BBP in Brief, Issue 4, April 2005

Digital Library Training at the American Museum of Natural History
Shananda Miller (College of The Bahamas)

In October 2004, I had the opportunity to train with fellow librarians at the Library of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. The Museum has been developing “digital libraries,” and this was a chance for me to learn some of the approaches needed to develop appropriate and useful digital resources for the College of The Bahamas (COB). The definition of “digital library” varies tremendously but, simply put, it includes the use of computer technology to copy, store, share, and preserve library materials in electronic (or “digital”) format.

The training, although short, was a fantastic learning experience. The staff was very hospitable and helpful. On Monday morning, Barbara Mathe, Museum Archivist and the Head of Special Collections, gave me a quick tour of the Museum Library. I later met with Tom Moritz, Director of Library Services and with Anthony Troncale, Assistant Director of Digital and Special Collections. We discussed my goal to increase the knowledge and expertise to develop digital resources in The Bahamas in a responsible, sustainable, and systematic manner that could then be integrated with other library procedures and workflow. In addition, I wanted to determine a good starting point that the COB Library can take to digitize a portion of our collection.

I learned that the digitization process should begin with careful thought regarding target audience, and should include wide consultation with reference librarians, collection development specialists, preservation experts, information technician specialists, and representative users. It not only involves scanning, but cataloging and organizing the resources. The inner “wheel” of the whole process should include the users and the collection. The middle wheel should consist of staff, funds, and technical and physical infrastructure. Finally, the outer wheel should comprise selecting, benchmarking, digitizing, setting and observing quality control, creating metadata (descriptive information or “data about data”), processing images, system building, access, preservation, and management. It is important to be aware of the formats within the collection and the types of digitization formats. In addition, strategies must be devised to capture the data.

This training experience was very informative and has peaked my interest in digitization and being a part of building a digital library. Moreover, being significantly involved in building a digital library, in particular one of our own, has now become a focus of my long-term goals.