Managing an Open Access, Multi-Institutional, International Digital Library: The Digital Library of the Caribbean

Wooldridge, Brooke; Taylor, Laurie; Sullivan, Mark

doi:10.1080/07377790903014534

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…The digital library of the Caribbean (dLOC)[5] contains cultural, historical and research materials from the Caribbean (Wooldridge et al, 2009). DLOC is funded by a grant from the US Department of Education and member contributions from dLOC partners.…”

Section: Existing Multilingual Digital Librariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…to build a digital library and additional skills such as linguistics, natural language processing, or cross-language information retrieval would be needed in cases of a multilingual DL. Funding from different agencies and foundations encourages collaboration in the form of projects with participants often hailing from several countries (Cousins et al, 2008;Gorman and Tran, 2002;Wooldridge et al, 2009) and between different organizations such as libraries and software companies (Calvanese et al, 2002). In some cases, these projects are collaboratively funded (Van Oudenaren, 2010).…”

Section: Collaboration: Projects and Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Multilinguality in the digital library

Diekema

2012

The Electronic Library

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Purpose -Together, increasing globalization and the internet created fertile grounds for the establishment of multilingual digital libraries. Providing cross-lingual access to materials is of particular interest to political entities such as the European Union, which currently has 23 official languages, but also to multinational companies and countries that have different languages represented among their citizens. The main objective of this paper is to review the literature on multilingual digital libraries and provide an overview of this area. Design/methodology/approach -Based on a thorough literature search in four different databases, a core set of literature on multilingual digital libraries was retrieved. Literature on various aspects of this topic was reviewed. The paper is organized based on emerging themes directly drawn from the literature. Where warranted additional literature is brought in to provide necessary background information or clarification. Findings -Creating a multilingual digital library is a highly complex undertaking and typically requires a collaborative effort between different organizations and people with different areas of expertise. Enabling users to search across languages requires translation resources to cross the language barrier, which can be challenging depending on the language and resource availability. Additional challenges were found to be in data management (localization and language processing), representation (dealing with different fonts and character codes), development (creating international software, cross-cultural collaboration), and interoperability (system architecture and data sharing). Research in multilingual digital libraries was mostly system based involving experimental systems or system prototypes. Research limitations/implications -Most likely the literature review does not include all possible journal articles on multilingual digital libraries even though the literature searches done to obtain these articles were thorough and deliberate. Journal articles without the descriptors used in this search and those articles not indexed in the four different databases used in the search will not be included here. The review excludes cross-language information retrieval research unless it is directly related to existing multilingual digital libraries, or a connection to digital libraries in general is made in the paper itself. Originality/value -This paper provides the first literature review on the topic of multilingual digital libraries and provides a concise overview of relevant aspects in this area. The number of multilingual digital libraries is growing, as is the interest from the research community in these libraries to apply their research findings from cross-language information retrieval. This review article provides a valuable entry point to the field of multilingual digital libraries for researchers, practitioners, and other interested parties.

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Section: Existing Multilingual Digital Librariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Collaboration: Projects and Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multilinguality in the digital library

Diekema

2012

The Electronic Library

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“…Kresh (2007) defined digital libraries as repositories where "resources are available in machine-readable format (as opposed to print or microform), accessible by means of computers." This basic concept is widely acknowledged, but digital libraries also generate new digital content for scholars, students, and the general public by increasing access and awareness to open access materials (Wooldridge et al, 2009). Through analysis of mission statements, project proposals, and definitions of existing digital libraries, the following list of digital libraries' characteristics was compiled:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaboration and crowdsourcing

Budzise-Weaver

Chen

Mitchell

2012

The Electronic Library

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Purpose -This study aims to understand key features of existing multilingual digital libraries and to suggest strategies for building and/or sustaining multilingual information access for digital libraries. Design/methodology/approach -A case study approach was applied to examine four American multilingual digital libraries: Project Gutenberg, Meeting of Frontiers, The International Children's Digital Library, and the Latin American Open Archives Portal. This examination used a framework derived from digital library evaluation practice. The missions, goals, funding, partners, users, collections, services, and technologies of these digital libraries were analyzed to present their key multilingual features . The collaboration and crowdsourcing characteristics were highlighted and discussed. Findings -These four multilingual libraries benefit substantially, both in the creation of the library and in its access, from the collaboration of groups domestic and international with different language expertise. For building the multilingual collection and services, some libraries involved both staff and users. For multilingual access to the collection, however, none of the libraries used machine translation or crosslanguage information retrieval technologies. Research limitations/implications -The four cases are all publicly available digital libraries in the United States. Their features may not be applicable to digital libraries in other countries or to commercial digital information services. Practical Implications -With the advancement of machine translation technologies and the wide application of social media, multilingual digital libraries may have even better opportunities to sustain their multilingual capabilities through crowdsourcing and the application of new technologies. Originality/value -This study summarizes the key features of four existing multilingual digital libraries. It provides insights into important factors for building successful multilingual digital libraries. The suggested strategies may help digital library developers to design appropriate multilingual information access services.

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“…The dLOC brings together collections from countries around the Caribbean in order to provide researchers with greater online access to these physically dispersed collections. 1 This partnership reflects common interests of preservation, access, accessibility, discovery, and content management. 2 One of the countries that we have a number of digitization projects with is Cuba.…”

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confidence: 99%

Developing a Minimalist Multilingual Full-text Digital Library Solution for Disconnected Remote Library Partners

Digby

2021

ITAL

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The University of Florida (UF) George A. Smathers Libraries have been involved in a wide range of partnered digital collection projects throughout the years with a focus on collaborating with institutions across the Caribbean region. One of the countries that we have a number of digitization projects within is Cuba. One of these partnerships is with the library of the Temple Beth Shalom (Gran Sinagoga Bet Shalom) in Havana, Cuba. As part of this partnership, we have sent personnel over to Cuba to do onsite scanning and digitization of selected materials found within the institution. The digitized content from this project was brought back to UF and loaded into our University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) system. Because internet availability and low bandwidth are issues in Cuba, the Synagogue’s ability to access the full-text digitized content residing on UFDC was an issue. The Synagogue also did not have a local digital library system to load the newly digitized content. To respond to this need we focused on providing a minimalist technology solution that was highly portable to meet their desire to conduct full-text searches within their library on their digitized content. This article will explore the solution that was developed using a USB flash drive loaded with a PortableApps version of Zotero loaded with multilingual OCR’s documents.

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Managing an Open Access, Multi-Institutional, International Digital Library: The Digital Library of the Caribbean

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Multilinguality in the digital library

Multilinguality in the digital library

Collaboration and crowdsourcing

Developing a Minimalist Multilingual Full-text Digital Library Solution for Disconnected Remote Library Partners

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