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LIS 901-08: Building Digital Libraries: Infrastructural and Social Aspects (Fall 2009) - Long Island University

This class aims to prepare students to think proactively, creatively, and critically about planning, implementing, and evaluating digital library projects in a variety of institutions. In addition, this class is designed as a seminar to allow proactive discussion of topics between both the students and the instructor; this format allows you to learn from each other as well as from me.

Overview

Given constraints on the class, you are not expected to have a background or experience with particular library technologies. Accordingly, this course cannot teach you exhaustive skills that will allow you to build digital libraries. This course will instead focus instruction in two main areas: the major infrastructural components of digital library projects (metadata, software architectures, etc.), and aspects of the social and technical impact of digital libraries that lead to their success or failure (sustainability, usability, audience, etc.)

Objectives

This class aims to teach students how:

  • to read and evaluate technical and research-based articles on digital libraries without having exhaustive knowledge in particular technologies or subject areas,
  • to evaluate proposed digital library projects in international and inter-institutional contexts,
  • to gain a high-level understanding of the interplay between the technologies, social practices, and people involved in digital library projects, and
  • to understand why certain project plans, technologies, and evaluation strategies have or have not been proven successful in digital libraries.

Required Texts and Readings

We will be relying on the following two books heavily throughout the class. I recommend purchasing them, but they are also available on reserve at the NYU Bobst Library Reserve desk. Digital Library Use is also available as an eBook through LIU; ask me for more details if you’d prefer to use the eBook version.

  • Bishop, Ann Peterson, Nancy A. Van House, and Barbara P. Buttenfield, eds. Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation. The MIT Press, 2003.
  • Reese, Terry, and Kyle Banerjee. Building Digital Libraries: A How-to-do-it Manual. 1st ed. Neal Schuman Publishers, 2007.

All other readings are available online either freely or through LIU’s electronic journal subscriptions. Each week’s readings are split up into required and supplemental readings. As this suggests, you are obligated to complete the required readings before class. The supplemental readings complement and build on the required readings and are optional.

Course Policies

  • It is your responsibility to attend class. If you miss class for any reason without notifying or following up with the instructor, you will get a zero grade for class participation for that week. If you must miss class, please contact the instructor at least 3 hours in advance if possible. You may miss class for medical reasons, work-related reasons, or religious reasons if you give the instructor advance notice. If you are sick, have an emergency, or must miss class for any other reason on short notice, please contact the instructor as soon as is feasible. Please refer to the “class participation” section under Grading and Assignments about your responsibilities for participating even if you miss class.
  • Assignments are due on the date indicated (or the date chosen in the case the of leading class discussion and summarizing that week’s readings).
  • Plagiarism is an extremely serious matter. All submissions must be your own work in your own words. You can incorporate excerpts or ideas from other sources, but they must be properly attributed. In addition, you can get assistance with copy-editing or discuss ideas with your classmates or other people, but all content must be your own or otherwise explicitly cited. Please familiarize yourself the information on preventing and detecting plagiarism, available at http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/exhibits/plagiarism.htm. In particular, please note “academic irregularities or dishonesty, such as plagiarism and cheating, may result in an automatic failure in a course and dismissal from the program.”
  • In addition, this instructor and this course will follow Long Island University’s academic policy, available at http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/stuact/acadconductpol.html.

Grading and Assignments

Note: All written assignments must be completed with citations formatted using the Chicago Manual of style.

  • Class participation (35%). This class will be taught as a seminar. You will be expected to complete the week’s required readings and be prepared to discuss them; you are also strongly urged to complete as many of the supplemental readings as is feasible. Obviously, attendance is a factor. If you miss class, you must discuss the week’s readings on the class Google Group.
  • Two instances of leading class discussion and written summaries for weekly readings (15% each). During the semester, you will choose two classes where you and a few of your other classmates will be responsible for leading discussion. For each class you choose, you will need to 1) prepare a brief (five-minute) summary that you’ll use to start discussion, and 2) a three to five page written summary each summarizing the week’s readings. Your summaries should discuss any connections or conflicts you see between the articles. Potential areas of discussion appear below each week’s readings on the syllabus; these are merely suggested, and you are encouraged to think of your own topics for discussion. The written summary is due at the beginning of the class in which you lead discussion.
  • A final project/paper (20%), an accompanying proposal (10%), and a brief presentation (5%) on your project during the one of last two classes (December 9 and 16). You will be expected to write a detailed research paper on some aspect of digital libraries that we cover during the course or implement a small-scale digital library project in some capacity. To ensure your project is feasible given the time allotted for the assignment, you must write a two to three page proposal and meet with the instructor to discuss your plans.** This part of the assignment is mandatory.** Finally, you will be required to present on your project during the last class sessions. Further details about this assignment are forthcoming.
  • There is also an optional extra credit assignment. See December 2 for more detail.

Course Schedule

Notes:

  • The readings appear in suggested order of reading; feel free to read them in any order you like.
  • Readings marked with are available from LIU’s online databases.

September 9

  • Introductions.
  • What are your preconceptions of a digital library?
  • Definitions of “digital libraries” in various contexts: technical, societal, and this course.
  • Assignment of discussion leadership.

September 16

  • Definitions of “digital libraries,” continued.
  • Digital libraries as sociotechnical systems.

Required reading:

  • Edwards, Paul N. “How to Read a Book, v4.0.” http://www.si.umich.edu/%7Epne/PDF/howtoread.pdf.
  • Van House, Nancy A., Ann Peterson Bishop, and Barbara P. Buttenfield, “Introduction: Digital Libraries as Sociotechnical Systems,” in Digital Library Use (chapter 1).
  • Borgman, Christine L. “What are digital libraries? Competing visions,” Information Processing and Management 35, no. 3 (1999): 227 - 243.
  • Greenstein, Daniel, and Suzanne E. Thorin. The Digital Library: A Biography. Digital Library Federation, 2002. http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub109/pub109.pdf.
  • O’Day, Vicki L, and Bonnie A. Nardi, “An Ecological Perspective on Digital Libraries,” in Digital Library Use (chapter 4).
  • Lynch, Clifford. “Colliding with the Real World: Heresies and Unexplored Questions about Audience, Economics, and Control of Digital Libraries,” in Digital Library Use (chapter 8).

Supplemental reading:

Potential topics for discussion:

  • Did these readings fit with what your preconceptions of what digital libraries were?
  • Using Greenstein and Thorin’s typology (“young,” “maturing,” and “adult”), what stage do you think most digital libraries you’ve used are? Give examples and reasons.
  • Do you think “socially grounded engineering” as described by Lynch is actually possible? Give examples and reasons.
  • Describe an example of a digital library that you’ve used in terms of O’Day and Nardi’s “ecological” framework.

September 23

  • Short- and long-term planning of digital library projects.
  • Development of sustainable projects.
  • Disruptions and boundaries.
  • First week of class-led discussion and reading summaries.

Required reading:

  • Reese and Banerjee, chapter 1.
  • National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage, NINCH Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials, chapters I, II, and IX. http://www.nyu.edu/its/humanities/ninchguide/.
  • National Information Standards Organization, “Introduction,” “Initiatives,” and “Initiative Principles,” in A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. http://framework.niso.org/.
  • Marshall, Catherine C. “Finding the Boundaries of the Library Without Walls,” in *Digital Library Use *(chapter 3).
  • Agre, Philip E. “Information and Institutional Change: The Case of Digital Libraries,” in Digital Library Use (chapter 9).
  • Cervone, H. Frank. “How not to run a digital library project.” OCLC Systems & Services 20, no. 4 (2004): 162 - 166.
  • Cervone, H. Frank. “Standard methodology in digital library project management.” OCLC Systems & Services 23, no. 1 (2007): 30 - 34.
  • Cervone, H. Frank. “The system development life cycle and digital library development.” OCLC Systems & Services 23, no. 4 (2007): 348 - 352.
  • Dietrich, Dianne, Jennifer Doty, Jen Green, and Nicole Scholtz. “Reviving Digital Projects.” The Code4Lib Journal 5 (December 15, 2008). http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/685.
  • Rieger, Oya Y. “Select for Success: Key Principles in Assessing Repository Models.” D-Lib Magazine 13, no. 7/8 (7, 2007). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july07/rieger/07rieger.html.

Supplemental reading:

  • Pitti, Daniel V. “Designing Sustainable Projects and Publications,” in A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/.

Potential topics for discussion:

  • Do you feel like the NINCH and NISO suggestions are sufficient groundwork for planning a digital library project?
  • How do boundaries and disruptions affect the planning and sustainability of digital library projects?
  • Do you think Cervone’s list in “How not to run a digital library project” is exhaustive?
  • What is the interplay between social and technical aspects in long-term custodianship of digital library projects? Whose responsibility should these projects be?

September 30

  • Digital library building blocks: XML, databases, and Resource Description Framework.
  • Identifiers.

Required reading:

Supplemental reading:

Potential topics for discussion:

  • Do you think XML, databases, and RDF are sufficient to model all possible digital objects?
  • What are the role of identifiers in relation to XML, databases, and RDF respectively?
  • Do you see the choice of a data format (i.e., XML, databases, or RDF) as a decision that will have a sociotechnical impact? What about choice of an identifier scheme?
  • Which identifier scheme would you choose first for a digital library project, and why?

October 7

  • Metadata and representation.

Required reading:

  • Levy, David M. “Documents and Libraries: A Sociotechnical Perspective,” in Digital Library Use (chapter 2).
  • Gilliland, Anne J. “Setting the Stage.” In Introduction to Metadata, edited by Murtha Baca. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata/setting.pdf.
  • Reese and Banerjee, chapter 5.
  • NINCH Guide, Appendix B (See September 16).
  • “Object Principles 3 and 6,” “Metadata,” and “Metadata Principles,” A Framework of Guidance (see September 16).
  • Chan, Lois Mai, and Marcia Lei Zeng. “Metadata Interoperability and Standardization - A Study of Methodology Part I: Achieving Interoperability at the Schema Level.” D-Lib Magazine 12, no. 6 (6, 2006). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june06/chan/06chan.html.
  • Duval, Erik, Wayne Hodgins, Stuart Sutton, and Stuart L. Weibel. “Metadata Principles and Practicalities.” D-Lib Magazine 8, no. 4 (4, 2002). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april02/weibel/04weibel.html.
  • Marshall, Catherine C. “Making Metadata: A Study of Metadata Creation for a Mixed Physical-Digital Collection.” In Proceedings of the third ACM conference on Digital libraries, 162-171. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States: ACM, 1998. http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~marshall/dl98-making-metadata.pdf.
  • McDonough, Jerome. “Structural Metadata and the Social Limitation of Interoperability: A Sociotechnical View of XML and Digital Library Standards Development.” In Proceedings of Balisage: The Markup Conference 2008. Balisage Series on Markup Technologies, vol. 1 (2008). http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol1/html/McDonough01/BalisageVol1-McDonough01.html.

Supplemental reading:

Potential topics for discussion:

  • How does Levy see the digital world as being different from the world of “traditional” libraries? Does metadata begin to address these concerns?
  • How does metadata need to be stored, and what are the sociotechnical impacts of storing them in the different formats we discussed last week?
  • Is metadata really as interoperable as the technical community wants us to believe?
  • Taking a cue from McDonough’s article, what are the sociotechnical limitations on metadata interoperability? Consider this in terms of some of the other readings, such as Chan and Zeng, Duval, and Marshall.

October 14

  • Modeling objects: digitally, intellectually, and physically.

Required reading:

  • Van House, Nancy A. “Digital Libraries and Collaborative Knowledge Construction,” in Digital Library Use (chapter 11).
  • Kahn, Robert, and Robert Wilensky. “A framework for distributed digital object services,” International Journal on Digital Libraries 6, no. 2 (2006), 115-123. http://www.doi.org/topics/2006_05_02_Kahn_Framework.pdf.
  • Daniel, Ron, Jr., Carl Lagoze, and Sandra Payette. “A Metadata Architecture for Digital Libraries.” In Proceedings of the Advances in Digital Libraries Conference. Washington: IEEE Computer Society, 1998. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/lagoze/papers/ADL98/dar-adl.html.
  • Hurley, Bernard J., John Price-Wilkin, Merrilee Proffitt, and Howard Besser. 1999.* The Making of America II Testbed Project: A Digital Library Service Model.* Council on Library and Information Resources Reports. Council on Library and Information Resources. http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub87abst.html.
  • Lagoze, Carl, Dean B. Kraft, Sandy Payette, and Susan Jesuroga. “What Is a Digital Library Anyway? Beyond Search and Access in the NSDL.” D-Lib Magazine 11, no. 11 (11, 2005). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/lagoze/11lagoze.html.
  • Pearce, Judith, David Pearson, Megan Williams, and Scott Yeadon. “The Australian METS Profile - A Journey about Metadata.” D-Lib Magazine 14, no. 3/4 (3, 2008). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march08/pearce/03pearce.html.
  • Twidale, Michael B., and Paul F. Marty. “Coping with errors: the importance of process data in robust sociotechnical systems.” In Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, 269-278. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States: ACM, 2000. http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~twidale/pubs/cscw00.pdf.
  • Hedstrom, Margaret, and Christopher A. Lee. “Significant properties of digital objects: definitions, applications, implications.” In Proceedings of the DLM-Forum 2002, 6"“8 May, 2002, Barcelona: @ccess and preservation of electronic information: Best practices and solutions, 218"“227, 2002. http://ils.unc.edu/callee/sigprops_dlm2002.pdf.

Potential topics for discussion:

  • Do you see the modeling and creation of digital objects as a case of collaborative knowledge construction? Who do you think the key stakeholders would be?
  • Do you think the Kahn/Wilensky architecture can accurately represent any kind of digital object? If not, why? Give examples.
  • How would you record the “significant properties” in a digital object as described by Hedstrom and Lee?
  • How does Twidale and Marty’s article relate to the workflows needed for digital objects? How would you create such a workflow?
  • Do you think the Making of America II project was successful? Give reasons.

October 21

  • Platforms for digital library development.
  • Content management systems.
  • Digital repositories.

Required reading:

Potential topics for discussion:

  • What do you think the appropriate infrastructural choice (i.e. a CMS or a repository) would be for the project described by Spasser?
  • Do you see a concrete difference between a CMS and a repository?
  • Do you think the various repository platforms you read about can store and retrieve digital objects reliably?
  • Do you think the highest levels of service (as described by Allinson, Jantz and Giarlo, and LeFurgy) are sustainable? What are the sociotechnical limitations on their sustainability?

October 28

  • Metadata sharing and interoperability.
  • Final project proposals due.

Required reading:

  • Reese and Banerjee, chapter 6.
  • Woodley, Mary S. “Crosswalks, Metadata Harvesting, Federated Searching, Metasearching: Using Metadata to Connect Users and Information.” In Introduction to Metadata, edited by Murtha Baca. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata/path.pdf.
  • Lagoze, Carl, and Herbert Van de Sompel. “The making of the Open Archives Initiative protocol for metadata harvesting.” Library Hi Tech 21, no. 2: 118 - 128.
  • Lagoze, Carl, Herbert Van de Sompel, Michael L. Nelson, Simeon Warner, Robert Sanderson, and Pete Johnston. “Object Re-Use & Exchange: A Resource-Centric Approach.”* 0804.2273* (April 14, 2008). http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.2273.
  • Shreeves, Sarah L., Ellen M. Knutson, Besiki Stvilia, Carole L. Palmer, Michael B. Twidale, and Timothy W. Cole. “Is “Quality” Metadata “Shareable” Metadata? The Implications of Local Metadata Practices for Federated Collections.” In Proceedings of the Twelfth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, April 7-10 2005, Minneapolis, MN, edited by H. A. Thompson, 223-237. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2005. https://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/handle/2142/145.
  • Tennant, Roy. “Bitter Harvest: Problems & Suggested Solutions for OAI-PMH Data & Service Providers.” http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/harvesting/bitter_harvest.html.
  • Tarrant, David, Ben O’Steen, Tim Brody, Tim Hitchcock, Neil Jefferies, and Leslie Carr. “Using OAI-ORE to Transform Digital Repositories into Interoperable Storage and Services Applications.” The Code4Lib Journal 6 (March 30, 2009). http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/1062.
  • Zeng, Marcia Lei, and Lois Mai Chan. “Metadata Interoperability and Standardization - A Study of Methodology Part II: Achieving Interoperability at the Record and Repository Levels.” D-Lib Magazine 12, no. 6 (6, 2006). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june06/zeng/06zeng.html.
  • Gow, Virginia, Lewis Brown, Courtney Johnston, Andy Neale, Gordon Paynter, and Fiona Rigby. “Making New Zealand Content Easier to Find, Share and Use.” In Museums and the Web 2009: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, 2009. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/gow/gow.html.

Supplemental reading:

  • Cole, Timothy W., Joanne Kaczmarek, Paul F. Marty, Christopher J. Prom, Beth Sandore, and Sarah Shreeves. “Now That We’ve Found the “˜Hidden Web,’ What Can We Do With It? The Illinois Open Archives Initiative Metadata Harvesting Experience.” In Museums and the Web 2002: Selected Papers from an International Conference, 63”“72. Pittsburgh: Archives & Museum Informatics, 2002. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2002/papers/cole/cole.html.
  • Lagoze, Carl, Dean Krafft, Tim Cornwell, Naomi Dushay, Dean Eckstrom, and John Saylor. “Metadata aggregation and “automated digital libraries”: a retrospective on the NSDL experience.” In Proceedings of the 6th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries, 230-239. Chapel Hill, NC, USA: ACM, 2006. http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0601125.

Potential topics for discussion:

  • What are the sociotechnical factors needed for interoperability across repositories?
  • How are the barriers described by Tennant sociotechnical rather than just technical?
  • Do you think Gow, et al. were successful in getting past barriers described by Shreeves, et al. and Tennant?

November 4

  • Designing applications on digital library infrastructures (1): designing workflows and tools for building and adding materials to digital libraries.

Required reading:

  • Reese and Banerjee, chapters 2 and 8.
  • Star, Susan Leigh, Geoffrey C. Bowker, and Laura J. Neumann, “Transparency beyond the Individual Level of Scale: Convergence between Information Artifacts and Communities of Practice,” in Digital Library Use (chapter 10).
  • Agnew, Grace, and Yang Yu. “The Rutgers Workflow Management System: Migrating a Digital Object Management Utility to Open Source.” The Code4Lib Journal 1 (December 18, 2007). http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/25.
  • Green, Richard, and Chris Awre. “Towards a Repository-enabled Scholar’s Workbench: RepoMMan, REMAP and Hydra.” D-Lib Magazine 15, no. 5/6 (2009). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may09/green/05green.html.
  • Krevit, Leah, and Linda Crays. “Herding cats: Designing DigitalCommons @ The Texas Medical Center, a multi-institutional repository.” OCLC Systems & Services 23, no. 2 (2007): 116 - 124.
  • Müller, Eva, Uwe Klosa, Stefan Andersson, and Peter Hansson. “The DiVA Project - Development of an Electronic Publishing System.” D-Lib Magazine 9, no. 11 (11, 2003). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november03/muller/11muller.html.
  • Waugh, Andrew. “The Design and Implementation of an Ingest Function to a Digital Archive.” D-Lib Magazine 13, no. 11/12 (11, 2007). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november07/waugh/11waugh.html.
  • Zhang, Allison B. “Creating Online Historical Scrapbooks with a User-Friendly Interface.” D-Lib Magazine 13, no. 11/12 (11, 2007). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november07/zhang/11zhang.html.
  • Daines, J. Gordon, and Cory L. Nimer. “Integrating Process Management with Archival Management Systems: Lessons Learned.” The Code4Lib Journal 6 (March 30, 2009). http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/1016.

Supplemental reading:

  • Guerard, Genie, and Robin L. Chandler. “California cultures: Implementing a model for virtual collections.” Journal of Archival Organization 4, no. 1 (2007): 45"“67.
  • McWilliams, Jeremy. “Developing an Academic Image Collection with Flickr.” The Code4Lib Journal 3 (June 23, 2008). http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/74.

Potential topics for discussion:

  • Do you think transparency is an essential part of usability for these “back-end” applications?
  • Are the examples represented by the other readings “transparent” to the user given the description by Star, Bowker, and Neumann?
  • What is the social and technical impact of putting restrictions on various types of workflows? Consider the examples given by Green and Awre, Daines and Nimer, and Waugh.
  • How do you think Krevit and Crays could have better “herded their cats”?

November 11

  • Designing applications on digital library infrastructures (2).
  • Designing for user communities.

Required reading:

  • Marchionini, Gary, Catherine Plaisant, and Anita Komlodi, “The People in Digital Libraries: Multifaceted Approaches to Assessing Needs and Impact,” in Digital Library Use (chapter 6).
  • Bishop, Ann Peterson, Bharat Mehra, Imani Bazzell, and Cynthia Smith, “Participatory Action Research and Digital Libraries: Reframing Evaluation,” in Digital Library Use (chapter 7).
  • Lervik, Jon E., Mark Easterby-Smith, Kathryn Fahy, and Carole Elliott. “Limits to Information Transfer: The Boundary Problem.” Ariadne 50 (January 2007). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue50/lervik-et-al/.
  • Maness, Jack M., Tomasz Miaskiewicz, and Tamara Sumner. “Using Personas to Understand the Needs and Goals of Institutional Repositories.” D-Lib Magazine 14, no. 9/10 (9, 2008). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september08/maness/09maness.html.
  • Marlow, Jennifer, Paul Clough, Neil Ireson, Juan Manuel Cigarrán Recuero, Javier Artiles, and Franca Debole. “The Multimatch Project: Multilingual/Multimedia Access To Cultural Heritage On The Web.” In Museums and the Web 2008: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, 2008. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2008/papers/marlow/marlow.html.
  • Pienaar, Heila, and Martie Van Deventer. “To VRE or Not to VRE? Do South African Malaria Researchers Need a Virtual Research Environment?.” Ariadne 59 (April 2009). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue59/pienaar-vandeventer/.
  • Salo, Dorothea. “Innkeeper at the Roach Motel.” Library Trends 57, no. 2 (Fall 2008). http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/22088.

Potential topics for discussion:

  • Does a digital library always have to be designed for a specific user community to be successful?
  • How do boundaries as described by Lervik, et al. inhibit or allow for digital libraries aimed at a broad user community?
  • Give your description of what you view as an ideal user community for the design of a digital library project.
  • What are the common aspects and distinctions between the methodologies used by Marchioni, et al. and Bishop, et al.?
  • Is a well-designed trans-national or global digital library possible? Consider Marlow, et al. as well as projects such as Europeana or the World Digital Library. Given the types of infrastructure we have studied, where do you see the largest problems coming up?

November 18

  • Designing applications on digital library infrastructures (3).
  • Designing for access: public interfaces; search/browse and “discovery”; information visualization for digital libraries.

Required reading:

  • Reese and Banerjee, chapter 7.
  • “Collections Principle 4,” A Framework of Guidance (see September 23).
  • Borgman, Christine L. “Designing Libraries for Usability,” in *Digital Library Use *(chapter 5).
  • Hearst, Marti. “Design of Search User Interfaces.” In Search User Interfaces. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. http://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/sui_ch1_design.html
  • Beer, Chris, and Courtney Michael. “Visualizing Media Archives: A Case Study.” The Code4Lib Journal 6 (March 30, 2009). http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/1119.
  • Börner, Katy, Ying Feng, and Tamara McMahon. “Collaborative visual interfaces to digital libraries.” In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries, 279-280. Portland, Oregon, USA: ACM, 2002.
  • Hyvönen, Eero, et al. “CultureSampo - Finnish Culture on the Semantic Web 2.0: Thematic Perspectives for the End-user.” In Museums and the Web 2009: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, 2009. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/hyvonen/hyvonen.html.
  • Sadler, Elizabeth. “Project Blacklight: a next generation library catalog at a first generation university.” Library Hi Tech 27, no. 1 (March 6, 2009): 57-67.

Supplemental reading:

  • Chan, Sebastian. “Tagging and Searching: Serendipity and museum collection databases.” In Museums and the Web 2007: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, 2007. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/chan/chan.html.
  • Kumar, Vijay, Richard Furuta, and Robert B. Allen. “Metadata visualization for digital libraries: interactive timeline editing and review.” In Proceedings of the third ACM conference on Digital libraries, 126-133. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States: ACM, 1998. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=276689.
  • Schmitz, Patrick L., and Michael T. Black. “The Delphi Toolkit: Enabling Semantic Search for Museum Collections.” In Museums and the Web 2008: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics, 2008. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2008/papers/schmitz/schmitz.html.

Potential topics for discussion:

  • What do you think are the most important aspects of designing a digital library for usability?
  • What is needed for minimal access to digital libraries?
  • Is search sufficient? How can users benefit from interfaces that allow for visualization?
  • What would your ideal discovery interface for digital libraries look like?

November 25 [No class (Thanksgiving break).]

December 2 [No class, but see below.]

  • Federated and distributed architectures and “the cloud.”

Note: You are still expected to do the readings and participate in class discussion this week via the class email list. In addition, you have the option of turning in a briefer written summary (a maximum of 3 pages), addressing what you thought were the most important aspects of the articles for the week and connecting the ideas to other concepts brought up in class. This extra credit is worth about 5% of your final grade, or approximately a partial letter grade (e.g. the difference between an A- and an A). The extra credit assignment is due by the beginning of class that week.

Required reading:

Potential topics for discussion:

  • Do you think an interoperable, federated repository system is possible?
  • What sociotechnical barriers do you think some of these authors (namely Van de Sompel, Lagoze, et al., and Manepalli, et al.) ran into while creating federated systems?
  • Do you think the cloud is secure or reliable enough for long-term storage and preservation?

December 9

  • Final papers due.
  • Presentations of final projects.

December 16

  • Final class.
  • Presentations of final projects, continued.
  • Tying up any loose ends.
Publish date:
by M.A. Matienzo