Digital library services news – spring 2020
Welcome to the Spring 2020 Digital Library Services Newsletter, prepared by the Product and Service Management team! This newsletter includes contributions from: Cathy Aster, Hannah Frost, Dinah Handel, Sarah Seestone, Andrew Berger, Jacob Hill, and Michael Olson.
The Digital Library of the Middle East
The Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME), which aims to become one of the world’s largest online archives of Middle Eastern and North African artifacts, is now operating as an ongoing service. The DLME currently brings together some 120,000 digital records of materials held in museums, libraries, and archives worldwide. A team of developers and managers in DLSS are responsible for establishing partnerships with data providers around the world and developing the application. New data and incremental improvements to the application will continue be added.
Software Preservation and Emulation Symposium
On May 11, 2020 Digitization Services staff facilitated a half-day symposium on software preservation. The symposium highlighted the work of Stanford Libraries as a test node for the Scaling Emulation as a Service Infrastructure grant lead by Yale University Libraries. As part of the symposium Stanford Libraries and the Stanford University Press presented three use cases from our collections or catalog: The International Monetary Fund CD-ROMs, Bob Stein’s Archive, and Filming Revolution. The symposium attracted interest from roughly forty attendees interested in emulation as an access/preservation technology and the complete video for the proceedings is available here.
Google-Digitized Books in SDR
At the end of March, Stanford Libraries launched a new automated pipeline for depositing Google-scanned books into the SDR. The result of a three-month engineering workcycle, this pipeline retrieves each scanned book from Google’s storage, matches it to library catalog records, and deposits it into the SDR. In addition to the scanned images for each page, the deposits also include OCR text and additional metadata generated by Google. As of 2020, Google has scanned over 3 million books from the library’s collections; running 24/7, the download process is expected to take multiple years to complete. For more information on Google-scanned books at Stanford, please see this FAQ.
105 Spotlight at Stanford exhibits published
Please join us in celebrating the continued success of Spotlight at Stanford as a publication platform for digital showcases that support research and teaching at Stanford and beyond. The 100th Spotlight exhibit, Opening Night! consists of a searchable, metadata-only database, and was recognized in the following digital library blog post. Five additional exhibits have since been published, including Mapping the Global Imaginary, 1500-1900, which exemplifies another Spotlight use case – showcasing the highlights of a conference so that scholars can reap the benefits even after the event has passed. Check out the other exhibits published since April 1st: Carleton Watkins at Stanford Libraries, Hopkins Marine Station, The David Bacon Photography Archive at Stanford, and The Super-Enlightenment.
Enhancing Repository Services for the Stanford Community
After a strong start in the winter but necessary delays due to shelter-in-place orders, we’re looking forward to restarting work on the Special Collections Explore project. Spec Explore is a discovery effort to understand user and staff needs as they request, route, and use special collections materials. Project members include staff from Special Collections and University Archives, David Rumsey Map Center, East Asia library, Archive of Recorded Sound, Preservation, and the Digital Production Lab, Stanford Media Production Lab, and the Access team in DLSS. Project goals include improved patron service, increased staff efficiency, and better item security and tracking. At the end of our discovery phase, we’ll deliver recommendations on how to proceed, potential tools (like the Aeon request management system), a timeline for implementation, and a cost estimate. Inquiries about the project can be sent to Sarah Seestone.
Pictured above is the emptied Green 341 scanning lab on on March 16 immediately before everyone went home to SIP. Some 3.5 months later, with the phased reopening of library services as part of Stanford’s Research Recovery, Digitization Services will begin phasing back into production at last. All three digitization service arms — the Digital Production Group, the Stanford Media Preservation Lab, and the Born Digital Lab — will be staffed in their respective lab locations (Green Library and Academy Hall at Stanford Redwood City) starting on Monday, July 6, 2020. Due to the ongoing imperative to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we will take all required measures to protect the health of staff while at work. To achieve social distancing, lab staffing levels at any given time will be reduced by necessity. Stay tuned for more information about changes to our service operations in general, and for any specific scheduling adjustments for collection projects underway or planned to begin in 2020. Questions may be directed to Dinah Handel or digitization-contact@lists.stanford.edu.
We’re pleased to share a result of a recent brainstorming session on antiracism and social justice at the monthly meeting of the Spotlight at Stanford service team. With a minimum of time and effort, we were able to add a new exhibit tag to Spotlight called “Social justice” where you will see many exhibits now gathered. Please go to Spotlight at Stanford and click on the Social justice tab to view the offerings. We hope this one small step will join the many that we can make together, to elevate and include marginalized voices in our work. Thank you to the Spotlight at Stanford Service Team and the DLSS Access Team for proposing and bringing this idea to fruition.
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