Browsing by Subject "special collections"
Item The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America(2014-03-25) Kung, Susan; University of Texas at AustinThe Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) is a completely digital repository at the University of Texas at Austin, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections. AILLA has no physical presentation space; its collections are accessible only through its website (www.ailla.utexas.org) via parallel interfaces in both English and Spanish. AILLA's primary mission is the preservation of irreplaceable linguistic and cultural resources in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America, most of which are endangered. Most of the materials in the archive are primary field data that were collected and deposited (donated) by linguists and anthropologists for whom audio and video recordings are a central part of their research methodology. Many indigenous organizations have also donated the results of their investigations to AILLA. The majority of AILLA's collection consists of audio and video recordings of discourse in a wide range of genres, including conversations, many types of narratives, songs, political oration, traditional myths, curing ceremonies, etc. Many recordings are accompanied by transcriptions and translations of the speech event. Other textual resources include dictionaries, grammars, ethnographic sketches, fieldnotes, articles, handouts and PowerPoint presentations. The collection also contains hundreds of photographs. AILLA's secondary mission is to make these valuable and useful resources maximally accessible via the Internet while simultaneously protecting personally, culturally and politically sensitive materials from inappropriate use and supporting the intellectual property rights of the creators. AILLA's system of access levels allows creators and depositors to have finely-grained control over their materials, which lets them restrict their entire collections or only certain files within the collections. For example, recordings might be public while transcriptions might be restricted or vice versa. Sensitive materials are protected; however, AILLA's directors, manager and depositors believe strongly that accessibility is equally important. Historically, very little of the fruit of linguistic and anthropological research has been genuinely available to the indigenous communities in which the research was done; AILLA aims to rectify that imbalance. Restrictions tend to keep speakers out, while researchers can generally gain access to archival materials through the academic network. Resources that are publically accessible can be heard and read by all speakers. Our policy is that if a resource can be made public, it should be made public; but if it is sensitive, it should be protected. Our goal is to ensure that the unique and wonderful resources preserved at AILLA can be used to maintain, revitalize and enrich the communities from which they arise. AILLA was intended from the outset to function as a partner with its depositors, providing them with a means of both preserving and sharing, under appropriate terms, the fruits of their work with the indigenous peoples of Latin America. The archive accepts any legitimate resources that can be housed in a digital format.Item Automated Archiving of DVD Content(2013-03-21) Nieto, Heriberto; Lamphear, Anna; University of Texas at Austin; Texas Advanced Computing CenterA little more than a decade after their introduction, DVDs are becoming obsolete. As a result collecting institutions must find a long term preservation solution for content in DVD format. To address this challenge the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) developed an automated workflow for transcoding DVDs using a tool built with open source software. Automated and potentially customizable, the tool allows for the creation of a series of files including a preservation quality file for long term storage, an ISO disk image, streaming files for access purposes, as well as technical and preservation metadata. The tool also applies a reference metric that allows for automated quality checks of the video files. The resulting output can be used as a Submission Information Package (SIP) suitable for ingest into a repository. The University of Texas Libraries is testing the tool on its DVD collections, streamlining workflows for both preservation and access. Several modifications have been made to the tool to support the production needs of the Libraries. This presentation will highlight aspects of the development of the tool and will discuss the implementation and testing in reference to the resultant output files and metadata, the differences between the museum and library workflow application, and the overall usefulness of the tool. Contributors on the project include: Maria Esteva (TACC, UT Austin); Karla Vega (TACC, UT Austin); Heriberto Nieto (TACC, UT Austin); Bethany Scott (Charlotte Mecklenburg Library); Kertana Kumar (College of Natural Sciences, UT Austin); Vandy Henriksen (UT Libraries); Anna Lamphear (UT Libraries); Jennifer Lee (UT Libraries); Wendy Martin (UT Libraries).Item "Better Living in North Carolina": Challenges of Presenting Agricultural Statistics From The Past(2016-05-25) Stewart, James R.; North Carolina State UniversityThe Special Collections Research Center at NCSU Libraries is exploring historical datasets as part of its LSTA-funded digitization project “Better Living in North Carolina: Bringing Technology To The People.” Through the project, thousands of resources from the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service will be digitized. Among these materials are annual statistical reports completed by agricultural extension agents from 1923 to 1967. These reports contain potential legacy datasets from various agricultural fields, from farming soils to home health and nutrition. This poster will present examples, insights on the challenges of extracting data from digitized archival materials, and the value of these resources for today’s researchers. We hope that data researchers across multiple disciplines may find new and unexpected datasets in special collections.Item Extreme Makeover: Digital Library Edition(2013-03-21) Cofield, Melanie; Tarleton Law Library, University of Texas at AustinFeaturing a digital library of early Texas legal documents built more than a decade ago and needing upgrades, this is a tale of renovation efforts requiring a sustained group effort. Librarians, archivists, students, and a programmer have worked together over time to evaluate the resource, identify practical fix-it strategies, and forge a more user-friendly and sustainable web resource for scholars, teachers and students interested in Texas legal history.Item Held Captive by Copyright: Two Case Studies for Open Access(2015-04-27) Gushee, Elizabeth; Rushing, Amy; Harry Ransom Center; University of Texas at San Antonio; University of Texas at AustinThe Harry Ransom Center is among the nation’s finest research libraries; its extensive holdings of manuscript, text, and visual materials provide a unique record of the creative processes of thousands of writers and artists. In 2014, with the goal of promoting the use of its collections, the Center’s Digital Initiatives Working Group (DIAG) was tasked with developing an open access policy for its corpus of materials believed to be in the public domain. As part of their work, DIWG surveyed open access strategies across peer institutions, struggled to determine where to place the Center on the open access continuum, debated the effects of open access on the Center’s human and financial resources, and, ultimately, found the process of identifying archival materials as “public domain” far more slippery than originally expected. In the fall of 2014, UTSA Libraries Special Collections held a department retreat to define strategic priorities for the year, and to discuss one of the thorniest issues facing repositories today: the permission to publish. Following a lawsuit against the University of Arkansas Special Collections and the subsequent urging of intellectual property guru Peter Hirtle that “it is time for repositories to get out of the "permission to publish" game and leave permissions to the copyright owner,” UTSA Special Collections decided to do just that. What we thought would remove barriers to our collections, however, has caused unanticipated issues regarding privacy, copyright, orphan works, and maintaining good donor relations. Learn how two libraries within The University of Texas system has grappled with issues of open access, copyright, and restrictions related to the use of their materials.Item Opening Image-based Collections with IIIF(2017-05-25) Brumfield, Ben W.; Gushee, Elizabeth M.; Albritton, Benjamin; Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; Brumfield Labs; Stanford UniversityThis panel will explore the International Image Interoperability Framework ("triple-I F"), a rapidly-growing suite of standards for digitized content. Three panelists will present on their experience, challenges, and hopes for IIIF adoption, followed by a robust discussion and Q&A. How can medievalists at Fordham University translate manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale de France using tools hosted in Oxford and Austin, without uploading files from server to server? Ben Brumfield will introduce the IIIF standards and the ecosystem of tools connecting researchers with worldwide collections. In December 2015, the Harry Ransom Center was awarded a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from CLIR to create an online archive of the writer Gabriel García Márquez's papers. One of the project’s deliverables is the implementation of the Mirador Image Viewer. Liz Gushee will explain how the Center’s project team worked with members of the IIIF community to integrate CONTENTdm collections with Mirador, tested and customized the image interface, and provided training on Mirador to reading room staff and patrons. Undergraduates at Stanford are transcribing manuscripts using IIIF-enabled tools like Mirador, T-Pen and FromThePage in the Spring of 2017. Ben Albritton will describe the the virtuous circle of scholarship created when IIIF-available resources allow students to enhance those resources for further scholarship.Item Session 3C | Cleanup on Aisle ‘21: Designing and Implementing Large-scale Metadata Remediation in an Archival Consortium(Texas Digital Library, 2021-05-26) Weaver, Robert; Dodd, Samantha; Romanchuk, RebeccaTexas Archival Resources Online (TARO) is a consortium of over 60 archives, museums and cultural heritage centers throughout Texas. During the early stages of a recent, NEH-funded project to redesign and enhance TARO’s twenty-year-old website, developers discovered an unanticipated and urgent obstacle: mandatory remediation of tens of thousands of data points across over 14,000 Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids. This presentation documents TARO’s efforts to assist its repositories in this data cleanup, from conception, through solutions planning, and culminating in an examination of the results of the project to date.Item Siloed No More: Collaborations Between Digital and Special Collections(Texas Digital Library, 2017-05-25) Long, Kara; McCormack, Allison M.; Baylor UniversityBaylor University is home to several special libraries, each with distinct missions and collecting focuses. This presentation explores a series of collaborations between a rare books cataloger and a metadata librarian in their efforts to raise the visibility of and increase access to special collections materials. We will discuss challenges to collaboration, including boundaries between cataloging and metadata management, dealing with diverse material types, and the institutional boundaries between discrete collections.To achieve our shared goals we established several “working solutions,” including the creation of MARC records and Dublin Core metadata, selective digitization, and allowing access to materials at both the collection and item levels. Rather than implementing a new software or designing a new program, these simple solutions are the direct results of reaching across institutional and departmental boundaries and finding commonalities in the work we previously did separately. In this presentation, we will highlight four digitization and cataloging projects from four different libraries as examples of successful collaborations and collaborations in progress. The oldest project involves the Historic Waco Newspapers collection at the Texas Collection, which was difficult for patrons to access due to the confusing holdings statements in the bibliographic records. The Keston Center for Religion, Politics and Society has a similar issue regarding access to their historic photo archive. The Armstrong Browning Library had digitized their extensive collection of Browning correspondence, but patrons were unable to discover the holdings in the library catalog. Finally, Central Libraries Special Collections is home to a growing collection of artists’ books. These contemporary but unique materials also present challenges in access and visibility across campus, and the nature of the materials makes casual browsing impossible. Working collaboratively, we were able to increase patron access to these materials and reduce duplication of effort. Integrating links, photos, and other digital objects into print material records has increased the visibility of both the print and digital collections in tandem. This presentation will interest catalogers, metadata librarians, and those who work with rare and special collections materials.