Building a Digital Library

1
Building a Digital Library

• Rochester Public Library
• The Next 100 Years

2
What Is a Digital Library?

• An organization that comprehensively collects,
  manages and preserves for the long term rich
  digital content, and offers to its user
  communities specialized functionality on that
  content, of measurable quality and according to
  codified policies.
• DELOS Digital Library Reference Model
• Simply put, RPL will collect digital content,
  organize it and present it in an easy-to-use
  manner.

3
The Future

• Information scientists at the University of
  California, Berkeley, estimate that the worlds
  total yearly production of print, film, optical,
  and magnetic content would require roughly 1.5
  billion gigabytes of storage. Therefore, they
  believe that soon it will be technologically
  possible for an average person to access
  virtually all recorded information.
• The Digital Library Its Future Has Arrived, 2003
• Note show 4 gig thumb drive

4
Collect

• Information born digital
• Government documents, annual reports, websites,
  tweets
• Existing information that becomes digital
• Historical information, public domain books,
  video audio, important local information, print
  on demand.
• Information about information and technology

5

• Espresso Book Machine

6
RPL Collection Plan, 2011-2013

• Virtual reference books
• E-books and other digital content
• Government Documents
• Digitization of print material

7
Manage

• Organize digital information into manageable
  chunks - http//www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digita
  l.html.
• Provide conduits between library experts and
  users accessing information.

8
RPL Management Plan, 2011-13

• Establish a Digital Services Manager position.
• Provide multiple access points to information,
  including
• Mobile
• Offsite visual access via webcam

9
Preserve

• Ensure access to information born digital e.g.
  newspapers, annual reports, government
  information.
• Provide digital access to endangered historical
  materials.

10
RPL Preservation Plan

• Enhance existing Digitization program.
• Create a single search front end to digital
  collections, i.e. an ancestry.com for the
  Genesee Valley.
• Enhance a print-on-demand service for digital
  materials.

11
Digital Library Examples

• American Memory - http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/inde
  x.html
• Worthington Memory - http//www.worthingtonmemory.
  org/
• FLAG Heritage - http//www.flagheritage.org/
• ArXiv - http//arxiv.org/
• Internet Archive - http//www.archive.org/

12
Funding

• Reynolds Library Board
• Fundraising in 2011
• Estimated need of 300k per year to operate
  2012-2013, including
• Staffing Digital Services Manager, Web designer
  programmer, data entry
• Database development
• Collection development
• Marketing
• Training
• Espresso Book Machine

13
How Can You Help?

• Participate in focus groups to be held in the
  last half of 2011.
• Donate to the cause.

14
The Final Word on BooksFor Now

• Book sales are up from 20 years ago in 2010
  Americans bought more than 751 Million books.
• In 2008, more original book titles were published
  than ever before 290,000 titles.
• In 2007, there were more U.S. publishers than
  ever before 74,000 compared to 397 in 1925.
• In 2008, the total spent on books in the U.S. was
  24.3 Million
• Library membership in the U.S. is at an all-time
  high at 209 Million people, with 2.3 Billion
  items borrowed in 2008.
• from Nielsens BookScan

15
Reading is alive and well.