Stanford University’s Cathy Aster, Product and Service Manager in Digital Library Systems and Services graciously invited me to write a second guest blog post for the Digital Library Blog earlier this year, so here I am, belatedly taking her up on that generous offer.
In May, 2019, three colleagues launched an exhibit to mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death by celebrating the books and ideas that shaped his world. Leonardo's Library: The World of a Renaissance Reader will be on display through mid-October in the Green Library Bing Wing. The three colleagues, Prof. Paula Findlen, John Mustain (Emeritus Curator of Rare Books), and Elizabeth Fischbach (exhibits designer and manager for Stanford Libraries Special Collections), brought a wealth of knowledge, expertise, and experience to a real blockbuster demonstration of what can be accomplished when Stanford faculty, libraries, and a team of exceptional students come together to tell a story with our collections. We're happy to announce a new online exhibit, https://exhibits.stanford.edu/leonardo, to parallel and augment the physical experience and preserve a memory of this event for posterity.
We are pleased to announce Lighting The Way: A National Forum on Archival Discovery and Delivery, a year-long project running from September 1, 2019 to August 31, 2020, funded by the National Leadership Grants for Libraries program of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Lighting the Way will convene a series of national meetings focused on enhancing discovery and delivery for archives and special collections. The project builds on current and past efforts at Stanford Libraries around archives and technology, including ArcLight, ePADD, and the AIMS project.
In October 2019, the project team will launch an open application and nomination process for a National Forum, scheduled for January 2020, dedicated to discussion and brainstorming about both current successes and challenges to effective archival discovery and delivery. Project funding includes participant support costs for archives, library, and technology workers interested in improving how user-facing systems that support archival discovery and delivery work together. Find out more about Lighting the Way, including information on the project team, its goals, and its expected outcomes on our project website.
Stanford Libraries is organizing a work cycle later this year for ArcLight, a Rails engine supporting discovery of archival material. The work cycle is expected to run from August 12 to October 11, 2019, with planned contributions in terms of staff and development time from Stanford University, University of Michigan, Indiana University, and Princeton University. This work expands upon the work undertaken between April to June 2017 to develop a minimum viable product, and focuses on adding features, fixing bugs, and ensuring it is better suited as a product for future adoption and development.
As a part of planning for this work cycle, Stanford, Michigan, Indiana, and Princeton have begun developing a collaborative roadmap to help us scope candidate areas of development. Following the process undertaken recently by the Spotlight community, we are now looking for contributions to and feedback on the roadmap to inform our work. If you’ve previously shared evaluations of ArcLight internal to your organization, we welcome you incorporating your ideas for features and improvements to this document. Our first deadline for contributions to the ArcLight work cycle roadmap is June 28, 2019.
The ArcLight MVP project team has completed our eight-week work cycle to develop a minimum viable product to support discovery and delivery of archival materials using Blacklight, and have released ArcLight 0.1. More details, including a demo video and list of implemented features, follow below. The code for ArcLight, as well as documentation on how to get started can be found on GitHub.
Welcome to the Summer 2019 Digital Library Services Newsletter, prepared by the Product and Service Management team! This newsletter includes contributions from: Cathy Aster, Hannah Frost, Dinah Handel, Michael Olson, and Josh Schneider.
We are pleased to announce that Stanford Libraries has released a redesigned My Library Account. Library borrowers can now:
using a mobile-friendly and completely updated application. Designed and developed by Digital Library Systems & Services staff, the new My Library Account shares the look and feel of other Stanford Libraries applications.
We are happy to report on a study conducted during the past academic year on stakeholder expectations and needs for text search capabilities in SUL’s digital library ecosystem, to inform future software development priorities and possible service expansion.
The study was conducted through interviews with six SUL bibliographers, one Hoover curator, one academic technology specialist, and two representatives from Special Collections.