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Digital Library Center History

The Digital Library Center was established in 1999 as an off-shoot of several digitization projects based in the Preservation Department and the Marston Science Library, including the brittle books and microfilming programs. Today, it is responsible for the creation and maintenance of Digital Collections from traditional library and museum materials for use in teaching and research. (Our brochure includes information on collections and programs).

The Center’s program management structure invites faculty collaborations both within and beyond the Libraries and University of Florida. Partners include the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Matheson Historical Trust, Florida's State Library and Archives, other state university libraries and university libraries across Florida, and university and special libraries beyond Florida. Our current international project is the Digital Library of the Caribbean. The Center also maintains active liaison with the Florida Center for Library Automation's Digital Library Services division and is a major contributor to the PALMM Collections.

The Digital Library Center also develops innovative projects that make materials accessible and usable in new ways, as with Ephemeral Cities. The Ephemeral Cities project allows users to browse through cities spatially, showing one new method for accessing materials in relation to each other geographically and in relation to the cities themselves. Allowing users to see and use materials in new ways creates new information, new types of information, and new avenues for research.

Digital Library Center Organization

The Center's units include Collections, Copy Control, Imaging, Text Processing, and Quality Control.

  • The Collections Unit, in collaboration with Faculty, builds digitization projects and funding requests.  Design of an institutional repository is among its current tasks
  • Copy Control tracks materials through analog and digital reproduction and provides bibliographic metadata for those materials.
  • The Imaging Unit supports both analog (a.k.a., microfilming) and digital technologies. Digital technologies include flat-bed, high-speed rotary, and high-speed microfilm scanners as well as a variety of digital cameras, together with support for audio- and video digitization.
  • Text Processing converts page images to searchable texts with mark-up similar to, but much more advanced than HTML. Advanced optical character recognition or OCR systems are used to convert texts and a series of state-of-the are programs facilitate mark-up.
  • The Quality Control Unit ensures the quality of digital products: visual, textual and metadata.

View the Center's Organizational Chart. Additionally, the Center shares responsibility with the Preservation Department and the Florida Center for Library Automation, for Digital Archiving. And, it shares development responsibilities for collections with Geographic Information System interfaces with the Government Documents Department. Its systems and networks are developed and maintained in collaboration with the Systems Department and the Florida Center for Library Automation.

Digital Circle

Projects Planning

team members work with library collection managers and faculty to develop collections for digitization and Internet useability.

Copy Control

tracks materials through analog and digital reproduction and provides bibliographic metadata for those materials.

Imaging

supports both analog (a.k.a., microfilming) and digital technologies. Digital technologies include flat-bed, high-speed rotary, and high-speed microfilm scanners as well as a variety of digital cameras, together with support for audio- and video digitization.

Text Processing

converts page images to searchable texts with mark-up similar to, but much more advanced than HTML. Advanced optical character recognition or OCR systems are used to convert texts and a series of state-of-the are programs facilitate mark-up.

Quality Control

ensures the quality of digital products: visual, textual and metadata.
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