North Carolina Digital Collections Collaboratory » crowdsourcing

Getting this party started.

kristydixon — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:24:50 +0000

Hi y’all. Allow me to introduce myself – I’m Kristy Dixon, and I recently (July 1) began my position as Digital Programs Archivist at UNC Charlotte. We’re pretty much starting from scratch, and we’ve got a clean slate, buckets of ideas, and a lot of excitement. I am SO stoked to be part of this North Carolina digital collections community. It’s excellent to have these wonderful examples of digital programs available as guidance and inspiration as we start out on this path. So first, thank you for being available for that!

We are exploring lots of options for digital asset management systems – right now, we are experimenting with a home-grown system, and while the backend seems ok so far, the interface needs major work. It’s clunky. The system also lacks capabilities for global find-and-replace, implementing controlled vocabularies, and easy data import/export. Also, folks with levels of expertise ranging from super-duper advanced to novice will be working on our projects, so we want to ensure some ease of use.

We’ve also been playing around with ContentDM, Omeka, and Fedora. There are aspects of all three that I really like and things that cause me some concern. (We’re excluding DSpace from the mix simply because it seems much more suitable for IRs and the like, but please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about that and you love using DSpace for image-based collections.)

So I come to you, my digital library pals – I’m sure you have strong opinions on these products. Do you have songs of praise to sing about any of them? Any huge warnings about what NOT to go with? We want to make sure we get as many perspectives as we can so we choose the right system for our needs.

Exciting News Alert & Let’s Crowdsource, People!

Amy — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:14:22 +0000

As of late this spring, the State Library and State Archives have merged efforts to provide a single point of access to our digital collections. We’re taking baby steps to do this, but as we move more collections online and the repository gets a much-needed facelift, we need to come up with a new name for this endeavor.

Here’s where we need your help (and I was able to work in reference to the term “crowdsourcing”).

We need a name that makes it clear that we aren’t NC ECHO, the Digital Heritage Center, or NC State (all of which either are in some way related to the State Library or State Archives or have the words “North Carolina” and “State” in their name). The name should (a) make reference to the Archives & Library or (b) be completely neutral (and I think that we prefer a “neutral” name as it allows our partnerships to grow, potentially). We’ll be providing access to the historic and contemporary records and publications of state government (as we do now), and the name needs to reflect that (probably). These materials can be as diverse as the Library’s 2003 document about prosecuting computer crimes from the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety to the Archives’s Black Mountain College publications and promotional photographs from the Department of Tourism. And, we’re both divisions within the Department of Cultural Resources, so there is some question as to whether we need to work a reference to that in?

Now, I realize that a name containing all of this information would be ridiculous, but I’m providing this information to give you some background.

OK. Let the crowdsourcing begin…