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North Carolina Supreme Court Briefs

The Kathrine R. Everett Law Library at the University of North Carolina is in the midst of a digitization project of its collection of North Carolina Supreme Court Briefs. More than 2,400 volumes will be made freely available on the Internet. The library will be making the PDF files available on its website with a custom search index. Original TIFF files will be archived. W.S. Hein & Co. is scanning the volumes for this project. The library will be using BitCurator, a forensic tool created by the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities,  to locate and remove sensitive personal information such as social security numbers.  Because many steps in this process are a first-time experiment, the completion date is unknown.  However, the library will begin posting the briefs in searchable form by the end of the 2013-14 school year.

Thanks to Steve Melamut, Information Technology Services Librarian, University of North Carolina Law Library, for this information. We look forward to progress reports on this important preservation experiment!

 
 
 

Preservation Project at University of Oklahoma Law Library

The following post is from Marilyn K. Nicely, Head of Technical Services & American Indian Law Subject Specialist

It is our goal to digitize a collection of Congressional documents from the Serial Set about Native Americans.  Our source is a bibliography prepared by Steven Johnson, Guide to American Indian Documents in the Congressional Serial Set: 1817-1899, New York : Clearwater Publishing Company, Inc. 1977. There are approximately 10,000 titles listed in the book which is a daunting number but many of them are only a few pages long.  Others are hundreds of pages.  I simply approach it as “if you don’t start you can’t finish.” Student workers are our staff for the project and they are very conscientious.  Quality control is always a concern but again access is so very important and the work they are doing seems to be very good, so I can’t allow myself to worry about perfection.  I have to continue with the duties of my “real job” so my time to work on the project is limited. Staying organized and having a good workflow is my main contribution.

Our project definitely is preservation of fugitive materials but my enthusiasm comes from the opportunity to provide open access to the content which will be of value to scholars, attorneys, and tribes and which is only available online through expensive databases.   We own a small collection of (1500)  documents which are unbound and can be scanned on a photocopier/scanner.  We are also scanning from bound volumes belonging to our Regional depository at the Oklahoma Department of Libraries.  We bought a book edge scanner and a more powerful computer.  We are using Adobe Acrobat to edit and character recognize.  Our University main library will put the documents into a database.  We are creating metadata, although it is very simple and not detailed.  The titles of the documents themselves have a lot of information.  Again, access is our emphasis.  We are scanning grayscale 400 dpi.

Here is a link to the description of our project in the Digitization Projects Registry http://registry.fdlp.gov/listings/american-indian-documents-in-the-congressional-serial-set-1817-1899

 
 
 

Preservation Week at American University

American University Law Library is celebrating Preservation Week by promoting their Digital Commons and encouraging students & faculty to preserve their scholarship by contributing to the Digital Commons. They placed flyers in the copy rooms on both floors of the library and posted them on the writing competitions board.

They are also tweeting/Facebooking preservation tips each day and linking to the Preservation Week website.

Thanks to Shannon Roddy and Billie Jo Kaufman for sharing their ideas and flyer!

 
 
 
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