Several years ago, National Public Radio (NPR) librarians began developing a new content management system (CMS). It was intended to offer desktop access for all NPR-produced content, including transcripts, audio, and metadata. Fast-forward to 2011, and their shiny, new database, Artemis, was ready for debut. Their next challenge: to teach a staff…

Librarians are familiar with the single-line form, the consolidated index, which represents a very large portion of a library's print and online collection. Their end users are familiar with the idea of a single search across a comprehensive index that produces a large, relevancy-ranked results list. Even though most patrons would not recognize…

Charles E. Bracker was a professor of botany and plant pathology at Purdue University from 1964 to 1999. His late wife, Anri, was an orchid enthusiast who began collecting and housing orchids in the 1980s. In 2009, Bracker's 30,000 digital orchid photographs were donated to Ball State University Libraries, where both of this article's authors…

BeaverTracks Historical Locations and Walking Tour is a mobile project at Oregon State University (OSU), where the author serves as programmer/analyst. It connects the past to the present by linking historic images to current campus locations. The goal of BeaverTracks is to showcase and bring attention to OSU Libraries' digital collections as well…

In 2009 the University of Washington (UW) Libraries special collections received funding for the digital preservation of its audio indigenous language holdings. The university libraries, where the authors work in various capacities, had begun digitizing image and text collections in 1997. Because of this, at the onset of the project, workflows (a…

Digital repository is one sector of digital content creation that receives less mainstream attention. Unlike blogs with accretions of documents and commentary or websites with masses of ephemeral pages that come and go, digital repositories have a more plodding pace of development. They conform to demanding standards for metadata and information…

Explains the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting and its impact on digital libraries and information retrieval by transferring metadata from one server to another in a network of information systems. Highlights include data providers; service providers; value-added services; Dublin Core metadata; data transfer;…

Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) is an emerging format that allows for the creation of customized research packages to push to patrons. It is a way to gather collections of Web resources (links, RSS feeds, multimedia files), organize them as outlines, and publish them in a format that others can share and even subscribe to. In this…

Describes work at the University of Virginia library to digitize special collections. Discusses the use of XML (Extensible Markup Language); providing access to original source materials; DTD (Document Type Definition); TEI (Text Encoding Initiative); metadata; XSL (Extensible Style Language); and future possibilities. (LRW)

Discusses digital libraries and Web site design issues. Highlights include accessibility issues, including standards, markup languages like HTML and XML, and metadata; building virtual communities; the use of Web portals for customized delivery of information; quality assurance tools, including data mining; and determining user needs, including…

Since its humble beginning, Digital Past, a centralized local history digitization initiative at the North Suburban Library System (NSLS), a multitype consortium in Wheeling, Illinois, has now grown into a large centralized collaboration that consists of 32 libraries and a museum as its primary contributors. With Digital Past, there are various…

Examines recent trends that will have a significant impact on how virtual library services are designed and implemented in the future. Discusses end-user instruction; staff training and professional development; database design; the metadata movement and the Dublin Core; and changing roles of librarians and library services. (AEF)