SMU Central University Libraries' Digital Collections

摘要

Southern Methodist University's (SMU) Central University Libraries (CUL) has embarked upon an ambitious program to digitize objects from its many unique special collections, and to make the items freely accessible on the CUL Digital Collections web site. Between June-December 2008, CUL's Norwick Center for Digital Services has uploaded or transferred nine digital collections containing 1,107 items. Several of the collections are being augmented, six more are under development, and dozens more are being investigated for potential digitization. The original resources for CUL Digital Collections vary widely, both between the collections and sometimes within a single collection. Contrasting types and amounts of information about the objects are available. Sometimes we receive the digitized items, while in other cases we provide end-to-end digitization services. Because the Content-DM digital asset management system we use is flexible, we are able to create tailored metadata fields for each collection. At the same time, we are striving to build standards, best practices and guidelines to ensure the highest quality digital resources and metadata are created within the timeline established for the projects.