Creating Content: Smithsonian Institution Libraries' Digital Library Program

Slide 1: Creating Content Smithsonian Institution Libraries' Digital Library Program Martin R. Kalfatovic New Media Office and Preservation Services Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Slide 2: Smithsonian Institution Libraries 20 branch libraries (New York ● to Panama) 1.5 million volumes; 50,000 ● rare books; 500,000 trade lit items ~120 staff ● Web presence since 1995 ● 3 million web visitors per year ● 80% from outside the ● Smithsonian network

Slide 3: Overview of Library Digitizing • Books are unique objects for scanning purposes • Differ from 2 dimensional works (e.g. Photographs) • Differ from 3 dimensional works (e.g. Artifacts)

Slide 4: Overview of Library Digitizing • Codex has been around for over 1600 years • The book format (title page, text, index, etc.) since the mid-16th century • Web delivery of book objects has interesting challenges

Slide 5: Book Digitizing Process • Bound materials – Quality issues – Protects the material for future use • Disbound materials – Generally better scans – Destructive

Slide 6: SIL Imaging Center • Established 1999 • 2 digital scanning- back cameras – BetterLight – Phase I • Flatbed scanners • All Mac-based

Slide 7: Digitizing Vendors • SIL has used a variety of commercial vendors for non- and semi-rare materials – Kirtas Technologies (Robotic APT 2400 Scanner) – Preservation Resources – PTFS, Inc. – Thomson – TechBooks

Slide 8: Digitizing Partner Internet Archive Scanning services • File Storage • File delivery • Technical development • Internet Archive Headquarters The Presidio, San Francisco

Slide 9: Digitizing Standards: Page Images 300 dpi, 24-bit color uncompressed TIFF, or lossless compressed images (e.g. LZW, JPEG2000)

Slide 10: Digitizing Standards: Page Images DLF Benchmark ● for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials NISO Framework ● for Digital Collections

Slide 11: Digitizing Standards: Text Conversion Re-keying or OCR with correction to 99.997% accuracy

Slide 12: Digitizing Standards: Text Conversion Standard mark-up schema (e.g. flavors of XML like TEI or structured databases)

Slide 13: SIL Digitizing Statistics • Approximately 400,000 scanned pages • 700+ titles • 1,100 volumes

Slide 14: Who Is Using the SIL Digital Library? • Sewing machine enthusiasts • Researchers in Brazil • School kids around the country • Lepidopterists in Peru “Aloha. I live on the Big Island of Hawai’i …I’ve been looking for this text for over TWENTY YEARS. Mahalo nui loa for all your hard work. Reading these pages means so much to me and many others …”

Slide 15: Major Projects: Digital Editions • History of Science • Natural History • History and Culture • Art and Design

Slide 16: Major Projects: Trade Literature • Trade Literature Collections – Over 500,000 pieces, only a small fraction digitized – 30,000 images from two collections – Among SI Libraries’ most popular sites with over 15,000 visitors per month

Slide 17: Major Projects: Image Galaxy SIL Image Galaxy – Over 9,000 of SI Libraries’ most interesting images – Serves as a gateway for product development and licensing – Assists students and teachers in locating images for use in the classroom and other projects

Slide 18: Major Projects: Scholarly Publications Smithsonian Contributions and Studies Series – Collaboration with Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press – Currently over 65,000 pages online with another 80,000 in FY 2007

Slide 19: National and International Partnerships • Aluka – African history and culture • Open Content Alliance

Slide 20: Biodiversity Heritage Library • 10 member libraries • Goal: digitize corpus of heritage taxonomic literature (300 million pages) • $3 million grant as part of Encyclopedia of Life in hand www.biodiversitylibrary.org

Slide 21: Internet Archive Scribe Scanner • Single Scribe Machine – Human operated – 200 volumes per shift per week – ~ 70,000 pages from a single machine per week – Located in the Natural History building and working on BHL project

Slide 22: BHL Scribe Facilities • Boston Library Consortium (Boston Public Library) • New York Public Library • University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign • Natural History Museum (London) • Smithsonian Inst. Libraries • Missouri Botanical Garden (non-Scribe operation)

Slide 23: Digitizing Philosophy • Digital Curation – Just as libraries keep books, so do libraries have a mission to preserve “born digital” material – Digital Preservation through assisting in the transmission of digital content to future generations

Slide 24: Smithsonian Digital Repository DSpace – Developed jointly by MIT and HP – Open source software used in hundreds of academic libraries

Slide 25: Smithsonian Digital Repository – Preserves and makes available digital output of scientists, researchers, curators, historians, etc. – Coordinated with Smithsonian Scholarly Bibliography to track Smithsonian staff publications

Slide 26: Needs for Enhancing the SIL Digital Library Program Petabyte storage system for • source files Effective system for archiving • of digital material (byte preservation) Enhanced capacity for • storing/delivering web- deliverable images Central programming support • for enhanced XML data delivery

Slide 27: Needs for Enhancing the SIL Digital Library Program Implementation of Web 2.0 • technologies Focus on reuse and re- • purposing of legacy data and metadata Enhanced service to the • various Smithsonian audiences (internal and worldwide)

Slide 28: Smithsonian Institution Libraries Image Credits All book and material images available • through the Galaxy of Images ( www.sil.si.edu/imagegalaxy) Other images by Martin R. Kalfatovic •