What is a Digital Collections Repository?
A Digital Collections Repository is a digital library management and delivery system that can serve a research library with broad, comprehensive electronic collections. The UVa Repository will eventually manage and provide access to images, texts, finding aids, datasets, and digital video and audio from Library collections, licensed resources, and faculty projects, where the resources are available for discovery and use, and new uses of the collections can also be collected into the Repository.
What is Fedora™?
The Repository has been implemented on top of Fedora™ (Flexible and Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture), which was initially proposed by the Cornell Digital Library Research Group in a 1999 D-Lib article. The University of Virginia Library' s Digital Library Research and Development Group (DLR&D) is collaborating with Cornell to develop Fedora™ under a $1,000,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, which has also funded a $1,400,000 Fedora Phase 2 grant. More information about the UVa Fedora implementation and links to current publications are available through the Library's Digital Initiatives site.
Why does the UVa Library need a Repository?
- To store "digital objects" and the metadata that describe them.
- To manage access, including rights management.
- To support indexing and retrieval.
- To coordinate delivery of the digital objects.
What is a "digital object"?
Objects can document a single digital image, a series of images related to an architectural site or art object, an electronic book or manuscript that includes a transciption and digital page images, a complete web site, or a virtual collection that itself contains multiple objects.
What will users find in the Repository?
Approximately 10,000 images from five image collections (Jefferson Country Architecture, the Smithsonian American Art Museum Catlin Collection, selections from the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA, and a growing selection from the Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library's Visual Resources Collection); all electronic texts created by DLPS for the Library's locally managed digital collections to date; and electronic finding aids for the UVA Library's Special Collections.
What can users do with what they find?
Descriptive metadata and images can be viewed, and images can be downloaded, if allowed by licensing; texts can be read online. The Collectus digital object collector tool allows users to collect images into personal portfolios and create both web pages and classroom slide shows.
What is planned for the future?
- Alongside continued new production of images, texts, and findings aids, existing "legacy" collections will be consolidated into the Repository from across the Library.
- The next formats to be analyzed for inclusion are social science & scientific data sets and digital video.
- The Collectus digital object collector tool will eventually support collection of all types of digital objects.