First Contact: Establishing the USC Digital Library

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First Contact Establishing the USC Digital
Library
Catherine Quinlan, Dean of the USC LibrariesHugh
McHarg, Executive Director, Communications and
Public Programming
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Outline

• The USC environment
• The Essential Library
• Mission and vision
• The USC Digital Library
• Philosophy, infrastructure, practice
• A look into the USC Digital Library
• Basel Mission Image Archive, mashups, and outreach

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The USC Environment

• Academic units
• College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences
• Graduate School
• 17 professional schools
• Student profile
• Undergraduate 16,500
• Graduate and professional 17,000
• International students 5,900most of any U.S.
  university
• Faculty and staff profile
• Full-time faculty 3,200
• Staff (50 time or more) 8,500

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Examples of Major ResearchCenters and Institutes

• Center on Public Diplomacy
• Center for Religion and Civic Culture
• East Asian Studies Center
• Institute for Multimedia Literacy
• Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and
  Education
• U.S.-China Institute

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The USC Libraries

• 22 libraries and information centers
• 200 faculty and staff members
• 250 student worker FTEs
• 4 million volumes
• 103,275 serial titles (print and electronic)
• 316,000 electronic books
• 3,192,538 visual items

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Collections Highlights

• California and history of the American West
• Cinematic and performing arts
• East Asian studies
• Iberian and Latin American studies
• Natural history
• Philosophy

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The Essential Library
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The USC Libraries Vision
The USC Libraries will be an innovative,
inspiring, and integral partner in the scholarly
achievements of USC faculty, students, and staff.
In so doing, we actively contribute to the
development of knowledge and the advancement of
society.
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The USC Libraries Vision (contd)

• We will build
• A dynamic intellectual and physical environment
  that will attract and retain top-tier students,
  faculty, and staff and encourage the creativity
  necessary to support the global ambitions of USC.

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The USC Libraries Vision (contd)

• We will build
• Vital partnerships, through which we will develop
  interdisciplinary collections that support
  faculty teaching and research, student learning,
  and the cultivation of critical-thinking
  abilities.

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The USC Libraries Vision (contd)

• We will build
• An agile, progressive culture of ubiquitous
  service that connects our users with relevant
  information.

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The USC Libraries Vision (contd)

• We will build
• An appreciation of the value of past knowledge,
  in all its forms, and its role in informing the
  scholarship of the future.

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The USC Libraries Mission

• The USC Libraries actively support the discovery,
  creation, and preservation of knowledge. We
  develop collections and services that support and
  encourage the academic endeavors of faculty,
  students, and staff build a community of
  critical consumers of information and help
  develop engaged world citizens.

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Imperatives and Objectives
Collections imperative

• To ensure ready access to existing resources and
  to develop focused collections that support
  effective learning, exceptional teaching, and
  innovative research at USC.

Digitization objective
Review digitization activities and develop a plan
for future growth.
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Task Force Findings

• Digital projects and services in silos
• The Digital Archive
• USC Institutional Repository
• AIMSArchiving, Indexing, and Metadata Services
• Discrete faculty-driven projects result of
  actively seeking to engage

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Task Force Findings

• Needed a deeper relationship with collection
  development, including
• Formal mechanism for review
• More subject librarian participation
• Unified framework for green-lighting
  projectscollections, technology, funds, faculty
  advocates

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Task Force Findings

• Persistent questions among our users
• What is the approval process for digital
  projects?
• What are the libraries responsibilities? What
  are my responsibilities as a content owner?
• Will you buildand maintaina custom interface?
• When I donate a collection, is it automatically
  digitized?

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The USC Digital Library
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Digitization Philosophy

• A program of digitization, rather than a digital
  archive
• Digitized collections must be accessible through
  our primary catalog
• Project decisions must be transparent and
  communicated to partners and within the libraries
• Focus on accessibility and sustainability vs.
  customization, however

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Digitization Infrastructure
Technical

• build so that assets are retrievable from
  secondary interfaces
• Currently using Documentum

Organizational

• Formal Digital Library unit and with a director
• Reports to the associate dean for collections

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Digitization Practices

• Digital Library Selection Advisory Committee
• Technical expertise
• Subject knowledge
• Metadata specialists
• Established selection criteria
• Relevant to educational and research mission of
  USC
• Legal right to provide online access
• Inventory and metadata available
• Feasible with existing or potentially obtainable
  resources
• Status and documentation published online

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State of the USC Digital Library

• 2007 Digital Archive
• Records 125,307
• Assets 155,897

• 2009 Digital Library
• Records 200,500
• Assets 255,935

• 17 New Collections, Including
• Basel Mission images
• Los Angeles Examiner
• Russian satirical journals
• Sea of Korea maps

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A Look into the USC Digital Library
Basel Mission Image ArchiveDistributed Content
ContributionMashups, Outreach, and Community
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1.USC Digital Library
digitallibrary.usc.edu
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2.BaselMissionPhotos
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3.BaselMissionPhotos
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4.DistributedContentCapture
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5.DistributedContentCapture
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7.AlternateInterface
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8.VisualInterpreterby Rahul Mehrotra, Sharada
Dwivedi
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9.VisualInterpreterby Emmanuel Akyeampong
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10.RussianSatiricalJournals
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11.RussianSatiricalJournals
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12.RussianSatiricalJournals
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13.GoogleMapInterface
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14.Google-FlickrMashup
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15.TwitterOutreach
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16.MediaResource
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17.MediaResource
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18.PrintExhibitions
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Special Thanks

• Matt Gainer
• Director, USC Digital Library
• Chris Mendez
• Web Applications Developer
• Joyce Ouchida
• Senior Web Developer
• Wayne Shoaf
• Head, Technical Services
• Tim Stanton
• Project Manager
• Jon Vidar
• Multimedia Services Developer

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Questions