Category Archives: Announcements

Announcements, Collections, Digital Collections, Duke Digital Repository

Digital Collections 2019

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‘Tis the time of year for top 10 lists. Here at Duke Digital Collections HQ, we cannot just pick 10, because all our digital collections are tops!  What follows is a list of all the digital collections we have launched for public access this calendar year.

Our newest collections include a range of formats and subject areas from 19th Century manuscripts to African American soldiers photograph albums to Duke Mens Basketball posters to our first Multispectral Images of papyrus to be ingested into the repository.  We also added new content to 4 existing digital collections.  Lastly, our platform migration is still ongoing, but we made some incredible progress this year as you will see below.  Our goal is to finish the migration by the end of 2020.

New Digital Collections

Additions to Existing Collections

Migrated Collections into the Duke Digital Repository

 

 

 

 

Announcements, Digitization Expertise

New Digitization Initiative and Call for Proposals

Two years ago, Duke Libraries Advisory Council for Digital Collections launched a new process for proposing digitization projects.  Previously the group accepted new digitization proposals every month. We decided to shift to a “digitization initiative” approach where the Council issues a time-based call for proposals focusing on a theme or format. This new method has allowed staff across different departments to plan and coordinate their efforts more effectively.  

This Fall we are inviting DUL staff to propose Audio and Video (A/V) based collections/items for digitization. DUL staff are welcome to partner with Duke Faculty on their proposals. We chose to focus on A/V formats this year due to the preservation risks associated with the material. Magnetic tape formats are especially fragile compared to film given their composition, and the low availability of players for accessing content.  

The complete call for proposals including criteria and a link to the proposal form is online.  Proposals should be submitted on or before November 18. 

What about non-A/V digitization proposals? 

The Advisory Council is working on another call for digitization proposals, which is intended to include non-A/V formats (manuscripts, photographs, and more).  We should be able to announce the new call before the end of the calendar year.  Stay tuned!

DUL staff can also submit proposals for small digitization projects anytime as long as they fit the criteria for an “easy” project. Easy projects are small in size and scope and include a wide range of formats; complete guidelines are online along with the proposal form.

 

Announcements

Join our Team!

Do you have photography skills? Do you want to work with cultural heritage materials? Do you seek a highly collaborative work environment dedicated to preserving and making rare materials digitally available? If so, consider applying to be the next Digitization Specialist at Duke!

The Digitization Specialist produces digital surrogates of rare materials that include books, manuscripts, audio, and moving image collections. The ideal candidate should be detail-oriented, possess excellent organizational, project management skills and an ability to work independently and effectively in a team environment. The successful candidate will join the Digital Collections and Curation Services department and work under the direct supervision of the Digital Production Services manager.

The Digital Production Center (DPC) is a specialized unit dedicated to creating digital surrogates of primary resource materials from Duke University Libraries. Learn more about the DPC on our webpage, or through our department blog, Bitstreams. To get a sense of the variety of interesting and important collections we’ve digitized, immerse yourself in the Duke Digital Collections. We currently have over 640 digital collections comprising of 103,247 items – and we’re looking to do even more with your skills!

Duke is a diverse community committed to the principles of excellence, fairness, and respect for all people. As part of this commitment, we actively value diversity in our workplace and learning environments as we seek to take advantage of the rich backgrounds and abilities of everyone. We believe that when we understand, celebrate, and tap into our uniqueness to creatively solve problems and address shared goals, our possibilities are limitless. Duke University Libraries value diversity of thought, perspective, experience, and background and are actively committed to a culture of inclusion and respect.

Duke’s hometown is Durham, North Carolina, a city with vibrant research, medical and arts communities, and numerous shops, restaurants and theaters. Durham is located in the Research Triangle, a growing metropolitan area of more than one million people that provides a wide range of cultural, recreational and educational opportunities. The Triangle is conveniently located just a few hours from the mountains and the coast, offers a moderate climate, and has been ranked among the best places to live and to do business.

Duke offers a comprehensive benefit package, which includes traditional benefits such as health insurance, dental, leave time and retirement, as well as wide range of work/life and cultural benefits. More information can be found at: https://hr.duke.edu/benefits. For more information and to apply, please submit an electronic resume, cover letter, and a list of 3 references to https://library.duke.edu/about/jobs/digitizationspecialist. Search for Requisition ID #4778. Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled.

Announcements, Behind the Scenes, Collaborations, MSI, Profiles

Congratulations and farewell to Mike Adamo

This week, Digitization Specialist Mike Adamo will move on from Duke Libraries after 14 years to assume a new position as Digital Imaging Coordinator at the Libraries of Virginia Tech University. Mike has contributed so much to our Digital Collections program during his tenure, providing years of uncompromising still imaging services, stewardship in times of change for the Digital Production Center, as well as leadership of and then years of service on our Digital Collections Implementation Team. He has also been the lead digitization specialist on some of our most well known digital collections like the Hugh Mangum photographs, James Karales photographs and William Gedney collection.

In addition, Mike has been a principal figure on our Multispectral Imaging Team and has been invaluable to our development of this service for the library. He established the setup and led all MSI imaging sessions; collaborated cross-departmentally with other members on the MSI Team to vet requests and develop workflows; and worked with vendors and other MSI practitioners to develop best practices, documentation, and a preservation plan and service model for MSI services at Duke Libraries. He’s also provided maintenance for our MSI equipment, researching options for additional equipment as our program grew.

Side by side comparison of a papyri item under natural light and the same item after multispectral imaging and processing.

We are grateful to Mike for his years of dedication to the job at to the field of cultural heritage digitization as well as for the instrumental role he’s played in developing MSI Services at DUL. We offer a huge thank you to Mike for his work and wish him well in his future position!

Post contributed by Giao Luong Baker and Erin Hammeke

Announcements, Technology

Smart People Who Care

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It’s that time of year at the university when we’re working on our PEPs (Performance Evaluation and Planning forms) and I’m thinking about how grateful I am to have such smart staff who really care about their work, their colleagues, and the people they serve, as we advance technology across the libraries. In contrast to some corporate environments, the process here really does aim to help us improve, rather than rank us as a setup for “resource actions” (firings). This excellent article, The Feedback Fallacy by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, reminds me to emphasize the things people do well, and encourage them to build on their strengths.

Attuned to ethical practices within organizations, I’m also excited about increasing awareness of ethics in the effects of the technologies we produce. Justin Sherman, co-founder of the Ethical Tech initiative here at Duke, did a stimulating talk at the Edge Workshop this month about ethical issues that surround technology, such as search engine bias, and AI tools that judges use to determine sentencing for crimes.  Justin recommends this podcast, with Christopher Lydon on Open Source, called Real Education About Artificial Intelligence.  Library staff are participating in the Kenan Institute for Ethics book club program (KIE), where the spring selection is Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble.

And, I’m pleased to exercise my hiring mantra, “smart people who care”, which has served me well for over 30 years, as we’re recruiting candidates with I/T and team leadership experience for a new position, Computing Services Supervisor.

Happy Spring!
Laura Cappelletti
Director, Information Technology Services

Announcements

We are Hiring: Digital Repository Content Analyst

Duke University Libraries (DUL) is recruiting a Digital Repository Content Analyst to help us ingest and manage content in our digital preservation systems and platforms.  This position will partner with the Research Data Curation Program, Digital Collections Program, and various other departments around the Library and on campus to provide curation and preservation services.  This is an excellent entry level opportunity for anyone who enjoys managing large sets of data and/or files, working with colleagues across an organization, preserving essential data and library collections, and learning new technical skills.

Ideal applicants have been exposed to technical systems and file management techniques such as command line scripting, can communicate functional system requirements between groups with varying types of expertise, enjoys working with different types of data/collections, and loves solving problems.  The successful candidate will join the highly collaborative Digital Collections and Curation Services department (within the Digital Strategies and Technology Division) at DUL.

For a full job description please see https://library.duke.edu/about/jobs/digitalrepositorycontentanalyst. To apply, submit an electronic resume, cover letter, and list of 3 references: https://hr.duke.edu/careers/apply – refer to requisition #401537489. Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled.

Announcements, Behind the Scenes, Duke Digital Repository, New Collections, Projects

Digital Collections Round Up 2018

It’s that item of year where we like to reflect on all we have done in 2018, and your favorite digital collections and curation services team is no exception.  This year, Digital Collections and Curation Services have been really focusing on getting collections and data into the Digital Repository and making it accessible to the world!

As you will see from the list below we launched 320 new digital collections, managed substantial additions to 2, and migrated 8. However, these publicly accessible digital collections are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of our work in Digital Collections and Curation Services.

A cover from the Ladyslipper, Inc Retail Catalogs digital collection.

So much more digitization happens behind the scenes than is reflected in the list of new digital collections.  Many of our larger projects are years in the making. For example, we continue to digitize Gedney photographs and we hope to make them publicly accessible next year.  There is also preservation digitization happening that we cannot make publicly accessible online.  This work is essential to our preservation mission, though we cannot share the collections widely in the short term.

We strongly believe in keeping our metadata healthy, so in addition to managing new metadata, we often revisit existing metadata across our repositories in order to ensure its overall quality and functionality.

Our team is also responsible for ingesting not just digital collections, but research data and library collections as well.  We preserved 20 datasets produced by the Duke Scholarly Community in the Research Data Repository (https://research.repository.duke.edu/)  via the Research Data Curation program https://library.duke.edu/data/data-management.

A selection from the Buffalo Bill papers, digitized as part of the Section A project.

New Digital Collections 2018

Additions to Existing Digital Collections

The men’s basketball team celebrates its 1991 championship win.

Collections Migrated into the Digital Repository

Announcements, First Wednesday, Technology

New Project Request Process

Last week, I presented our New Project Request Process at First Wednesday.  This request process is to help the Digital Strategies & Technology (DST) Leadership Team more effectively evaluate and prioritize projects that require ITS resources.  Over the summer, we developed and tested a two-stage workflow aimed to lower the barrier for library staff to submit project ideas and streamline the prioritization of projects into our three new project management streams: Library Systems, led by Karen Newbery; Web Experience, led by Tom Crichlow, and Application Development, led by Cory Lown, or into the existing Operations stream, led by John Pormann.

You can view the presentation here.  (My presentation begins at 35:45, but you should definitely watch Karen present on the Updated Request App and her trip to DKU.)

The quick summary notes of our process is this:

  • Project Summary is a short, one page summary of your project idea that includes 4 major elements:
    • Summary
    • Project Rationale
    • Goals
    • Stakeholders
  • The DST Leadership will evaluate Project Summaries within one month of submission and accept it, decline it, or request more information.
  • Accepted Project Summaries will be assigned a Project Lead, who will guide the Project Sponsor in writing the Project Charter.
  • Project Charter is an in-depth project plan that includes these elements:
    • Project Details:
      • Requirements – list of the high-level project requirements
      • Scope Statement – narrative description of the project scope
      • Deliverables – A deliverable is a unique and verifiable product, result or capability to perform a service that must be produced to complete a process, phase or project.
      • Estimated Schedule – focus on schedule and timeline, not specific dates
      • Completion Criteria – what must occur before project is considered complete
      • Goals – specific measurable objectives the project must achieve for completion
      • Dependencies – any outside factors, including people, data, and systems
      • Collaboration and communication strategy – frequency of meetings, project management tools used, plan to provide communication to those outside the project
    • Risks to Scope, Budget, Resources, Schedule, Technologies
    • Stakeholders – people outside of ITS (List of names and contact information)
    • Project Team – roles needed for team (Specific team members will be assigned, if project is approved and scheduled)
    • Budget – especially important for grant-based projects
  • The DST Leadership will review Project Charters within one month of submission.  Accepted project charters will be prioritized based on one or more of the following:
    • Portfolio Management review of resources by the Director, ITS
    • EG input for projects involving two or more divisions, or that impact campus users, or that impact a majority of DUL staff
    • Input of corresponding AUL, if competing projects require same team members of an previously approved project in queue
    • Input from DUL department or existing committee with governance oversight of a particular area, such as WebX or Digital Preservation and Production Program

We believe this process will enable us to plan projects more effectively with project sponsors and utilize the Libraries’ resources more efficiently.  We also believe this will improve communication with stakeholders and provide EG with better information to make priority decisions for projects that have benefit or impact to our staff and users.

You can download the Project Summary and Charter template here.  You can submit your Project Summary to dst-lt@win.duke.edu.

 

Announcements, Digital Collections, Digitization Expertise

We are Hiring!

Duke University Libraries is recruiting a Digital Production Services Manager to direct the operations of our Digital Production Center, its staff (3 FTE plus student assistants), and associated digitization services. We are seeking someone experienced in leading digitization projects who is excited to partner with colleagues around the library to reformat and preserve unique library collections and provide access to them online. This is an excellent opportunity for someone who likes working with people, projects, and primary sources!

This newly created position combines people and project management responsibilities with hands-on digitization duties. Previous supervisory experience is not required; however, the ability to direct the work of others is essential to this position, as is a service oriented attitude. Strong organizational and project management skills are also a must. Some form of digitization experience in a library or other cultural heritage setting is required for this role as well. The successful candidate will join the highly collaborative Digital Collections and Curation Services department and work under the direct supervision of the department head.

The Digital Production Center (DPC) is a specialized unit that creates digital surrogates of primary resources from Duke University Libraries collections for the purposes of preservation and access. Learn more about the DPC on our web page, or through the Digital Strategies and Technology division’s blog, Bitstreams. To see some of the materials we have digitized, check out Duke Digital Collections online.

Duke is a diverse community committed to the principles of excellence, fairness, and respect for all people. As part of this commitment, we actively value diversity in our workplace and learning environments as we seek to take advantage of the rich backgrounds and abilities of everyone. We believe that when we understand, celebrate, and tap into our uniqueness to creatively solve problems and address shared goals, our possibilities are limitless. Duke University Libraries value diversity of thought, perspective, experience, and background and are actively committed to a culture of inclusion and respect.

Duke offers a comprehensive benefit package, which includes both traditional benefits such as health insurance, leave time and retirement, as well as wide ranging work/life and cultural benefits. Details can be found at: http://www.hr.duke.edu/benefits/index.php.

For a full job description please see https://library.duke.edu/about/jobs/dpsmanager. To apply, submit an electronic resume, cover letter, and list of 3 references: https://hr.duke.edu/careers/apply – refer to requisition #401463554. Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled.

Announcements, Collections

New and Migrated Digital Collections Round up

We are halfway through 2018, and so it seems like a fitting time to share new and newly migrated digital collections.  

Digital Collections Launched or Migrated since January 1 2018:
These collections should be publicly accessible in late June or early July:

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, we will have more Radio Haiti recordings, 1990s issues of the Duke Chronicle, the Josephine Leary papers, more of your favorite legacy digital collections moving over to the digital repository and so much more! Stay tuned!