Tag: digital humanities

Orphan Digitization

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The University of Michigan Library Copyright Office, in partnership with the HathiTrust Digital Library, is launching an effort to identify orphan works among the holdings of the HathiTrust.

Orphan works are those which are within their copyright date restrictions but for which no copyright holder can be found: effectively, they have no parent individual or organization and are, therefore, orphaned. Still, granting access to these works can be problematic since they are not outside the realm of copyright but, so to speak, mislaid within it.

The University of Michigan/Hathi identification project will start by focusing on works published between 1923 and 1963 and aims, in the end, to create tools which will allow publicizing of orphan work information, giving copyright holders the chance to come forward and claim their intellectual property.

Orphan works are a category of material which any digitization project must take into account: should they be digitized? if they are, should they be presented under the same rules as a work that is wholly out of copyright? should they be made available with restricted access of some kind? if restrictions are put on use, what should they be?

The list of questions is nearly endless and the MHL looks forward to the information that will undoubtedly be generated by the University of Michigan project.

Open Access at Yale

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Last week, Yale University, one of the partners in the MHL, announced it would be offering open access to images of many of the items in its museums, libraries, and special collections via a new website: Discover Yale Digital Commons.

Researchers can browse the collections — which include Historical Scientific Instruments — or search for something specific.

For more on the new Yale initiative, see coverage at DigitalKoans, Ten Thousand Year Blog, the Chronicle of Higher Education’s QuickWire or Boston.com.

The MHL is pleased to be in such a fine and growing group of online projects.

As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!

CLIR 2011 Sponsors’ Symposium Features the Medical Heritage Library

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The world of higher education at large continues to grapple with the changing needs of researchers brought about by emerging technologies. Although many of the technological solutions for building a more robust research infrastructure are within our grasp, the human side of this equation is unresolved. That is, we are still learning the productive ways in which to work together across professional and institutional boundaries. This was a focus of discussion at the 2011 Council on Libraries and Information Resources Sponsors’ Symposium in Arlington, VA—Collaborative Opportunities Amidst Economic Pressures. Lively discussion of the economic, institutional, and social factors that can facilitate or impede collaborative solutions filled much of the day.

My presentation, Whose Goals are They? Navigating Diverse Institutional Cultures and Shared Responsibility for Creating Digital Resources in the History of Medicine, focused on the history of the MHL project and how a diverse group of partners can support digital scholarship in the medical humanities. This presentation was part of a panel that included two other examples of successful collaborations:

  • “The Making of Hydra: Common Solutions for Common Problems” by Martha Sites, Associate University Librarian for Production and Technology Services, University of Virginia
  • “TextGrid: A Virtual Research Environment for the Humanities” by Heike Neuroth, Scientific Coodinator of TextGrid and Director of Research and Development, University Library of Goettingen.

Together these projects highlight three approaches to finding shared solutions for disciplinary or local issues. In the final session of the day Chuck Henry, CLIR President, divided us into groups and asked the provocative question: What is it about our policies, organizations, traditions, or practices that impedes collaboration? The list of responses ranged from resource and staffing constraints to the perhaps more challenging habits of culture and communication.

PowerPoint slides from each of the presentations are available here. CLIR will also post a summary of the afternoon session on their website with a blog or wiki to encourage wider discussion. Visit often and join in the conversation.

Lori M. Jahnke
S. Gordon Castigliano CLIR Fellow
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia