Symposium on Building Digital Collections
Iowa Memorial Union, Ilinois Room
Acquisition, creation, and management of digital collections is becoming increasingly important for teaching and research. The University of Iowa Libraries is in the process of launching initiatives such as the Scholarly Digital Resources Center to better support digital collections. The foundations of this support are already visible in the LWIS (Libraries-Wide Information System) and other uses of the World Wide Web as an information delivery system, and in the establishment of the Information Arcade and the Information Commons as centers for the acquisition, use and support of multimedia resources. However, many issues remain to be explored and addressed to ensure success in meeting campus needs related to digital collections as well in identifying opportunities for funding initiatives. The Symposium on Building Digital Collections will provide valuable information from local and invited speakers about experiences related to current and future digital collections' initiatives.
The last three decades of library automation have focused heavily on management of locally held materials published and distributed in the print medium. Bibliographic access has been achieved through the application of national standards. However, the world of digital information resources is expanding quickly and does not always contain nor rely on bibliographic records. It includes, not only rapidly growing collections of electronic full text resources, but those including images, video, sound, and even virtual reality. Perhaps the most significant shift in focus as libraries build digital collections is greater interoperability among information systems across the country and internationally. Building a useable infrastructure in support of access to an expanded universe of digital materials is an important and exciting challenge.
The National Science Foundation also recognizes the need to explore and find solutions to building digital collections through its Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI) grant program. Speakers from the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois, institutions who have received the NSF Digital Libraries Initiative grants, will provide valuable insight into their particular projects along with UI faculty who have expertise in specific aspects of digital resource creation and use. Thus, the Symposium will provide a foundation for future initiatives and projects related to digitial collections and the University of Iowa Libraries.