Building a Digital Library

Rochester Public LibraryThe Next 100 Years

What Is a Digital Library?• An organization that comprehensively collects, manages and preserves for

the long term rich digital content, and offers to its user communities specialized functionality on that content, of measurable quality and according to codified policies.

DELOS Digital Library Reference Model

Simply put, RPL will collect digital content, organize it and present it in an easy-to-use manner.

The FutureInformation scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, estimate

that “the world’s total yearly production of print, film, optical, and magnetic content would require roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage.” Therefore, they believe that “soon it will be technologically possible for an average person to access virtually all recorded information.”

The Digital Library: Its Future Has Arrived, 2003

Note: show 4 gig thumb drive

Collect• Information “born digital”– Government documents, annual reports,

websites, tweets

• Existing information that becomes digital– Historical information, public domain books,

video & audio, important local information, print on demand.

• Information about information and technology

Espresso Book Machine

RPL Collection Plan, 2011-2013

• Virtual reference books• E-books and other digital content• Government Documents• Digitization of print material

Manage• Organize digital information into

manageable chunks - http://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.html.

• Provide conduits between library experts and users accessing information.

RPL Management Plan, 2011-13

• Establish a Digital Services Manager position.

• Provide multiple access points to information, including:– Mobile– Offsite visual access via webcam

Preserve• Ensure access to information born digital –

e.g. newspapers, annual reports, government information.

• Provide digital access to endangered historical materials.

RPL Preservation Plan

• Enhance existing Digitization program.• Create a single search front end to digital

collections, i.e. an “ancestry.com” for the Genesee Valley.

• Enhance a print-on-demand service for digital materials.

Digital Library Examples• American Memory -

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html• Worthington Memory -

http://www.worthingtonmemory.org/• FLAG Heritage - http://www.flagheritage.org/• ArXiv - http://arxiv.org/• Internet Archive - http://www.archive.org/

Funding• Reynolds Library Board• Fundraising in 2011• Estimated need of $300k per year to operate

2012-2013, including – Staffing: Digital Services Manager, Web designer & programmer,

data entry– Database development– Collection development– Marketing– Training– Espresso Book Machine

How Can You Help?

• Participate in focus groups to be held in the last half of 2011.

• Donate to the cause.

The Final Word on Books…For Now

• Book sales are up from 20 years ago – in 2010 Americans bought more than 751 Million books.

• In 2008, more original book titles were published than ever before – 290,000 titles.

• In 2007, there were more U.S. publishers than ever before – 74,000 compared to 397 in 1925.

• In 2008, the total spent on books in the U.S. was $24.3 Million• Library membership in the U.S. is at an all-time high at 209 Million

people, with 2.3 Billion items borrowed in 2008.

from Nielsen’s BookScan

Reading is alive and well.