Library and Museum Digital Projects
December 10, 2013 10:02 AM Subscribe
I am on a team at a public library and we are looking at what we can do to expand our digital presence. I have looked at websites like the Smithsonian and Library of Congress and I am looking for suggestions of other institutions that are trying new things online.
You should look through the AAM Muse Award winners and various Museums and the Web Best of the Web winners. Lots of great projects that cover various types of collections and types of presentations.
posted by advicepig at 10:14 AM on December 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by advicepig at 10:14 AM on December 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
I think it's really important to find a goal that's not just "expand our digital presence." Why do you want to expand your digital presence? Is it to reach underserved members of your community? Is it to provide access to special collections?
Some questions to think about: who are you trying to reach? What kind of access to the internet do they have (dialup vs. broadband vs. mobile)? What are you already offering online, and how/how much is that getting used? Is it OK if you build something cool but not many people really use it?
posted by mskyle at 10:54 AM on December 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
Some questions to think about: who are you trying to reach? What kind of access to the internet do they have (dialup vs. broadband vs. mobile)? What are you already offering online, and how/how much is that getting used? Is it OK if you build something cool but not many people really use it?
posted by mskyle at 10:54 AM on December 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
I work in a digital library and I think the major thing you want to examine is who do you want to reach and what do you want to give them.
If you have a unique collection of special documents or artifacts that you want to provide online access to, that's one thing. If you just want to make old books and stuff you have in the library available online, that's something completely different.
I wasn't here at the beginning of our project, but one the things that we decided early on was our audience. From that point, we could decide how to build our collection, either by in-house digitization or outsourced work. One thing that I would strongly recommend is determining your metadata standard at the outset and applying it consistantly. Try not to get caught up in the librarian pit fall of too much description, use something like MODS that you can just transfer from MARC in your ILS if that's possible. We did not do that and now that we're growing a great deal, it's difficult to retroactively do this.
Additionally, you'll need to think about long term funding and how to ensure your project is sustainable. A number of digital library projects die after interested parties retire or move on to bigger and better things. It's extremely helpful to have a plan for how the project will continue in 5, 10, 15 years so that at least there's some discussion to refer to when the head of the project leaves your library.
posted by teleri025 at 11:29 AM on December 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
If you have a unique collection of special documents or artifacts that you want to provide online access to, that's one thing. If you just want to make old books and stuff you have in the library available online, that's something completely different.
I wasn't here at the beginning of our project, but one the things that we decided early on was our audience. From that point, we could decide how to build our collection, either by in-house digitization or outsourced work. One thing that I would strongly recommend is determining your metadata standard at the outset and applying it consistantly. Try not to get caught up in the librarian pit fall of too much description, use something like MODS that you can just transfer from MARC in your ILS if that's possible. We did not do that and now that we're growing a great deal, it's difficult to retroactively do this.
Additionally, you'll need to think about long term funding and how to ensure your project is sustainable. A number of digital library projects die after interested parties retire or move on to bigger and better things. It's extremely helpful to have a plan for how the project will continue in 5, 10, 15 years so that at least there's some discussion to refer to when the head of the project leaves your library.
posted by teleri025 at 11:29 AM on December 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Seconding the idea that a little more specificity about your goals and audience would help you (and help us answer the question better). You might find the Special Collections and Social Media wiki helpful for some examples of libraries that maintain a presence on Twitter, Tumblr, blogs, etc. And not to get too self-linky, but there are some examples in my Projects page of things we've done at my library.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:10 PM on December 10, 2013
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:10 PM on December 10, 2013
There was an interesting article about the DPLA in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently. The article covers DPLA as a little bit 'place you might want to reach out to' (the article specifically mentions that DPLA is interested in working with public libraries to expand their presence and just got a Bill and Melinda Gates grant to do so) and a little bit 'place with some nifty things it's doing' (the API, aggregating rather than hosting, working to standardize metadata).
Speaking of metadata, we're in the middle of hiring a (digital) metadata librarian and it turns out that there's also a lot of metadata projects that are looking to interface more smoothly with the semantic web; your library might want to explore what frameworks you use to decide whether you can better expand your reach through cross-walks and other mechanisms that allow you to reach a better web presence. I'm sorry to be vague--this really isn't my thing--but it sounded like a great almost-ready thing to explore.
posted by librarylis at 9:20 PM on December 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Speaking of metadata, we're in the middle of hiring a (digital) metadata librarian and it turns out that there's also a lot of metadata projects that are looking to interface more smoothly with the semantic web; your library might want to explore what frameworks you use to decide whether you can better expand your reach through cross-walks and other mechanisms that allow you to reach a better web presence. I'm sorry to be vague--this really isn't my thing--but it sounded like a great almost-ready thing to explore.
posted by librarylis at 9:20 PM on December 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Bourbonesque at 10:07 AM on December 10, 2013 [1 favorite]