From Concept to Reality: An overview of the University of
Wisconsin Digital Collections
Melissa Mclimans
What we do:
• Create digital resources to support instruction and research
• Build quality digital resources from:
– rare, fragile, non-circulating, and high-use library and archival materials
– materials not previously digitized nor available on the Internet
– books, journals, archival collections, slides, photos, art illustrations, maps,
audio, and video
• Develop tools that facilitate search, retrieval, and navigation of our
digital resources
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Provide stable, scalable, and sustainable technology platforms for long-term
management of digital resources
The UWDCC is:
– 6 full time and 10-15 student staff
– Librarians, technology specialists, and other information
professionals
– located in Memorial Library on
Madison campus
Two administrative bodies oversee
and fund our projects:
– UW System
– UW-Madison Libraries
A little history...
First text project was John Nolen’s Madison : a
model city
First multi-media project was AfricaFocus
3000 slides, 500 photographs, and 50 hours of sounds from forty-five
different countries
We have:
–32000 audio minutes
–Well over 5000 finding aids
–92000 images
–2.1 million pages of text
UW Digital Collections
• strengths include: area studies, decorative arts, ecology, literature,
history, music, natural resources, science, social sciences, the State of
Wisconsin, and the University of Wisconsin.
• Over 400 completed projects
• Recently approved projects
Institutional repository (Minds@UW)
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Store, index, distribute, and preserve digital materials
Deposited directly by UW faculty or staff
Research papers, pre-prints, datasets, photographs, videos, learning
objects, theses, student projects, conference papers
Content distributed through a searchable Web interface, receive
persistent URLs
For more information: http://uwdcc.library.wisc.edu/minds/
Where does the content come from?
• UW Madison -- Libraries and Faculty
– Playing House
– Ainu Komonjo Volumes
• UW System Libraries
– The Ku Klux Klan in Northwestern Wisconsin, circa 19151950
– UW-La Crosse Historic Steamboat Photograph collection
• Public Libraries, Museums and Historical
Societies
– World War II Veterans of Mount Horeb
– Kenosha County History: Images and Texts, 1830s1940s
Projects that meet these criteria are most likely to be approved:
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support instruction or research needs
do not circulate, e.g. rare books, materials from Special Collections
enhance an existing digital collection
are unique, e.g. not previously digitized nor available online in any format
high use, regularly requested by UW faculty or students
are distinctive and have potential for academic use and general education
interest (K-12)
The Process for submitting a proposal
1. Proposals are submitted with our simple web form found at:
http://uwdcc.library.wisc.edu/forms/submitProposal.shtml
2. Our team will assesses project and meets with content providers to discuss project
details.
3. We will present the proposal to a committee, who will accept or decline the
proposal.
4. Once approved, we will work together to create a Memorandum of Understanding
that fully describes the project.
5. Work begins.
• A quick note about our project types
– Efacs = Electronic Facsimile = Pageturner = TEXT
• We do the metadata and scanning
– Mmbib = Multi Media, Bibliographic = IMAGES
• Content provider is the subject specialist
• Content provider does the metdata
• We do the scanning
Value of digitization
1. Access
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Google
catalog records, including Forward
and finding aids
2. Preservation
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Back-up TIFF images, store offsite, committed to
migrating in the future
Value = Increased Use
Facebook
• Over 580 total fans
• More Than 20,000 page views per month
• Approx. 1,000 impressions per post
Twitter
• Over 1,040 followers
• More than 1,000 clicks per month
Collection Sessions
Overall collection sessions--18,508,649
State of WI--1,904,409
Ecology and Natural Resources – 1,512,121
UW Collection--709,846
• Questions?