INLS 740: Digital Libraries
From Pomerantz
Contents |
Course description
This course will address research and development issues in digital libraries, including: collection development and digitization; mass digitization; text and multimedia materials; metadata; interoperability; architecture; searching and services; economic, legal, and social policies such as copyright; and management and evaluation. Students will read and discuss literature on DLs, evaluate a DL of their choice, and work as a group to develop a prototype DL.
Course objectives
By the end of the course, students will:
- Understand the technologies involved in the construction of digital libraries,
- Be able to make collection development decisions for building a digital library,
- Be able to make decisions regarding the implementation of services and automation for a digital library,
- Be able to evaluate a digital library with regard to its content and user base,
- Be able to be involved in the construction and maintenance of a digital library.
Instructor
| Jeffrey Pomerantz, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Director of Undergraduate Studies Director of the Field Experience Program School of Information and Library Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill CB 3360, 100 Manning Hall Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3360 | v: 919-962-8064
f: 919-962-8071 pomerantz at unc dot edu [Skype] |
| Office: 112 Manning Hall
Office hours: Mon & Wed, 11 am - 12:30 pm Make an appointment on my Google Calendar. Please indicate your name and what you want to meet to discuss. | |
| Curriculum vitae | |
Course management
Sakai site: Only your grades will be in Sakai. All other course content and activity will be on the course WordPress site.
We will be working with the following DL platforms: Omeka, DSpace, and CONTENTdm. Aaron B has installed all of these on a test server in the SILS Lab. I will provide you with the login info for all of them.
Remedial materials
Textbook & reading
There is one required text for this course:
Witten, I. H., Bainbridge, D., & Nichols, D. M. (2010). How to Build a Digital Library, 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufman Publishers.
Available as an ebook though the UNC libraries.
Breaking news: This ebook is from Ebrary, and Ebrary recently added a download feature to their books. See these excellent instructions for downloading Ebrary ebooks, written by the fantastic Chad Haefele, Emerging Technologies Librarian and Computer Science Subject Specialist, Davis Library.
If you prefer to hold paper in your hands, this book is also available in the Student Stores and on reserve in the SILS library. Also available from Amazon or any online bookseller.
All readings will be assigned on the course Schedule. Readings not from HtBaDL will be available on the free web, as an e-journal, via the Library's e-reserves, or via this wiki. Readings are also listed in my course Pinboard feed.
Additional reading
Arms, W. Y. (2000). Digital Libraries. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. (Also available from netLibrary, from ebrary, and on the free web)
Bishop, A. P., Van House, N. A., & Buttenfield, B. P. (Eds.). (2003). Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Borgman, C. L. (2000). From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. (Also available from netLibrary)
Lesk, M. (1997). Practical Digital Libraries: Books, Bytes, and Bucks. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufman Publishers.
Special issues of journals:
Library Trends, 49(2), Fall 2000. Assessing Digital Library Services, Edited by Thomas A. Peters.
Information Processing & Management, 41(1), January 2005. An Asian Digital Libraries Perspective, Edited by E. A. Fox and E. Logan.
You should read D-Lib Magazine and the International Journal on Digital Libraries regularly.
Several conferences devoted to digital libraries exist:
- Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL)
- International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL, formerly the European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL))
- International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL)
- The Digital Humanities Conference also has a lot of DL-related content
I've also aggregated a bunch of DL-related RSS feeds.
Assignments
Building a Digital Library
Status Reports
Digital Library Review
Digital Library Evaluation
Environmental Scanning
Grading rubric & other policies
See my course grading rubric.
See my course policies.
See the web.unc.edu Online Class Statement.
Assignments constitute the following percentage of your final grade:
- Building a Digital Library = 30%
- Status Reports = 20% (4 reports at 5 points per)
- DL Review = 10%
- Digital Library Evaluation = 10%
- Environmental Scanning = 10%
- Participation = 10%
Schedule
See the Schedule from Spring 2012.

