digital projects

Digitized books into the IR - workflow

This past week, we started depositing digitized books into our institutional repository instance for The McMaster Collection. As of this posting we have 216 books in the collection. However, currently these materials are only available to the McMaster community. This is completely out of my control, and I agree what some of you may be thinking, “wait, out of copyright books are not available to the general public!?” The workflow is a little complicated right now, but it is the beginning and will definitely be improved.

New Stuffs on the Horizon...

Now that Historical Perspectives of Canadian Publishing is all finished up we have time, albeit a small amount of time, to concentrate on other portions of the Digital Collections site, and other collections. World War, 1939-1945, German Concentration Camps and Prisons Collection is nearly complete. Only a few boxes remain to be scanned. The next portion of the project is World War, 1939-1945, Jewish Underground Resistance Collection. This collection is predominantly from 1941-1944 and will contain 325 items.

Historical Perspectives of Canadian Publishing - LAUNCH!!!

Oops, I was supposed to write about this last Thursday when we actually launched. Busy, busy week. So, without further ado - Historical Perspectives on Canadian Publishing! So, here is the actual library news story. The site was a year in the making, and still has some content that will be added. An immense amount of hard work was put in by the team. I would like to give a special thanks for all the hard work put in by the project coordinator, Judy Donnelly, Bev Bayzat who handled the data management portion of the project, and Matt McCollow who took over the majority of development responsibilities on the site.

2009 OLITA Digital Odyssey

I must say that the Digital Odyssey was the best one day event I have been to. Just a fantastic day with fantastic people talking about awesome projects. It cheered me up and gave me hope in these crap times. Best part of the day had to be Mike Ridley’s keynote speech - The Age of Information is over. It is time for the Age of Imagination. It will be the library’s job to nurture and foster creativity.

OMG! You Don't Need CONTENTdm!!!

So, I bet a lot of you are wondering what is up with my with my title? Well, I don’t plan on standing up here taking potshots at OCLC for 15 minutes, but I am sure some people in the crowd wouldn’t mind. Basically, the title should have had a very long sub-title along the lines of, like Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Open Source Software.

PW20C Launch & Local Press Coverage

Here is the library press release: The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University Library is launching the latest in a series of digital initiatives aimed at bringing its unique collections to a wider, online audience. The new site, Peace and War in the 20th Century, has been developed with the assistance of almost $100,000 in funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, through the Canadian Memory Fund.

Got another grant!!! History of Canadian Publishing

Just we put the finishing touches on the Library and Archives Canada funded Peace & War in the 20th Century project, we received word from the granting agency that our newest grant application has been accepted. We have been awarded almost $100,000 to develop a state-of-the-art, interactive website on the history of Canadian publishing. The project will last for a year (same amount of time for the PW20C project), and will focus on the history of Canadian publishing houses, people in publishing, authorship, and aspects of unique to Canadian culture.

PW20C Launch!!!

Ok, kids. Finally, done. The Peace & War in the 20th Century is finally done - http://pw20c.mcmaster.ca. The site is now official. The site consists of nearly 3000 records, and is divided between two over archiving themes, Waging Peace and Waging War. The over arching themes are broken down into sub categories, and case studies, covering an expansive wealth of information. Images digitized for the collection include posters, letters, 3-D objects (grenades, metals, etc.