New & Noteworthy

Citation

(2007), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 24 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2007.23924fab.001

New & Noteworthy

Library Game Lab at Syracuse University

One role of many libraries is to serve as a community center where people living in the same area can meet and enjoy activities together. Games, as the next new media, are quickly being integrated into library services as an offering for groups of users who may not frequent the library for other reasons. As with any phenomenon, scientists wish to understand more about this intersection of gaming and libraries. In order to explore games in libraries, researchers from the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, the American Library Association and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana are working together. As the project grows, Director Scott Nicholson hopes that it will attract other researchers

Other researchers involved with the process are Ian MacInnes and R. David Lankes, both from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and David Dubin, from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. These researchers are tackling early problems of the development of a classification structure for games and determining the public good served by the library providing gaming programs. George Needham, VP of Member Services at OCLC, has been speaking on gaming in libraries for several years and brings a perspective from the largest worldwide library cooperative to the project. In addition, Jenny Levine, from the American Library Association, has considerable experience with gaming in libraries and will be bridging the research with the practice of librarianship.

To extend their current work, the researchers are working to secure funding to build a research laboratory at the Information Institute of Syracuse, where they can replicate the gaming programs currently put on in libraries and explore new program ideas. The researchers wish to explore the effectiveness of different types of gaming activities – not only video games, but also physical face-to-face games like board and card games – with different socioeconomic and age groups. In addition, the laboratory will be portable so that results can be tested in local libraries. The results will be disseminated to libraries as a guide to selecting gaming activities for a particular demographic profile and program goal and will be reported at the ALA Tech Source Symposium on Gaming, Learning, and Libraries conference in July to be covered in a future issue of LHTN. Questions about this project can be directed to Scott Nicholson at srnichol@syr.edu.

Research website: http://gamelab.Syr.edu/

Surface: Microsoft Launches New User Interface Technology

At the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference in May, Microsoft unveiled Microsoft Surfac, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.

The intuitive user interface works without a traditional mouse or keyboard, allowing people to interact with content and information on their own or collaboratively with their friends and families, just like in the real world. Surface is a 30-in. display in a table-like form factor that small groups can use at the same time. From digital finger painting to a virtual concierge, surface brings natural interaction to the digital world in a new way.

Surface computing, which Microsoft has been working on for a number of years, features four key attributes:

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  Direct interaction. Users can actually "grab" digital information with their hands, interacting with content by touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.

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  Multi-touch. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger like a typical touch-screen, but up to dozens of items at once.

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  Multi-user. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.

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  Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.

Harrah's Entertainment Inc., Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., and T-Mobile USA Inc. will be some of the first companies to provide their customers with Surface computing experiences. Surface will also be made available through a distribution and development agreement with International Game Technology (IGT), a global company specializing in the design, development, manufacturing, distribution and sales of computerized gaming machines and systems products.

More information: www.surface.com

iTunes U Launched

Apple announced in May 2007 the launch of iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store featuring free content such as course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours provided by top US colleges and universities including Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT.

iTunes U was created in collaboration with colleges and universities that were looking for ways to expand and enrich their curricula with digital content. It is designed to make it easier to extend learning, explore interests, learn more about a school and stay connected with an alma mater. Colleges and universities build their own iTunes U sites. Faculty post content they create for their classes. Students download what they need. Downloads can be made to a Mac, a PC, or an iPod; however installation of the freely available iTunes software is required to download podcasts.

User guides, online podcasting workshops, content scenarios, design tips and help resources are all available for download from the iTunes U Faculty page.

iTunes U: www.apple.com/education/itunesu/

iTunes U user guides and documentation: www.apple.com/education/itunesu/faculty.html

New Features from Aquabrowser

OPAC as a Service

AquaBrowser, a world leader in visual faceted search that connects to any data source, has announced the official live debut of AquaBrowser Online at the 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC. AquaBrowser Online claims to be the first "OPAC as a Service" in the library industry. AquaBrowser Online, developed on the "Software as a Service" model, is a web-based OPAC solution that brings the basic Search, Discover and Refine functions of AquaBrowser Library to the library's catalog. AquaBrowser Online makes it easy for smaller libraries to take advantage of the latest web-based library search technology.

AquaBrowser Online will allow any user to discover information while searching its catalog with the visual word cloud, as well as allowing the user to zoom in on exactly what they are looking for with the refine menu which categorizes the items. Because this is completely web-based there are no servers for the library to purchase as with typical software installations. AquaBrowser Online is a 100 per cent web-based service hosted on AquaBrowser central servers; there is nothing to install. AquaBrowser Online is sold as a subscripted monthly service with a small monthly fee.

Libraries can customize their AquaBrowser Online website with the library's name, logo, color scheme, interface language (English, Spanish, German, or Italian) and a URL of their choice. All AquaBrowser Online customers get their own AquaBrowser Online web address (e.g. http://YOURLIBRARYNAME.aquabrowseronline.com). Patrons can be guided directly to the library's AquaBrowser Online website or the library can create a link from its website to the AquaBrowser OPAC.

Making Libraries' Resources Findable on the Web

AquaBrowser is opening up the library by making its resources visible on the web. AquaBrowser now allows all the item records in a library's collection to be indexed and found by any internet search engine, as if to create a separate web page for every title in the library's collection. This means any item in the entire collection can be found as a search result when performing a regular web search, driving traffic to the library website and allowing anyone to discover its community valuable information.

Medialab CEO Bastiaan Zwaan commented on the newest AquaBrowser feature, "Have you ever wondered why when performing a simple search on the web you retrieve tons of great information from a variety of resources, but you never see information about that topic from a library in the results? Without the library's resources being visible in a web search, it is as if the search result list is incomplete. We all know that the library is filled with great information, now let the library show it off!" AquaBrowser's new feature helps the library promote itself as a relevant source of information for the community, as well as a broader audience.

Aquabrowser Online: www.aquabrowseronline.com

Aquabrowser website: www.aquabrowser.com/index.asp

WorldCat xISBN Service Now Available for Commercial Applications

The WorldCat xISBN service, the OCLC service that supplies International Standard Book Numbers associated with individual intellectual works represented in the WorldCat database, is now available for commercial and high-use applications. The WorldCat xISBN service, which began as an OCLC Research project, is a machine-to-machine service that supplies ISBNs and other information associated with an individual work in WorldCat, the database for discovery of items held in libraries. It has been a supported service, available at no charge for individual, non-commercial use, since February. It is now also being made available for commercial and high-use applications (more than 500 requests per day) via subscription.

The xISBN service helps a user find a resource when an ISBN assigned to any printing or edition of the work is known. Users submit an ISBN to the service to return a list of related ISBNs and selected metadata. ISBNs are related to each other using librarian-cataloged bibliographic records in WorldCat together with an algorithm that implements the FRBR model for information objects that brings together multiple versions of a work. The FRBR model keeps WorldCat users from having to browse numerous records that represent many different manifestations of a book – such as different printings, hardcover or paperback editions, audiobooks or film versions, for example – and brings them together under one record.

The WorldCat xISBN service is designed for Web-enabled search applications, such as library catalogs and online booksellers, and based on associations made in the WorldCat database, xISBN enables an end user to link to information about other versions of a source work. Among the uses of the WorldCat xISBN service: to identify a book from an online bookseller to determine if that book is available at the user's library; to confirm that no alternative versions of a work are available before a library sends an interlibrary loan request; to use a single search to check holdings of all editions of a work before making a selection for acquisition.

More information about the WorldCat xISBN service is available on the OCLC WorldCat Web site: www.worldcat.org/affiliate/webservices/xisbn/app.jsp.

Zotero Research Tool Beta 4 Release

Zotero announced in April 2007 that a new release of Zotero, 1.0 Beta 4, was available. Existing users who downloaded from zotero.org can update manually via Tools->Add-ons from within Firefox. It is recommended that all others, including new users as well as those who originally downloaded the extension from the Mozilla website, use the Download button on the Zotero home page.

Zotero is a research tool that helps gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and facilitates sharing research results in a variety of ways. An extension to the open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote) – the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references – and parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways. Zotero integrates tightly with online resources; it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, and – on many major research and library sites – find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields. Since it lives in the web browser, it can effortlessly transmit information to, and receive information from, other web services and applications; since it runs on one's personal computer, it can also communicate with software running there (such as Microsoft Word). And it can be used offline as well (e.g. on a plane, in an archive without WiFi).

The 1.0 release of Zotero already provided advanced functionality for gathering, organizing, and scanning one's research, as well as significant import/export capabilities (including integration with Word and an API for communication with any program or service on the web). The Beta 4 release includes many new or improved site translators, in-page annotation and highlighting features, five additional language localizations, and many bug fixes. There is also a new alpha version of their Microsoft Word plug-in. They have also added a better method for taking snapshots of web pages, which on some platforms had a conflict with the Flash plugin.

Zotero is a production of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is generously funded by the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Zotero website: www.zotero.org/

Steve – the Art Museum Social Tagging Project

"Steve" is a collaborative research project exploring the potential for user-generated descriptions (tags) of the subjects of works of art to improve access to museum collections and encourage engagement with cultural content. It is managed by a group of volunteers, primarily from art museums, who share a common interest in improving access to their collections who are concerned about barriers to public access to online museum information. Participation in steve is open to anyone with a contribution to make to developing their collective knowledge, whether they formally represent a museum or not.

The group collaborated to develop a shared open-source tool that enables the collection of user terminology and facilitates its analysis. The goal is to make this tool freely available and encourage people to use it to describe works of art in their collections. Then they will evaluate the effectiveness of various implementations of the term-collection tool, exploring a series of research issues. In October 2006, the 1.0 version of the steve tagging tool was released. The release included a native tagging application and database that users could freely download and install. Steve 1.0 also included an API with support for SOAP Web Services.

Steve website: http://steve.museum/

WebJunction Releases Blended Learning Guide

WebJunction, OCLC's online community where library staff share ideas and use online resources to help them in their work, has released a Blended Learning Guide that mixes online and in-person training methods to offer libraries new approaches to library staff instruction. The Blended Learning Guide offers quick guides of several different modes to blended learning: Discussion Boards; Online Instant Messaging/Chat Sessions; PodCasting; Rapid E-Learning Software Tools; Web Conferencing. Blended learning case studies are included, as well as resources to find more information on the topic.

Several WebJunction programs – the Spanish Language Outreach Program, the Rural Library Sustainability Program, and the Learning Partner Beta Program, to name a few – have demonstrated the potential of blended learning to enhance library staff training. The Blended Learning Guide provides an introduction to potential tools and offers examples of successful programs implemented in organizations providing library staff training.

The Blended Learning Guide is available online from the WebJunction site: http://data.webjunction.org/wj/documents/13893.pdf

Technology in the Classroom: Results of Survey by Thomson Learning

A recent Thomson Learning survey polled 456 instructors – mostly from two- and four-year higher education institutions – to examine their views on using technology in the classroom. The majority of respondents had a positive view of technology in the classroom.

Key Findings:

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  97 per cent of the faculty use technology in their classrooms, and 88 per cent feel that technology has enabled better instruction.

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  95 per cent of survey respondents indicated that technology tools help instructors supplement textbooks with outside material.

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  90 per cent of those surveyed believe that technology tools help instructors better meet the needs of varied student learning styles.

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  54 per cent of respondents believe that all classes should utilize classroom technology.

The majority of respondents use the following technology tools:

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  E-mail (88 per cent);

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  PowerPoint presentations (81 per cent);

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  Online syllabi (71 per cent);

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  Overhead projectors (63 per cent);

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  Instructor companion Web sites (61 per cent).

Thirty-six percentage of respondents indicate they use online library resources in their teaching. Thirteen percntage reported using e-books, with an additional 26 per cent indicating they would consider using e-books.

Complete survey results available at: www.thomson.com/pdf/learning/tech_tools_2006

Sorting Out Information Technology Users: New Report from Pew Internet

Fully 85 per cent of American adults use the internet or cell phones – and most use both. Many also have broadband connections, digital cameras and video game systems. Yet the proportion of adults who exploit the connectivity, the capacity for self-expression, and the interactivity of modern information technology is a modest 8 per cent. Fully half of adults have a more distant or non-existent relationship to modern information technology.

These findings come from the Pew Internet Project's typology of information and communication technology (ICT) users. The typology categorizes Americans based on the amount of ICTs they possess, how they use them, and their attitudes about the role of ICTs are in their lives. Ten separate groups emerge in the typology.

Four groups of information technology users occupy the elite end of the spectrum. Collectively, 80 per cent of users in these four groups have high-speed internet at home, roughly twice the national average. They are (with each group's share in the adult population in parentheses):

Omnivores (8 per cent): They have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace, express themselves online, and do a range of Web 2.0 activities. Most in this group are men in their mid- to late twenties.

Connectors (7 per cent): Between featured-packed cell phones and frequent online use, they connect to people and manage digital content using ICTs – with high levels of satisfaction about how ICTs let them work with community groups and pursue hobbies.

Lackluster veterans (8 per cent): They are frequent users of the internet and less avid about cell phones. They are not thrilled with ICT-enabled connectivity and do not see them as tools for additional productivity. They were among the internet's early adopters.

Productivity enhancers (8 per cent): They have strongly positive views about how technology lets them keep up with others, do their jobs, and learn new things. They are frequent and happy ICT users whose main focus is personal and professional communication.

Two groups make up the middle range of technology users:

Mobile centrics (10 per cent): They fully embrace the functionality of their cell phones. They use the internet, but not often, and like how ICTs connect them to others. Thirty-seven percentage have high-speed internet connections at home. The group contains a large share of African Americans.

Connected but hassled (10 per cent): They have invested in a lot of technology (80 per cent have broadband at home), but they find the connectivity intrusive and information something of a burden.

Some 49 per cent of all Americans have relatively few technology assets, and they make up the final four groups of the typology. Just 14 per cent of members of the first three groups listed below have broadband at home.

Inexperienced experimenters (8 per cent): They occasionally take advantage of interactivity, but if they had more experience and connectivity, they might do more with ICTs. They are late adopters of the internet. Few have high-speed connections at home.

Light but satisfied (15 per cent): They have some technology, but it does not play a central role in their daily lives. They are satisfied with what ICTs do for them. They like how information technology makes them more available to others and helps them learn new things.

Indifferents (11 per cent): Despite having either cell phones or online access, these users use ICTs only intermittently and find connectivity annoying. Few would miss a beat if they had to give these things up.

Off the network (15 per cent): Those with neither cell phones nor internet connectivity tend to be older adults. A few of them have computers or digital cameras, but they are content with old media.

The data for the Project's typology of ICT users were gathered through telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates between February 15 and April 6, 2006, among a sample of 4,001 adults, aged 18 and older. The sample has a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.

Full text of the report: www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_ICT_Typology.pdf

The Pew website also provides a link to the Internet Typology Test allow you to place yourself in one of the categories in the Pew Internet Project's Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users. When you answer a few questions and calculate the results, the test will tell you in which group you fit, along with a description of the general characteristics of that group.

Online Internet Typology Test: www.pewinternet.org/quiz/

Second Meeting of LC Working Group on Bibliographic Control

The Library of Congress (LC) sponsored Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control held its second meeting on May 9, 2007 in Chicago, IL. The focus of this meeting was "Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Data".

An excerpt from the summary of the meeting lists the main themes as follows:

Several themes that were often repeated were the importance of collaboration/consultation with other communities in developing standards, the end goal of supporting users in fulfillment of their information needs, the importance of maintaining (if not enhancing) the quality of bibliographic data, and the need to facilitate mutual learning, data sharing, and data interoperability with other communities by transforming the library community's structures and standards into Web resources. Further to the latter point, the discussion concerned not only the need to have interoperability and sharing of bibliographic data, authorities, terminologies, and other structures, but also how this should be accomplished. Specifically, the value of the library community's metadata and information tools can be released on the open Web by aligning them more closely with the architecture of the Web.

Meeting Summary: www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/meetings/meetingsummary-may9.html

Background Paper for the Meeting (pdf): www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/meetings/docs/mtg2paperfinal2.pdf

Working Group Website: www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/

Dublin Core and RDA Communities to Work Together

A Data Model Meeting was held in London on 30 April–1 May 2007 at the British Library which examined the fit between Resource Description and Access (RDA) and models used in other metadata communities. Participants from both the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) and RDA communities attended: Tom Baker, Robina Clayphan, Tom Delsey, Gordon Dunsire, Diane Hillmann, Alistair Miles, Mikael Nilsson, Andy Powell, and Barbara Tillett.

The meeting participants agreed that RDA and DCMI should work together to build on the existing work of both communities. The participants recommended that the RDA Committee of Principals and DCMI seek funding for work to develop an RDA Application Profile – specifically that the following activities be undertaken:

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  development of an RDA Element Vocabulary;

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  development of an RDA DC Application Profile based on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD);

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  disclosure of RDA Value Vocabularies using RDF/RDFS/SKOS.

The benefits of this activity will be that:

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  the library community gets a metadata standard that is compatible with the Web Architecture and that is fully interoperable with other Semantic Web initiatives;

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  the DCMI community gets a libraries application profile firmly based on the Dublin Core Abstract Model (DCAM) and FRBR (which will be a high profile exemplar for others to follow;

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  the Semantic Web community get a significant pool of well thought-out metadata terms to re-use;

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  there is wider uptake of RDA.

The meeting further suggested that DCMI and DC Application Profile developers consider the value of using conceptual models such as FRBR as the basis for describing intellectual or artistic creations.

The actual PowerPoint slides are also available (PDF format) 25KB: www.bl.uk/services/bibliographic/pdf_files/datamodel-agreed-outcomes.pdf

RDA Data Model Meeting website: www.bl.uk/services/bibliographic/meeting.html

RDA Data Model Meeting wiki: dublincore.org/librarieswiki/DataModelMeeting

Interesting blog comments include:

Karen Coyle: http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/2007/05/astonishing-announcement-rda-goes-20.html

FRBR Blog: www.frbr.org/2007/05/04/rda-dc-frbr-frad-rdf

Andy Powell: http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2007/05/when_worlds_col.html

Semantic Web Deployment Working Group Requests Comments

The Semantic Web Deployment (SWD) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) Use Cases and Requirements. Knowledge organization systems, such as taxonomies, thesauri or subject heading lists, play a fundamental role in information structuring and access. These use cases and fundamental or secondary requirements will be used to guide the design of SKOS, a model for representing such vocabularies. The Group would greatly appreciate comments and feedback on this Working Draft, which should be submitted to the SWD mailing list.

The SWD Working Group is chartered to advance the November 2005 SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification Working Draft and the SKOS Core Guide Working Draft to W3C Recommendation. The Use Cases detailed in this document have been selected as representative of the use cases submitted in response to a "Call for Use Cases" published in December 2006. These use cases as well as Issues identified by the working group have resulted in draft requirements that will guide the design of the future SKOS Recommendation. Early feedback is therefore most useful. Feedback on use cases that can help to resolve open issues is especially important. Note also that any feature listed under Candidate Requirements should be considered as "at risk" without further feedback.

Working Draft: www.w3.org/TR/skos-ucr/

SWD mailing list: mailto://public-swd-wg@w3.org

NSF Cyberinfrastructure Council Releases New Vision Document

Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery is a sweeping call to reimagine:

1. 1.

   cyberinfrastructure resources, tools and related services such as supercomputers, high-capacity mass-storage systems, system software suites and programming environments, scalable interactive visualization tools, productivity software libraries and tools, large-scale data repositories and digitized scientific data management systems, networks of various reach and granularity and an array of software tools and services that hide the complexities and heterogeneity of contemporary cyberinfrastructure while seeking to provide ubiquitous access and enhanced usability;

2. 2.

   the preparation and training of current and future generations of researchers and educators to use cyberinfrastructure to further their research and education goals, while also supporting the scientific and engineering professionals who create and maintain these IT-based resources and systems and who provide essential customer services to the national science and engineering user community.

The vision document was developed by the National Science Foundation's Cyberinfrastructure Council. Full text of the document is available at: www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf0728/

2007 Nestor Conference Presentations Available Online

Network of Expertise in Long-Term Storage of Digital Resources (Nestor) has made freely available for download the presentations of the conference "The Challenge: Long-Term Preservation – Strategies and Practices of European Partnerships". The conference was held during the German Presidency of the European Union from 20th to 21st April 2007 in Frankfurt, Germany. Experts from the European member states were invited to the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Frankfurt to discuss current issues and assess the prospects for long-term digital preservation. Presentations are available in English, German and French.

Conference website: www.langzeitarchivierung.de/eu2007/index.php?newlang=eng

Presentations: www.langzeitarchivierung.de/eu2007/modules.php?op=modload&name=PagEd&file=index&page_id=48

Second Release of Registry of Digital Masters Record Creation Guidelines

DLF and OCLC announced the second release of the "Registry of Digital Masters Record Creation Guidelines". Created by a DLF/OCLC working group, the guidelines are to be used when creating metadata for born digital or to be digitized materials that have been digitized according to standards and best practices with the intention of including the metadata in the Registry of Digital Masters. The DLF/OCLC Registry of Digital Masters provides a central place for library staff to search for, and find, digitally preserved materials. The Registry is available through OCLC WorldCat.

The guidelines use DLF Digital Registry and MARC 21 elements to provide descriptive metadata and access to Registry materials as well as to assist in the discovery of materials that have been digitized or for which an institution has indicated an intent to digitize at a level such that another digital copy is not required.

Guidelines: http://purl.org/dlf/rdm200705

DLF/OCLC Registry of Digital Masters General Information: www.oclc.org/digitalpreservation/why/digitalregistry/default.htm

Second Edition of Best Practices for Digital Collections Document Available

The Digital Collections and Resources Department at the University of Maryland Libraries has released a new edition of "Best Practices for Digital Collections at UM Libraries". In addition to covering topics such as project lifecycle management and technical specifications for still images and text, the new edition covers audio and moving image formats, Web authoring guidelines, user centered design as well as a local interpretation of the "digital master" concept. While the document was prepared primarily for in-house use, UM Libraries welcomes feedback and discussion on the concept and content from the wider cultural heritage community.

UM Website: www.lib.umd.edu/dcr/publications.html

Document (pdf): www.lib.umd.edu/dcr/publications/best_practice.pdf

HBCU-CUL Digitization Initiative Wins $450,000 Grant to Expand Digital Collection

A digital collection that chronicles the founding of Americas black colleges and universities will continue to expand, thanks to a $450,000 grant Cornell University Library recently received from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Cornell Library is sharing its expertise in digital imaging, preservation, and management with librarians and archivists from the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Library Alliance in an initiative that is laying the foundation for an HBCU digital library. Important materials from the founding collections of ten HBCU institutions will soon be available online in a digital collection entitled "Celebrating the Founding of the Historically Black College and University". Some of its highlights include student yearbooks, early campus architectural drawings, and a rich assortment of photographs featuring choral groups, student sports teams, famous alumni, and churches (which often served as the first classrooms at several of these institutions).

The online collection is the result of a partnership that began in 2005 between Cornell University Library and the HBCU Library Alliance with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. To date, Cornell librarians have trained staff members from HBCU institutions to use flat-bed scanners, high-end multimedia computers, and digital imaging software as well as storage, collection management, and access systems.

In the partnership's next phase, library staff from ten additional HBCU institutions will be trained in digital collection building so materials from their founding collections can become part of the online repository. They include Lincoln University – Missouri, Miles College, Morehouse School of Medicine, North Carolina Central University, Paine College, Southern University at Shreveport, South Carolina State University, St. Augustine's College, Texas Southern University and the University of the District of Columbia. The grant will also allow the first ten participating HBCU institutions to continue their digitization efforts and provide funding to train selected HBCU librarians in digital video and audio techniques.

More information about the partnership and the HBCU Library Alliance digital library initiative: http://hbculibraries.org/html/programs.html