Uniting Communities: the Digital Library as a practical tool

1. Uniting Communities: the Digital Library as a practical tool Professor Derek Law Director of Information Resources, University of Strathclyde

2. Organised digital collections to support teaching, learning and research Overview | Contacts | Reports | Policies The Glasgow Digital Library is based at the Centre for Digital Library Research in the University of Strathclyde. It was set up as part of the Research Support Libraries Programme, supplemented by funding from SCRAN for specific digitisation projects.

5. User not technology driven • The Library as place • Second most used public service • Images are available to all • Communities share a history • Librarians collect and interpret that • Returning their history to communities

7. Trust Me I’m a Librarian • “People become librarians because they know too much. Their knowledge extends beyond mere categories. They cannot be confined to disciplines. Librarians are all-knowing and all-seeing. They bring order to chaos. They bring wisdom and culture to the masses. They preserve every aspect of human knowledge. Librarians rule. And they will kick the crap out of anyone who says otherwise.” (Olson, 2000)

8. Structure and Themes • Objectives • Issues • Problems • Goals • Examples

9. Objectives of the Scottish Government for Digital Scotland • Making business more competitive • Raising skills levels in the workforce • Promoting social inclusion • Addressing the democratic deficit • Promoting e-government

11. Springburn Virtual Museum

14. The Three Challenges • Management of things • Building Coherence • Management of Relationships • Building Trust • Management of Perceptions • Being Relevant

15. Glasgow Digital Library: objective • The Glasgow Digital Library is an attempt to create a wholly separate and purely digital library available to all citizens irrespective of educational level.

16. Why Glasgow? • First cross-sectoral digital library in the UK • Government research funding available • Tradition of co-operation in Glasgow across sector boundaries • Broadband network available • Concentration of expertise in Glasgow

17. Centre for Digital Library Research • Based in Strathclyde University • Largest such group in the UK • An existing series of projects on collaboration • Provides underpinning technical research

18. Glasgow Digital Library: key features • Separate librarian • But all partners involved • Quasi-autonomous organisation • Image based content aimed at all levels of user • Issues are human more than technical

20. Glasgow Digital Library: issues(1) • Human level co-operative mechanisms at a metropolitan level, including issues related to different organisations and issues of co-operation between competing organisations • Metadata issues relating to aggregating and disaggregating electronic materials from colleges, universities and the public library as required • The use of the CAIRNS landscaping mechanism dynamically to generate the GDL sub-set of the larger distributed catalogue and also offer a GDL specific look and feel

21. Glasgow Digital Library: issues(2) • Interface issues relating to the need to serve different user groups of varying age, interests, and educational level • Policy and strategy issues for the creation and maintenance of a large digital library aiming to serve all users in a large metropolitan area • Collaborative collection development issues • Authentication and access control issues for purchased materials and valuable materials not offered free.

23. Glasgow Digital Library: goals(1) • An attractive, well managed, user-evaluated interface to the service and demonstrator web-site. • Better access over the MAN to electronic resources, to new locally created resources, to locally cached internet resources, to the products of digitisation projects • Improved retrievability, usability and reliability of collections through resource cataloguing to agreed standards for between 5000 and 10,000 discrete items, link checking, archiving, tools for resource manipulation.

24. Glasgow Digital Library: goals (2) • Improved services through improved management control, co-operative savings, co-operative collection management, joint service provision. • Service as well as collections • A report on cross-sectoral use of MANs, identifying best practice procedures, and making recommendations for a draft model IPR contract for institutions sharing resources.

25. Glasgow Digital Library: goals (3) • Basic (and evaluated) consultative, financial, managerial and technical infrastructure for the GDL, allowing ongoing development. • Exit strategy and forward plan for the GDL: operational plan for five years beyond initial funding. • Report on the project with recommendations and guidelines likely to be of value to other MANs. • Investigation of wider issues through integration of CAIRNS and work with SCONE.

26. Glasgow Digital Library: goals (4) • Guidelines on the value and limitations (if any) of city-wide subscriptions to electronic resources. • Collection management and user online tools recommendations for MAN. • Model and demonstrator for cross-sectoral co-operation in a large metropolitan area.   

28. Red Clydeside

29. Organised digital collections to support teaching, learning and research Overview | Contacts | Reports | Policies The Glasgow Digital Library is based at the Centre for Digital Library Research in the University of Strathclyde. It was set up as part of the Research Support Libraries Programme, supplemented by funding from SCRAN for specific digitisation projects.

30. The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902

31. The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902 http://www.gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk