catalog, library circulation, etc.) Now that IU has selected SIRSI as its next library management system, work can proceed on planning and implementing electronic reserves. Pat Steele from the University Libraries is taking the lead in this effort, and participation from the Digital Library Program and UITS is expected.

Action 63. The University should establish sound funding for existing digital library initiatives (including Variations, LETRS, IMDS, others), and should provide support for other digital library projects of merit that are advanced in the years ahead.

System upgrades and improvements have been made to the ongoing digital library programs including the Variations digital music library application, DIDO (the fine arts digital image database), and the services provided by LETRS (Library Electronic Text Resource Service).

Variations delivered 191,305 sound file accesses between July 1, 1998 and June 30, 1999, averaging 590 accesses per open day; 1472 additional sound recording titles were digitized by Music Library staff; and 19 opera scores (6393 pages) scanned by Music Library staff. Fine Arts Slide Library staff added 3290 images to DIDO in 1998-99, bringing the total to 9597 images, and supplied images for 35 Art History and Fine Arts Studio course Web pages. Also in the past year the DIDO image bank was successfully moved from a Sun SPARCstation at the Slide Library to a Digital Library Program server with no interruption in service. LETRS Web-based collections received increasing use during the year, peaking at 22,000 accesses per month, and averaging about 15,000 per month. Web-based collections continued to expand: notable additions were the complete works of Goethe, the Patrologia Latina, and collections of medieval Spanish texts. For the first time, Variations and DIDO are operating on current computing platforms that also have in place a life-cycle replacement plan, while LETRS continues to operate with an effective life-cycle replacement plan.

Action 64. UITS, in partnership with the University Archives, Internal Audit, the Committee of Data Stewards, and others should develop a program to assure preservation of electronic institutional records.

Action 65. UITS, in partnership with the University Libraries, University Archives, and others should evaluate technologies and propose methods and standards to protect digital materials against media deterioration and technological obsolescence.

UITS and the University Archives have an ongoing collaboration to develop methods, standards and practices that will assure long-term access to and preservation of IU's electronic records. In 1999, University Archivist Philip Bantin received a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to continue the work in electronic records analysis and preservation that he began as part of an earlier NHPRC-funded project undertaken in cooperation with UITS.

UITS is also working with the University Archives, the School of Library and Information Science, and the School of Informatics to develop courses and course modules for teaching undergraduates and graduate students about electronic records. Further progress on this action is being made as part of the University's Data Administration initiative.