Digitisation of Cultural Heritage at the National Library of Latvia:

Past and Future

Uldis ZariņšHead of Strategic Development

National Library of Latvia19.06.2014

Goals

To digitise and make as widely accessible as possible the entire Latvian published cultural heritage

To support digitisation with IT infrastructure, services, common standards and methodology

To create digital services and embed the digital content in today’s information landscape

Tasks

To digitise analogue and acquire born-digital cultural heritage materials

To ensure long-term preservation of digital heritage

To ensure availability and access of digital heritage

To maintain standarts, methodology, best-practice, research on digitisation

To lead the co-operation in digitisation on a national and international level

History

Pilot projects – 1999-2006 Establishment – 2006-2009 Development – 2009-2014

Content

23 digital collections – mostly pilot projects to develop methodology and test technologies, some to be merged • 3+ m pages of periodicals (~1000 titles)• 1+ m pages of books (~7000 titles)• ~50 000 images (maps, posters, photos etc.)• ~2000 audio files• ~3000 harvested internet sites of .lv domain

Periodicals (1)

2000. – Mantojums 1– Scaning, PDF, no OCR

2008. – Periodika.lv v.1.– Scanning and segmentation, OCR and full-text search

2012. – Periodika.lv v.2.– Scanning and segmentation, OCR and full-text search,

interactive features

Periodicals (2)

Timespan: 1760. – 2011. Content: newspapers, magazines, journals Languages: Latvian, German, Russian, Latgalian

etc.

3 000 000 pages 1 000 titles

Periodicals (3)

Periodicals (4)

Books

Photos

Maps

Audio records

Infrastructure

DOM2 – system for management and preservation of digital objects

Specialised front-ends for different types of content

Tool for building digital collections on top of DOM2

Piping – data and file transformations, user management, import/export, etc.

Know-how

Digitisation handbook Translation and adaptation of standarts Training and consultations Co-operation with partners

Future (1)

Aggregated search A mobile front-end New front-end for images National academic repository Digitisation on demand service

Future (2)

Contextualisation, data models, semantic search Use of crowdsourcing Discoverability and usability of resources Synergies with education, research, tourism,

creative industries National and international partnerships

Towards national approach

• Strategy for digital cultural heritage 2014-2020• Coordinated approach

– Content priorities – Build-up and distribution of know-how– Shared standarts, data models, vocabularies– Content distribution– Shared infrastructure (?)– Centralised services (?)

• A national network based around 1-3 competence centres

Goal

To create a united and freely accessible digital environment for Latvian cultural heritage with an aim to strengthen the national identity and to ensure accessibility, preservation and inclusion of Latvian national cultural and scientific heritage in the European and world digital cultural landscape.

Questions?

Thank you!uldis.zarins@lnb.lv