SPEC Kit 335: Digital Image Collections and Services · 63
The born digital Media Relations Photo Collection we have been offered (527,000 images) dwarfs our entire inventory
of previously scanned photographs. We are focused on clearing our backlog of existing but undescribed files from
previous digitization work and establishing scaleable workflow for existing and incoming born digital materials.
The library is undergoing a process of reviewing and defining its digital library policies and practices, including digital
images management.
The Library of Congress conducts a number of Web archiving projects that have added 6.9 billion “Web documents”
including many images. Projects to digitize LC’s own analog collections have resulted in 37.6 million digital files of
which the National Digital Newspaper Program accounts for 5 million, including many images. The World Digital Library
accounts for 336,000 “managed images.“ The very large scale of these projects, even though not all the items are
images, tends to swamp the licensed collections.
We are in a period of tremendous transition and hope to begin to offer a robust digital repository that meets all the
criteria discussed in the survey, because our researchers need us to.
We did not include licensed collections that we do not host (e.g., ARTstor and AP Photos) because we license it but we
do not hold it and we felt it would skew our responses.
We found ourselves having difficulty answering questions that separate LibGuides from “web pages.” We offer high
quality, in-depth subject research guides on our Libraries’ website (WordPress-based). In terms of quality and nature,
these research guides are on par with LibGuides. However, they are not hosted at libguides.com.
We have a combination of commercial, licensed remotely hosted collections and local digitized collections.
We have a very old homegrown digital image database.
We have transferred the digital images from our previous Media Library Catalogue (home grown) into Shared Shelf
(ARTstor). We are now cataloguing into this product and our local and commercial collections are available as a
collection through ARTSTOR2. The Centre for Scholarly Communication facilitates the creation of unique digital
collections showcasing University Library, museum, and archival primary holdings and provides the means to share our
scholarly output globally.
We subscribe to ARTstor’s Shared Shelf service which allows us to ingest our locally managed collection into the Shared
Shelf cataloging environment thereby offering access to the combined general ARTstor collection plus the Yale-VRC
collection through the ARTstor interface A growing percentage of VRC activity is devoted to digitizing materials from
our Study Photograph Collection (our entire slide and photo collection was moved to off-site storage in 2007 when the
VRC moved to a renovated office in the Arts Library. We have a full range of finding aids for our analog collections,
which have made the collection accessible to patrons. We regularly recall analog materials at patron request and digitize
materials for online access. There is a steady decline in traditional faculty requests, with the exception of new course
offerings in areas not currently well served by existing VRC or ARTstor collections, especially in non-Western subject
areas. We license the entire Archivision Archive as a service to the School of Architecture, which is available through our
local search interface and through the ARTstor interface.
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