Karen Lindquist
ILS 655 S70 Digital Libraries
Digital Resources
Libraries funded by the National Science Foundation’s
Digital Library Initiative I & II
Dr. Yan Quan Liu
Fall 2012
The Digital Library Initiative (DLI) sprang from the High Performance Computing Act of
1991,which led to the development of the National Information Infrastructure; both of which were
introduced by Senator Albert Gore Jr. The DLI included three main research areas;

The capture, catalog and organization of data and metadata of all kinds.

Advanced software and algorithm development for browsing, searching, filtering, abstracting,
summarizing and combining large amounts of data.

The use of distributed networked database. (Chowdhury, p.45)
Starting in 1994, the Digital Library Initiative was funded in two phases. NSF, DARPA and NASA
contributed to Phase 1 and it ran until 1998; funding six university digital library projects; a total of $30
million was divided equally among the six. The focus for phase 1 was on universities with strong
technical backgrounds. The National Library of Medicine, the Library of Congress, National Endowment
for the Humanities, the National Archives and the Smithsonian joined the initial three funders for a
second phase from 1999 to 2003. Thirty-six grants were issued for a total of $55 million, but they were
not equally distributed. The first six institutions were included in the second phase, either as extensions
or for new initiatives. Twenty-four new institutions were added in Phase 2, making for 30 institutions in
total receiving grants. The focus in Phase 2 was on a broader range of academic disciplines.
(http://bengross.com/dl/#DLI).
Today, the majority of these digital projects have evolved into something more than what their
grant application titles specified. The website for the Phase 2 portion of the Digital Library Initiative is
not even available any more; but the full list for Phase 2 can be found in Introduction to Digital Libraries
by Chowdhury and Chowdhury, 2007. Unfortunately, this resource has already become outdated, many
of the links are broken and project management has changed. This change shifts the emphasis to
subject matter rather than the university or its initiative involved; what is needed now is to gain a
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greater perspective of what is available in digital libraries today.Therefore, this list will be presented in
subject order, making it more useful to librarians. The Digital Library Initiative information will be listed,
but secondary to content, since the majority of these DLs are now maintained by different funding.
There are 37 projects listed covering seven subjects, science being the largest.
Computer Science, Information and General Works (12)
General Works in this context refers to funded projects which have no discernible end result in a
particular subject.
Cornell University - http://www.library.cornell.edu/
Phase 2 funding for Cornell went to Project Prism which studied and developed a working
prototype for a DL architecture with information integrity. There is currently no access to
Project Prism, but Cornell does have a very integrated and expansive catalog .
D-SIFTER - http://cs.iupui.edu/research/d-sifter-distributed-information-filtering-system
The goals of the D-SIFTER project at Indiana University are: 1.) develop a filtering system to
rank-order incoming documents, present them and learn user profile. 2.) access the suitability of
various object models to the domain. 3.) Investigate inter-agent protocols and explore using
market-based economic models. Initial funding was from Phase 2.
Georgia State University - http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/
GSU’s phase 2 funding was for Research on a Digital Library for Graphics and Visualization
Education; while no one collection came from it, the university has a strong visual presence and
searchable interface in its digital collections.
Informedia - http://www.informedia.cs.cmu.edu/
Informedia technology understands speech, image and natural language to
transcribe, segment and index linear video for search and retrieval in multiple
languages. Informedia focuses on education, healthcare, defense intelligence and
human activity. Initiated through Phase 1 funding to Carnegie Mellon University with two
projects coming from Phase 2. (1) continued search and discovery research for the video
medium and (2)the simplified interactive layout and video editing for re-use.
MLibary Digital Collections - http://quod.lib.umich.edu/lib/colllist/
The University of Michigan currently has 260 collections in their digital library,197 of which are
public and 63 private, spanning 11 different subjects. This was made possible through the Phase
1 funding to the university to research the creation, operation and use of large-scale ever
evolving DLs.
Old Dominion University - http://dlib.cs.odu.edu/
ODU Digital Library Research Group is involved with many digital library research projects. UDLF
is the project funded by Phase2 and focuses on DL research in undergraduate science.
Stanford Digital Library Technologies - http://diglib.stanford.edu:8091/index.shtml
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A digital library on Digital Libraries. Information focuses on the design and
implementation of the infrastructure and services needed to create, disseminate, share
and manage information in a DL context. Initiated through Phase 1 funding to Stanford
University with two projects funded through Phase 2. (1) Image filtering for secure distribution
of medical information (unavailable to public), (2) Development of heterogeneity of information
and services.
University of Arizona - http://www.arizona.edu/libraries
UA received Phase 2 funding for High-Performance Digital Library Classification Systems: From
Information Retrieval to Knowledge Management, yet there is no direct evidence of it. UA
currently has 15 digital collections available.
University of Hawaii at Manoa - http://library.manoa.hawaii.edu/research/digicoll.html
UH at Manoa received Phase 2 funding for the Shuhai Wenyuan Classical Chinese Digital
Database and Interactive Internet Worktable, yet there is nothing on their library website to
confirm its existence.
University of Kentucky - http://www.kyvl.org/
UK’s Phase 2 funding was directed toward creating new techniques for restoring, searching and
editing humanities collections, but there is no longer a direct connection to the project entitled
Digital Atheneum.
University of South Carolina Digital Collections - http://library.sc.edu/digital/about.html
It’s difficult to find a direct correlation to USC’s Phase 2 funding for a software and data library
for experiments, simulations and archiving; however, they do have a strong moving images
collection and historical archive which may have grown out of it.
University of Washington - http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/data_management/ the project
title was Automatic Reference Librarians for the World Wide Web, but there is no indication of
its existence at this time. The above link is the Computer Science Department which we can
assume absorbed any automated intelligence work which received Phase 2 funding.
Social Sciences (2)
Dataverse Network - http://thedata.org
The Dataverse Network Project is an open source application for publishing, citing and
discovering research data for the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. It was
Initiated by Phase 2 funding for Harvard University.
Encyclopedia of Philosophy - http://plato.stanford.edu/
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a dynamic and scholarly reference work maintaining
academic standards while evolving and adapting to new research. It uses a publishing model
more advanced than other digital libraries and has mirror sites in other universities around the
world for faster and access and backup. Initiated through Phase 2 funding to Stanford
University.
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Language (1)
Small Footprints Speech Synthesis - http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/education/schools/school-ofmedicine/departments/basic-science-departments/biomedical-engineering/center-for-spokenlanguage-understanding/small-footprint-speech-synthes.cfm?WT_rank=1
Small Footprint Speech Synthesis aims to develop and implement a new algorithm in the area of
text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis; this will have implications for Automatic Speech Recognition,
individuals who have lost their voice, mobile apps,, personalized TTS systems. Initiated through
Phase 2 funding to the Oregon Health and Science University.
Science (STEM based) (13)
AmphibiaWeb - http://amphibiaweb.org/
Information on amphibian declines, conservation, natural history and taxonomy.
Initialized through Phase 1 funding to the University of California at Berkeley, now a part
of the Berkeley Natural History Museum with continued support from Phase 2.
Biodiversity Sciences Technology Group (BSCIT) - http://bscit.berkeley.edu/
Includes: Moorea Biocode Project, CalBug, California Moth Database, Essig Museum
Specimen Database, UC Museum of Paleontology. Initialized through Phase 1 funding to
the University of California at Berkeley, now a part of the Berkeley Natural History
Museum with continued support from Phase 2.
CalPhotos - http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/
356,452 photos of plants, animals, fossils, people and landscapes around the world.
Initialized through Phase 1 funding to the University of California at Berkeley, now a part
of the Berkeley Natural History Museum with continued support from Phase 2.
DigiMorph - http://www.digimorph.org/
DigiMorph is a biological visualization library using digital morphology generated from a highresolution X-ray computed tomographic scanner. 2D and 3D visualizations of the internal and
external structures of living and extinct vertebrates and invertebrates are currently cataloged.
Initiated through Phase 2 funding to the University of Texas at Austin.
Docubase - http://docubase.berkeley.edu/
A collection of online document collections including: The Museum of Vertebrate
Zoology Reprints, California Native Plant Society, the University and Jepson Herbaria,
and the Essig Museum databases. Initialized through Phase 1 funding to the University
of California at Berkeley, now a part of the Berkeley Natural History Museum with
continued support from Phase 2.
Earthscape - http://www.earthscape.org/
A comprehensive aggregate of resources in Earth and Environmental Science. Columbia
University received Phase 2 funding for this project.
eSkeletons - www.eskeletons.org/
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The purpose of eSkeletons is to provide an interactive view of human and non-human primate
bones; an osteological database is also available for information gathering. Initiated through
Phase 2 funding to the University of Texas at Austin.
Grainger Engineering Library - http://dli.grainger.uiuc.edu/
The initial Phase 1 funded project to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on the
building of a full-text collection of journal articles in physics, engineering and computer science
is no longer available as such, but the university continues to develop projects and search tools
in these subject areas.
iLumina - http://dl.uncw.edu/
A DL of sharable undergraduate teaching materials in chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics
and computer science. University of North Carolina at Wilmington received Phase 2 funding for
this project and all resources are cataloged in the MARC and NSDL metadata formats.
JOMA Applet Project - http://mathforum.org/joma_applet/
The JOMA Applet Project produced a digital library of small platform-independent electronic
tools for teaching mathematics. Methodology was to find, review, test and make available
standalone or embedded applets to be published in JOMA the electronic Journal of Mathematics
and its Applications. Initiated through phase 2 funding to Swarthmore College.
Medical Image Resources - http://library.uic.edu/home/collections/images
University of Illinois received Phase 2 funding to create a Digital Library of Human Movement,
since there is no direct link to such, it’s believed this is the end result.
NEEDS - www.needs.org/
The National Engineering Education Delivery System is a Phase 2 funded project at UC Berkeley
to develop a digital library for science, mathematics, engineering and technology education.
Development includes courseware, cataloging, indexing, searching and downloading to the
science and mathematics community.
PERSIVAL - www.cs.columbia.edu/diglib/PERSIVAL/
A Personalized Retrieval and Summarization of Image, Video And Language resources was
developed by Columbia University from Phase 2 funding for the purpose of logging patient care
information. Consequently the site is not accessible to the general public.
Arts (2)
Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music - http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/
This sheet music and cover art collection spans the years 1780 to 1980 and features 29,000
pieces of American popular music. The database is fully searchable and also browsable by 38
subjects created by Levy himself. The sheet music is provided when copyright allows, but the
cover art alone makes for interesting and historical viewing. Initiated through Phase 2 funds to
John Hopkins University.
Variations - http://dml.indiana.edu/
This digital music library provides online access to students and faculty of recordings and scores
from the Cook Music Library at Indiana University. The Variations open-source software
developed at IU is available for other institutions. Variations 3 currently offers scanned score I
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mages in addition to streamed audio along with analysis and annotation tools for teaching and
learning. They are also working on metadata and searching based on the notion of the musical
work to improve search capabilities. Initiated through Phase 2 funding to Indiana University.
Literature (3)
Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews - http://www.sephardifolklit.org/flsj/
A multimedia archive of ballads and other oral literature in Judeo-Spanish funded by Phase 2 for
the University of California at Davis. Now one of many DLs available to the California university
system.
International Children’s Digital Library - http://en.childrenslibrary.org/
The International Children’s Digital Library’s goal is to make the best in children’s literature
available online to meet the needs of a global community, currently 19 languages are
represented within the seven collections. UM is responsible for the interface development for
this DL. Initiated through Phase 2 funding to the University of Maryland.
Perseus – www.perseus.tufts.edu
Perseus Digital Library in its latest incarnation includes TEI XML collections in Greek, Latin, and
English under a Creative Commons Sharalike/Non-Commercial/Attribution license. Collections
include: Greek and Roman materials – text, art and artifacts; Arabic and Germanic materials;
19th Century American History; Renaissance; Humanist and Renaissance Italian Poetry in Latin,
and the Richmond Times Dispatch. Initiated through Phase 2 funding to Tufts University.
History and Geography (4)
Alexandria Digital Library - http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/
A collection of georeferenced materials, similar to Google maps except better. Initialized
through Phase 1 funding to the University of California at Santa Barbara with continued support
for the ADEPTproject – a Virtual Learning Environment coming from Phase 2.
Cuneiform Digital Library- http://cdli.ucla.edu/
UCLA’s Initiative catalogs the form and content of nearly 270,000 cuneiform tablets dating from
the beginning of writing, ca. 3350 BC to the end of the pre-Christian era. It is a joint project with
the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Initiated through Phase 2 funding to the
University of California at Los Angeles
Word Spotting - http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/irdemo/hw-demo/
University of Massachusetts at Amherst received Phase 2 funding for the Indexing of Hand
Written Manuscripts; an historical document retrieval system developed by the Center for
Intelligent Information Retrieval
The National Gallery of the Spoken Word - www.ngsw.org/
This digital libraryhas created a search-able digital library of spoken word collections
spanning the 20th century. These sound files can be accessed through Historicalvoices.org .
Initiated through Phase 2 funding to Michigan State University.
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References
In addition to each of the websites listed above, the following works were consulted.
Chowdhury, G. G., Chowdhury, S. (2007). Introduction to digital libraries. London: Facet Publishing.
Digital Libraries – Access to Human Knowledge. National Science Foundation. Accessed Octtober 21,
2012 at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/cyber/digitallibraries.jsp
Gross, B. Phd. Information retrieved October 21, 2012 from http://bengross.com/dl/#DLI
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