Spring Break
Hopkins digitizes special collection
Issue date: 2/21/08
Hopkins has joined with the Open Content Alliance (OCA) in an effort to make the Milton S. Eisenhower Library digital, including one of its special collections.
The special collection contains anti-slavery pamphlets and publications that ran from the late 19th century through the Reconstruction period, which had been compiled by a leader of the abolitionist movement, James Birney. These materials have a lot of research value.
The Open Content Alliance is a cumulative and international group that is comprised of a range of organizations, including cultural, technological and governmental. Together, these groups are working to digitize a multilingual archive of text and multimedia content.
According to a representative at OCA, several universities, such as Columbia, Harvard and Hopkins, have become interested in implementing students' access to out of print and rare texts and to enrich their scope of world culture.
The OCA archive will be available through its Web site, where Yahoo! has collaboratively indexed and stored all of the content for the ease of Internet users.
The Birney Collection is a prototype, since the OCA hasn't really begun to incorporate special collections.
"Our aim with digitizing the material is to increase student and faculty access to these primary sources," said Margaret Burri, curator of manuscripts of special collections and curator of and a librarian for history.
If digitalization is implemented, students and staff would have access to all the collections of the OCA's archive on the Internet, while respecting the rights of content owners and contributors by using PDF software. OCA is designed to increase the circulation and knowledge of texts and information in general.
University of California recently contributed its archive on American literature, which is now available for downloading and reuse for any member of OCA. The benefits of pooling texts between universities can only increase student knowledge and awareness, making the OCA a valuable resource.
The special collection contains anti-slavery pamphlets and publications that ran from the late 19th century through the Reconstruction period, which had been compiled by a leader of the abolitionist movement, James Birney. These materials have a lot of research value.
The Open Content Alliance is a cumulative and international group that is comprised of a range of organizations, including cultural, technological and governmental. Together, these groups are working to digitize a multilingual archive of text and multimedia content.
According to a representative at OCA, several universities, such as Columbia, Harvard and Hopkins, have become interested in implementing students' access to out of print and rare texts and to enrich their scope of world culture.
The OCA archive will be available through its Web site, where Yahoo! has collaboratively indexed and stored all of the content for the ease of Internet users.
The Birney Collection is a prototype, since the OCA hasn't really begun to incorporate special collections.
"Our aim with digitizing the material is to increase student and faculty access to these primary sources," said Margaret Burri, curator of manuscripts of special collections and curator of and a librarian for history.
If digitalization is implemented, students and staff would have access to all the collections of the OCA's archive on the Internet, while respecting the rights of content owners and contributors by using PDF software. OCA is designed to increase the circulation and knowledge of texts and information in general.
University of California recently contributed its archive on American literature, which is now available for downloading and reuse for any member of OCA. The benefits of pooling texts between universities can only increase student knowledge and awareness, making the OCA a valuable resource.
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posted 11/09/09 @ 11:29 AM EST
Great news. Very useful information.
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