The Digital Collections Files

Over the past fiscal year (July 2018 - June 2019) the Digital Content & Collections (DCC) department has collaborated with stakeholders within libraries, museums, and more, across campus and beyond, to create the following new digital collections, adding to the full list of nearly 300 digital collections found online at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/. Thank you to all of our stakeholders involved in each collection, the Library Copyright Office for their role in every new digital collection, and the many individuals within Library Information Technology who also assisted in the creation of these collections!

This project's intent was to catalog, digitize, and present a selection of bird's-eye prints of American cities held by the Clements Library. The library started collecting bird's-eye views in earnest during the tenure of current director, J. Kevin Graffagnino. Looking for an innovative and unique way to display these views, Corey Schmidt, under the supervision of the Curator of Graphics Material, Clayton Lewis, began working to build an interactive display for these views. Schmidt worked with a mapping system called Leaflet. Leaflet is an open-source, interactive display (JavaScript library) for maps and geographic data. Because the Image Bank already contained the metadata for each view, Schmidt wrote a program that searched through the Image Bank API and retrieved this data, which was then used with Leaflet's map display to create the map found on their online exhibit.

Over the past year, Library Information Technology - specifically Digital Content & Collections, Digital Library Applications, and Design & Discovery - has been collaborating with the Bentley Historical Library to assess and update the interfaces for some of their digital collections. The results have improved usability, allowed us to document lessons learned that can be applied to the new digital platform that we are building for our digital collections, and forged deeper ties with a great ally, the Bentley Historical Library and its staff.

The Digital Content & Collections department begins an ambitious audit/assessment of our 280+ digital collections. This is the second in a blog series about the endeavor, noting how we started with a pilot group of collections to assess and the lessons learned.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Our Next-Gen Digital Collection System is a musical with music and lyrics by...oh no wait, it's the story of two departments within Library Information Technology filling gaps and solving problems with a minimum of outlay to maximal effect. And maybe one or two funny things that happened. On the way.

The Digital Content & Collections department begins an ambitious full audit of our 280+ digital collections. In this first in a blog series about the endeavor, I note why we are doing this, how we surveyed the digital landscape, how we cemented alliances with others who will help us along the way, and where we're heading next.

The Michigan Daily Digital Archives is a joint collaboration between the University of Michigan Library IT division, Michigan Daily, and the Bentley Historical Library. The Michigan Daily Digital Archives provides searchable access to over 300 volumes, 23,000 issues of digitized student newspaper, from 1891 through 2014. New volumes of the newspaper will be added in the future as they become available. The Library IT team developed a robust discovery interface for the archives. The team made the choice of building a discovery system instead of using an out of the box application or vended solutions. The development team followed Scrum-like Agile approach for website development.

Lately I’ve been looking back through the past of the Digital Library Production Service (DLPS) -- in fact, all the way back to the time before DLPS, when we were the Humanities Text Initiative -- to see what, if anything, we’ve learned that will help us as we move forward into a world of Hydra, ArchivesSpace, and collaborative development of repository and digital resource creation tools.

We talk about using Google Analytics in DLPS and HathiTrust, and how the Analytics interface will have changed before you've finished this sentence.

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.