The 'City of Lit' Digital Library - A Case Study of Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration

摘要

In 2008, Iowa City was designated as one of only five "Cities of Literature" worldwide by UNESCO. To take advantage of our rich local literary history, an interdisciplinary research team from the University of Iowa collaborated to develop a digital library featuring Iowa City authors and locations. The UNESCO City of Literature digital library (referred to internally as "City of Lit") consists of a mobile application for the general public to access the database and a set of web-based interfaces for researcher and content creators to contribute to the database. Members of the research team have developed undergraduate literature courses to study the feasibility of using young scholars for digital content creation, and the pedagogical effect of including digital research in traditional literary courses. Students in the courses were trained to conduct scholarly research and generate a variety of digital resources to be included in the digital collection. This paper reports our experience building the City of Lit digital library and the results from evaluations and studies of the students in the courses. We also outline the implementation and development of the digital library, its framework, and the client-side mobile application.