Alderman Library, University of Virginia
A special excursion after the recent AAUP/ARL Symposium brought 40 participants to the University of Virginia Library to see electronic publications conveyed to faculty and students and to focus on the emergent digital library and new forms of scholarly publication. After addresses by Karin Wittenborg, University Librarian, and Edward Ayers, Professor of History, who is currently creating an electronic archive of the life of two American towns in the Civil War era, participants visited the Library's electronic resource centers to examine different types of information routinely delivered over the local and global networks.
David Seaman, Center Coordinator, showed the on-line SGML text collections and the search software through which they are accessed, as well as the text-analysis programs, scanning technology, and digital image manipulation software available to library users.
Paul Bergen, Social Sciences Data Center Coordinator, introduced geographic information systems and drew on some research projects performed in the GIS Lab. Participants saw satellite imagery of Charlottesville linked to 1990 Census maps, and analyzed Civil War battle strategy using a three-dimensional digital elevation model of the mountains around Stokesville, Virginia.
Christie Stephenson, Digital Image Center Coordinator, showed off the Digital Image Study Project, a pilot project to provide images to students in art and architecture history survey courses. In addition, participants saw an electronic exhibit catalog she created to document a recent exhibition of African Art at UVA's Bayly Museum. The Catalog was presented using the NCSA Mosaic client for the World Wide Web.
James Campbell, Chair, Electronic Information Committee, Michael Plunkett, Curator of Manuscripts, and John Price-Wilkin, Systems Librarian for Information Services, presented the possibilities and problems of supplying information over the University networks. VIRGO, the Library's catalog and bibliographic database system, and the CD-ROM databases were discussed in terms of funding and staffing. The Library's most ambitious Gopher project -- mounting its Special Collections guides -- was described and demonstrated. WAIS technology searched manuscript collections dealing with slavery.
John Unsworth, Director, and Thornton Staples, Associate Director, described the IBM grant that initiated it, and the fellowship program that brings UVA humanities scholars into the Institute. John Dobbins, Art Department faculty and current Institute Fellow, discussed his reconstruction of the forum at Pompeii. Another Fellow, Hoyt Duggan, English Department, presented his project to build an electronic archive of the manuscripts of Piers Plowman. Some hypertext projects using the World Wide Web were demonstrated, including former Fellow Jerome McGann's Rossetti Archive.
Kendon Stubbs, Associate University Librarian, presented a session on the evolution of the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia.
Edward Gaynor, Head of Original Cataloging, discussed the use of TEI P(2)- conformant SGML to create full bibliographic headers for electronic texts. He outlined the decision-making process involved in selecting elements to be included in the file description and organization. He also demonstrated the online workform for the bibliographic headers, the fully parsed text, and the text plus headers. The need for a MARC record to represent the text both in the Library's catalog, and the national utilities was discussed. Visitors viewed the manual conversion of the header to MARC format and heard about plans for an automated translation program. The session concluded with a general discussion on the need for "super- catalogs" and multi-level catalogs that could incorporate full-texts, standardized access points, and a bibliographic place holder (a.k.a. the MARC record).
[ED. Note: This report was assembled from notes by the presenters of the sessions described above.]