From the monthly archives: February 2009

Video Discovery Stats for DSVA: A First Look

On February 25, 2009 By

Our Diamonstein-Spielvogel video archive collection, comprised of about 130 videos, was introduced this past fall and represents our first digital video collection. Our Digital Collections system (Tripod) does not yet support discovery within a video collection, so in the interim, we are using two external video services in tandem to host the collection [...]

Continue Reading →

Home(page) Economics

On February 23, 2009 By

As Tom mentioned, we’re in the process of re-examining our homepage (and the layout of individual collection homepages).

What do people actually do when they come to the Duke Digital Collections homepage as it is now?  One way to tell is to review our server logs.

Continue Reading →

Building the Broadsides Collection: A Large-Scale Digitization Approach

On February 17, 2009 By

I’m happy to report that work on the Broadsides and Ephemera Collection has begun! The source content for this project is an artificial collection in Duke’s Special Collections Library, dated 1790-1940. Truly an interdisciplinary collection, it includes materials related to political campaigns, politics, theater, dance, museum exhibitions, advertising, travel, expositions, and military [...]

Continue Reading →

On the Trident Project: Part 1 – Architecture

On February 13, 2009 By

The library’s search for software to support metadata creation served as the topic of two posts of mine from late last year, A Metadata Tool that Scales, and Grand Metadata Tool Ideas. Those posts discussed our internal process and analysis, and engaged in some “guilt-free big thinking.”  This post will report on [...]

Continue Reading →

Does this still fit?

On February 5, 2009 By

Ever go to a shoe store, try on a pair of shoes and think, “Wow, these are great”? Ever wear those same shoes around town for a bit and realize that they are actually too tight?

After wearing them for a year or so, we’ve decided that the Digital Collections home page and [...]

Continue Reading →

Collection Usage Stats for 2008

On February 2, 2009 By

Looking back at our 2008 web logs, we can learn a lot about how our system and our collections are being used. We hope to combine an analysis of this usage data with usability testing and other modes of evaluation to better inform our continued development of our system & interface in 2009.

[...]

Continue Reading →