Posts by John Weise

After the successful launch of our ArcLight finding aids application on April 19, 2023 - and the deprecating of our homegrown Digital Library eXtension Service (DLXS) finding aids application - we are sharing our reflections on the project with the wider community. This blog post will describe the history of finding aids at the University of Michigan Library and what led us to develop the ArcLight finding aids application, starting in earnest in 2020. We will describe our goals for the project, the organization of the development team, and the modifications that we needed to make to effectively complete the project. We will give an overview of what a finding aids application does, and why we decided to use ArcLight as well as Docker and Kubernetes as our new containerization and hosting solution. We will discuss what was advantageous to us for this project as well as what was particularly challenging, and sum up what we learned from our archives partners and end-users, throughout the project.

The Digital Library Production Service (DLPS) recently did a thoughtful and comprehensive update of its web presence on the University of Michigan Library website. This post summarizes the process and calls out the value of having a web content strategist in the mix.

As the creators of DLXS, we're quite impressed with the adaptation of Text Class by NLM/NIH to provide access to oral histories.

DLPS is currently (July 2010) exploring possible avenues for the future development of DLXS. I compiled this brief survey of existing digital library software systems to gain a better understanding of where DLXS fits in the current landscape, and what other systems have to offer.

Post by Maria Bonn. On Wednesday, the Scholarly Publishing Office activated more than 225,000 "buy a reprint" links in HathiTrust, increasing the number of public domain reprints available for purchase by more than 300%.

Post by Catherine Soehner. It is my pleasure to announce the public debut of PictureIt Rare Book Reader. PictureIt is a web-based animation program that gives users the sensation of turning the pages of digitized rare materials that would be otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to view or obtain. Volume 1 of John James Audubon’s Birds of America was selected as the inaugural PictureIt book.

The HathiTrust repository has reached the 5 million volume mark!

The University of Michigan Library has received a CLIR grant to provide specialized access to Islamic manuscripts. Users of the site will be able to contribute to the description/cataloging of each item. We are digitizing 1250 manuscripts as part of this project, and I thought it would be worthwhile to share the following summary of the process.