University of Michigan
The University of Michigan has directed much of its digital library (and library
technology, generally) effort to development and collaboration through HathiTrust
(see separate HathiTrust project overview). We believe that much of what our
community can accomplish through digital libraries should happen in a common,
shared space, and so have redirected resources in this regard. Some of what
Michigan works to develop uses the common infrastructure to deliver local services.
For example, Michigan now provides access to in-copyright digitized texts for its
certified users with print disabilities by leveraging HathiTrust infrastructure.
Michigan has other well-established digital library efforts in a number of areas (e.g.,
image delivery and publishing), and some efforts (e.g., audio and video) are more
exploratory. These are discussed below:
Digital Library Production Service
Digital Library development at the University of Michigan Library centers in the
Digital Library Production Service (DLPS) with vital contributions coming from many
areas including Preservation, Collection Development, Technical Services, Web
Services, Systems, Scholarly Publishing Office. DLPS was formed in 1996 to provide
infrastructure for campus digital library collections, including both access systems
and digitization services. DLPS is a unit of the University Library, and is part of its
Library Information Technology Division.
DLPS undertakes open-ended maintenance and development of the collections and
systems it supports. While it is a certainty that the methods and strategies for
maintenance will evolve, setting a term on the duration of responsibility for a
collection can only contribute to a process of trivializing the collections of the digital
library: these digital library collections are, in effect, our perpetual responsibility.
Access is seen as an essential component of preservation and the Library
concentrates on ensuring long term access on the premise that continuing attention
to access will also ensure the long term viability of the digital materials themselves.
All DLPS systems are constructed so that they can be supported in this open-ended
fashion (i.e., as much as it is possible to say this, in perpetuity). Capture formats are
all standards-based and high fidelity; in fact, most are suitable for creating
replacement copies of original publications. In nearly all cases, the "archival" version
of the digital surrogate is also the online version.
As part of its mission of full integration within the larger University Library, DLPS
relies on the expertise and methods of the Preservation Department to ensure longterm maintenance of these digital masters. We rely on cooperation with the
Preservation Department to achieve effective preservation of the digital files.
DLPS is funded by the University Library. In addition, DLPS receives funding from
grants, and from partnerships with other universities, commercial publishers, and
non-profit organizations.
Main Functions
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Digitize library collections: The Digital Conversion Unit (DCU) within DLPS has
the expertise and capacity for in-house digitization of books and materials
such as papyri and photographs. DCU manages outsourced conversion as
well. http://www.lib.umich.edu/node/19943
Host online collections: DLPS is responsible for providing access to digitized
books and journals, museum images, archival finding aids, bibliographies and
catalogs. DLPS staff develop digital library software called DLXS.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu
Provide leadership in digital library development: Through memberships in
national and international organizations, such as the Digital Library
Federation, the Text Encoding Initiative. DLPS plays an active role in the
Library's partnership with Google, and in Michigan's membership in
HathiTrust.
Activities Supported
An array of activities are supported around formats and the emergence of specific
needs from the Library, campus, and more generally. Publishing included.
For instance:
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Video and audio are being approached both as digital preservation problem
(format conversion and storage) and delivery problem (streaming with
BlueStream, supported by our Digital Media Commons);
Scholarly Publishing Office partnerships (e.g., ACLS History E-Book), as well
as their local imprint. Similarly, digital library infrastructure is leveraged for
the University of Michigan Press for access and print on demand;
Hosting services built to meet Library needs (e.g., Special Collections image
databases) are often extended to the rest of the campus and the broader
community;
DLPS has been, and continues to be, a key player in a number of prominent
initiatives including:
HathiTrust
The HathiTrust Experimental (full-text) Search, Catalog Search, Page Turner,
Collection Builder, and Data API were developed at Michigan to establish
access to the repository with the intention of distributing the development
effort across partner institutions in the future. http://www.hathitrust.org
OAIster
Recently transferred to OCLC, OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records
representing open archive resources that was built by harvesting from open
archive collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for
Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Today, OAIster boasts more than 23 million
records representing digital resources from more than 1,100 contributors.
http://oaister.org
Deep Blue Institutional Repository
Deep Blue is the University of Michigan's permanent, safe, and accessible
service for representing our rich intellectual community. Its primary goal is to
provide access to the work that makes Michigan a leader in research, teaching,
and creativity. http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/
Text Creation Partnership
The Text Creation Partnership (TCP) at the University of Michigan is bringing
together the international library community with commercial scholarly
publishers to support the creation of accurately keyboarded and encoded
editions of thousands of culturally significant works in all fields of scholarly and
artistic endeavor. http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/
DLXS
The University of Michigan Digital Library eXtension Service (DLXS) provides
the foundation and the framework for educational and non-profit institutions to
fully develop their digital library collections. DLXS is the middleware used to
host over 200 collections including texts, images, EAD finding aids, and
bibliographies. Several peer institutions have adopted DLXS as well.
http://www.dlxs.org
JSTOR
In the pilot phase of JSTOR, which at that time was partnered with the
University Library, the Preservation Division was responsible for designing and
codifying all pre-scanning preparation and post-scanning quality control
guidelines and processes, based on nationally-accepted guidelines and
standards for microfilm prep and quality control. http://www.jstor.org
Making of America
A major collaborative endeavor to preserve and make accessible a significant
body of primary sources related to development of the U.S. infrastructure.
With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, MOA sought to involve
research institutions and national consortia to develop common protocols and
consensus for the selection, conversion, storage, retrieval, and use of digitized
materials on a large, distributed scale. http://moa.umdl.umich.edu
Advanced Papyrological Information System
APIS is a "virtual library," created and maintained by the University of Michigan
and other universities to provide online access to papyrological collections.
Users are able to view digital images and detailed catalog records containing
information on papyrus characteristics, corrections to published papyri, and
republications. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?c=apis
Humanities Text Initiative
Providing online access to full text resources since 1994. The Humanities Text
Initiative (HTI) is an umbrella organization for the creation, delivery, and
maintenance of electronic texts, as well as a mechanism for furthering the
library community's capabilities in the area of online text.
http://www.hti.umich.edu/
Scholarly Publishing Office
The Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO) provides an array of sustainable publishing
services to the scholarly community. Costs are kept low and methods sustainable by
leveraging the resources and expertise of the Library to offer a core set of services
for digital publishing and partnering with others to extend these services when
necessary. SPO's publications are not simply websites: they are interfaces to text
and images stored in non-proprietary formats in the University of Michigan’s digital
library infrastructure. Michigan has a distinguished history in the preservation of
digital resources, successfully maintaining them through changes in technology. As
an extension of this preservation commitment, SPO pledges to maintain the content
it publishes. SPO's preference for open-source software helps to keeps costs down.
And the approach to marketing is to make SPO's publications discoverable through
search engines, full-text searching, and library catalogues.
As a library-based publisher, SPO helps scholars navigate the shifting landscape of
scholarly communication.
SPO's core services include:
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Electronic publication and distribution of journals, monographs, and other
scholarly content in a range of formats;
Robust search and navigation;
Long-term preservation and archiving;
Conversion of content from print or digital formats into XML;
Usage statistics;
Support for multimedia;
Access control options (open to the public or available by subscription);
Persistent URLs (handles);
Content discoverable by major search engines, OAI-PMH harvesting, and web
feeds;
ISSN and ISBN registration;
Metadata creation and cataloging;
Workflow management;
Consulting and project planning;
SPO also helps with:
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Intellectual property rights consultation
Digitization of printed text and images
Business planning for qualified journals in the humanities and social sciences,
through our partnership with SPARC
Setting up publications for print-on-demand or short-run digital printing
Locating skilled graphic designers, copyeditors, and indexers
It is worth noting that SPO is a part of the University of Michigan Library efforts
being re-conceived as MPublishing. MPublishing is a newly formed publishing
organization within the University of Michigan Library intended to align the existing
and future publishing activities of the Library with the core strengths and information
needs of the University. MPublishing incorporates the publishing activities of UM
Press, the Scholarly Publishing Office, Deep Blue (the institutional repository), and
the Library Copyrights office. Amongst its goals are developing quality information
communities for well-defined audiences, creating sustainable support for openaccess and campus-based publishing and working with the faculty to understand and
develop the scholarly publishing environment. MPublishing uses the best emerging
digital technology to disseminate scholarship as freely and widely as possible while
ensuring the integrity of the published scholarship. Its collective resources provide a
broad range of digital and print publishing and distribution options.