Managing Digitization Activities · 75
http://images.library.uiuc.edu/research.htm
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Digital Imaging Initiative was established in 1994 with the initial mission of examining the
potential of providing digital access to the University of Illinois Library’s collections, and to
perform research with collections and users to determine the best methods for doing so. The unit,
now known at the Digital Services and Development Unit, became a more formal part of the
University Library’s structure in 2005. Library users are demanding greater access to digital
information to support instruction and research. The fundamental mission of the unit remains
providing digital access to University Library collections and enabling the preservation, access to,
and promotion of collections. The Library is at a juncture where the central role for digital
library development and digitization of collections becomes development of more integrated
services rather than isolated projects.
The overall goals of the Digital Services and Development Unit (DSD) continue to be:
Making accessible through digitization fragile and under-utilized Library resources and special collections
Developing and implementing digital preservation best practices for preserving Library digital content
Promoting and supporting the availability and integration of Library digital content into learning and scholarly
activities on the Illinois campus and throughout the scholarly community
Conducting digital library research that advances the creation and use of these resources.
The goals of the program are to be met by the following objectives:
Providing a leadership role within the Library to implement institutional access and long-
term preservation and mass storage strategy for digital content
Establishing best practices for digitizing various classes of visual and textual materials
Creating and preserving “master” (archival) images of digitized materials Creating and preserving “access”
(lower resolution) images for Library users
Working in tandem with Technical Services and Preservation units to develop best practices for the creation and
production of various metadata schemas
Creating metadata to enable user access to and preservation of digitized materials
Identifying new technologies and services to provide better access to and preservation of digital collections and
resources
Coordinating, Library-wide, the development of grant proposals to support digitization activities
Developing multimedia databases that deliver visual resources and other media in innovative ways
Enabling the Library’s transition from experimental and developmental digital library technologies to mainstream
Library services
Providing opportunities to future librarians (GSLIS students) to obtain experience with digitization projects and
development activities
Providing cost-recovery digitization services not provided elsewhere on campus for Library and campus-wide
collections.
With the unit’s recent move to the Main Library, the Digital Services and Development Unit
hopes to accommodate the University Library's goal of accessibility by scaling up its digitization
and access program over the next several years. To accomplish this goal we plan to digitize
unique collections and build model access and delivery systems. The DSD has completed the
exploratory analysis of many collections by digitizing samples, and has developed innovative
approaches to making materials accessible through the Internet. Depending on the project, the technical
staff of DSD will develop a new system to accommodate the materials or, in most cases, we will develop a system using
an existing software packages. Systems currently supported by DSD include CONTENTdm and DLXS-XPAT.
CONTENTdm is a system that is most commonly used for image collections. It enables users to search descriptive
metadata in one or more collections for particular images. Projects where we are using CONTENTdm include the German
Emblem Books and Historical Maps. Results are displayed with thumbnail images. Using our RealMedia Server enables
us to also include audio and video files in databases if necessary. (See http://images.library.uiuc.edu/projects/index.htm
Previous Page Next Page