National Impact
This project seeks to establish
a Southern Oregon Digital Archives at the Southern Oregon University
Library. The University and its Library have long taken seriously
our regional service mission both in gathering and making available
a variety of information resources needed by Southern Oregon citizens.
With the advances in digitizing documentary material the Library plans
to take the next step and convert unique and/or significant regional
documents both to preserve them and, equally important, to make them
more widely available. We envision this as the logical and necessary
extension of our current library services. The Library expects to
coordinate with related and complementary projects at the University
of Oregon and Oregon State University. In addition the project will
help the Library build the necessary infrastructure to continue to
digitize materials after the end of the grant period. A core of trained,
knowledgeable staff will have been developed and appropriate processes
set in place and revised as necessary. A third goal for the project
is to develop the organization and techniques that could be adopted
by other regional university libraries as they seek to contribute
to the growing body of digitized resources.
Creating Digital Collections.
During the grant period, this project expects to begin creating three
digital collections. We will identify and acquire or locate significant
appropriate publications; will digitize retrospective materials in
our collections and in collections of other libraries or agencies;
and will develop the mechanisms to continue to acquire and digitize
related materials in the future. By the end of the grant project
period our expectation is that the Archives will number from 700 to
900 documents.
Southern Oregon Bioregions
Collection
For the past 30 years the SOU
Library’s Government Publications Department has collected and
cataloged federal documents relating to the three county Southern
Oregon area: Jackson, Josephine and Klamath Counties. In addition
to depository items, the Library has sought to obtain “fugitive”
documents (documents that are not depository items) from agencies
such as the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau
of Reclamation, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife, and the
U.S. Geological Survey. Through careful cultivation of personnel
in local offices and review of bibliographies in completed agency
research papers, the Library has developed a collection of hundreds
of these rare and valuable items, many of which are held only by Southern
Oregon University. Government Publications is also a full depository
for Oregon state documents relating to this region and has actively
collected fugitive state publications as well, including watershed
assessments, many of which are also unique.
The Southern Oregon Klamath-Siskiyou
bioregion, which will be the initial focus of this grant project,
is recognized by scientists around the world as an area that is uniquely
rich in plant and animal species. “In 1993 the World Conservation
Union proclaimed it one of the seven areas of global botanical significance
on the North American continent” (Portland Oregonian,
1/5/01). It is particularly diverse in plant species due in part
to the region’s complex geology including the high mineral content
serpentine soils in the Coast Range. The wide variation in rainfall
and temperature also contributes to this region’s abundant life
forms. According to the World Wildlife Fund (The Klamath-Siskiyou
Forests, June 2000) the region “ranks among the most biologically
diverse temperate coniferous forest ecoregions in the world”
and is home to more than 3,500 plant species, 281 of which are unique.
The area is often the edge of a plant or animal’s range–it
is the southernmost reach of many northern and Cascade species and
the northernmost reach of northern California species. The bioregion
encompasses 10 million acres, four mountain ranges (the Siskiyous,
Marbles, Trinity Alps, and Yolla Bollys), and a number of significant
river drainages (including the Rogue, Umpqua, Coquille, Illinois and
Klamath).
The digital materials that
will be added to the Southern Oregon Bioregions Collection will be
of interest not only to regional landowners, students, faculty and
Northwest citizens interested in environmental issues, but also to
national and international scholars and researchers.
Indian Tribal
Materials Collection
Four of the nine Oregon federally
recognized tribes reside in the Southern and Eastern Oregon region.
With this project the Library will open a dialog with the Klamath
Tribes, the nearest of the nine tribal governments. The Klamath Tribes,
composed of the Modoc, Klamath and Yahooskin Indians, have created
an excellent website and have begun mounting some information on it.
By working together, coordinating what material is digitized and creating
links between the Klamath and SOU sites, we can develop a project
that will serve as a statewide and national model of university/tribe
collaboration. We expect to establish an ongoing dialog with representatives
from the Tribes’ Natural Resources, Cultural and Heritage, Education
and Employment, Planning and Enterprise, and Klamath Newsletter/Public
Information Departments, and other departments the tribe feels should
be included.
The Tribes and University Library
will jointly select the tribal materials, both retrospective and current,
that will be digitized. In addition we will add to the Indian Tribal
Materials Collection public domain publications already in our collection
such as treaties, Klamath Boundary Commission documents, Bureau of
Indian Affairs publications relating to the Klamath including Annual
Reports to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, termination and restoration
hearings, cultural resource surveys, fishing and water rights materials,
and related publications.
Southern Oregon University
has a strong history of working collaboratively with the Klamath and
other tribes in Oregon, evidenced by the Native American Studies program
at the University and the Native American Youth Academy (Konaway Nika
Tillicum) held on campus every summer for middle school American Indian
youth from Oregon. Initiating a successful digitization project with
the Klamath Tribes, one that works collaboratively with them, will
provide both an impetus and a model for other partnerships and digitization
projects in the future.
Local Government
Information Collection
The Southern Oregon University
Library has actively collected regional city and county governmental
materials for a number of years. Most of these can only be obtained
through ongoing contacts and intensive efforts to work with the numerous
municipal and county governments and agencies. The SOU Government
Publications Department is often the only place where these items
can be found after their initial issuance. By digitizing the most
important of these items, particularly the city and county comprehensive
plans and budget documents, the University Library will create an
important repository for regional information of interest both to
local governmental employees and the citizens of Southern Oregon.
An important part of this project will be to institutionalize the
channels through which the Library obtains copies of local documents,
to set up mechanisms to assure continuing receipt of the materials
and to extend our reach in soliciting publications from a wider range
of municipal and county agencies. Library staff will also review
lists of uncataloged Oregon city and county planning publications
from the University of Oregon to identify those retrospective materials
that are within the scope of the project which can then be borrowed
and digitized.
This portion of the project
will complement the Data for Local Communities project, sponsored
by the Oregon libraries of the Orbis Library Consortium, which has
the goal of serving the information needs of local governments, business
people, community planners, researchers, and other citizens needing
access to local area data. The Local Government Information Collection
will contribute current and historic documents from the three county
region to this project.
Creating a Digitization
Infrastructure at Southern Oregon.
Libraries in Oregon, both large and small, have not yet been in the
forefront of national digitization efforts. But all Oregon libraries
have been models in regional cooperative efforts. One goal for this
project is to develop an ongoing digitization infrastructure in the
SOU Library that will allow the Library staff to continue creating
and preserving digital information after the grant period has ended.
At the same time Southern Oregon librarians will be able to serve
as catalysts for other digitizing efforts in Oregon.
The Library expects to put
into place the technical equipment, space, processes, and staff expertise
and knowledge necessary to inaugurate and continue the creation of
digital library resources. Librarians will learn about digitization
standards, equipment, and techniques; about creating the necessary
metadata; about the software to store, access, and link the digital
materials and their metadata; about web design most effective for
presenting digital documents; about mechanisms to preserve and refresh
the digital files; and about designing procedures that will sustain
the project beyond the grant period.
Serving as a Model for
Regional Libraries. The final goal
of this project is to create a model digitization center that is both
achievable and sustainable for regional libraries, one that can stand
as a guide to other libraries in the state and nation. Regional libraries
frequently assume responsibility for gathering, making accessible,
and preserving local material, often times materials that, if not
collected here, would be unavailable even in the largest research
universities. This is especially true of designated depository libraries,
such as SOU. If these important local materials are to be preserved
and made accessible for scholars and the ordinary citizen, regional
libraries must begin to play a significant role in the creation of
digital collections and conversion of print to digital formats. An
important component of this process is developing ongoing agreements
with local agencies to provide print copies or to automatically transmit
machine readable files of new publications to the regional archive
center, which would permit cost effective digital archiving. The
Southern Oregon Digital Archives Project will lay a foundation for
future collaboration between the libraries of Oregon to ensure that
local materials around the state are collected, preserved, and made
widely accessible.
Adaptability
Citizens and agencies turn
to local academic libraries when they need local materials and these
regional libraries have traditionally responded by collecting, as
intensively as possible, local items that are not easily found in
other libraries. Both for citizens and scholars, making the material
available digitally on the web is the next necessary step for regional
libraries, large and small. One of the project goals is to create
a model that can be used by other libraries of any size committed
to digitizing, preserving and providing access to significant local
materials. Southern Oregon expects to 1) develop model procedures
for working with regional federal, state and local agencies and governments
to select, acquire and digitize documents, 2) investigate and acquire
moderately priced equipment appropriate for other modestly sized projects,
3) develop internal processes and procedures for the actual digitizing
operation and quality controls, 4) create a set of metadata specifications
that are reasonable and achievable for regional libraries to employ
in ongoing projects, and 5) share this model information regionally
by working with the Orbis consortium, state-wide by presenting papers
at state and Northwest conferences, and nationally through contributing
articles to national journals.
Design
The University plans on a two
and a half year project to carry out our three goals. The planning
phase at the beginning is absolutely critical to the successful completion
of the entire project since this is the time when staff will educate
themselves about how to successfully digitize collections and will
make the critical decisions to create a model sustainable digitization
operation. The second phase of two years encompasses the actual digitization
of materials and makes them accessible. The final phase of four months
overlaps the end of the production period and focuses attention on
finalizing the infrastructure, ongoing procedures and planning for
the future of the Archives.
Phase I – Planning:
July 2001 - December 2001.
The initial stage of Creating the Southern Oregon Digital Archives
will focus on completing the planning details for the project. The
Library will hire a consultant experienced in digitization projects
to 1) recommend scanning equipment, 2) provide guidance in determining
appropriate operating procedures, 3) articulate responsibilities for
various personnel, 4) help define any additional training needs, 5)
clarify considerations in access to the digital documents, 6) advise
on cataloging concerns and 7) make suggestions on metadata needed
for the three collections. The consultant will also help develop
requirements for flatbed and overhead scanners, image quality standards,
image file formats and resolution standards. We will also look to
this person to help us determine personnel qualifications for our
Digitization Assistants and develop workflow patterns necessary to
achieve our goals.
A second, database/technical
consultant will provide assistance in determining the appropriate
computer hardware and software necessary to store, catalog, and provide
public access to digital image collections. This will involve determining
specific size requirements for hard disks, processor speed, backup
procedures and the necessary operating system environment. To some
degree, we will be testing a variety of existing software packages
to determine their appropriateness to this project. These include,
but will not be limited to, Endeavor’s ENCompass and University
of Washington’s Content. To enhance accessibility to our digital
collections we will hire a web design firm to work on a pleasing interface
and issues of usability.
During this phase initial contacts
will be made with the Klamath Tribal Council, state and federal agency
heads, and local government officials to explain the project, seek
their cooperation, acquire documents not already in our collections,
and open discussions on procedures to make this an ongoing activity.
Project staff will also initiate more extensive discussions with relevant
staff and the University of Oregon and Oregon State University Libraries
to coordinate the Bioregions Collection with OSU’s Natural Resources
Institute’s proposed digital library and to coordinate the Local
Government Information Collection with the Local Communities Data
project being started at the UO.
Phase II – Production:
January 2002 - December 2003. During the second phase of the
project the documents in the three collections will be digitized,
the database created, and the digitized publications made available.
The paragraphs below outline the several steps that will be needed;
but the precise processes and activities will be fully determined
with the help of the two consultants used during Phase I.
a) Selection.
Southern Oregon Bioregions Collection: Selection for the anticipated
400-600 items for this collection is already underway. The Government
Publications Librarian and her staff who have worked with these regional
materials for over 20 years will make all selections of government
publications. They are reviewing every bibliographic entry of currently
cataloged government publications in the SOU catalog from the regional
offices of the U.S. Forest Service covering the Siskiyou, Rogue River,
Klamath, Fremont, and Winema National Forests. In addition, they
will select appropriate U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of
Reclamation, Geological Survey, and Fish and Wildlife publications.
They will also systematically select studies published by Oregon Watershed
Councils and the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Resources.
Land use and ecological studies from city and county governments in
our defined region will be identified by close analysis of the library’s
cataloged collection. See Appendix A for a representative sampling
of the publications to be included in this and the other collections.
Indian Tribal Materials
Collection: We will concentrate on tribal
materials of the Klamath Tribes, centered in Chiloquin. The Klamath
Tribes are a logical choice, as they are the nearest tribal government
of the nine federally recognized tribes in Oregon, located about 70
miles east of Ashland in Klamath County. They are beginning to mount
information such as the October, 2000 Economic Self-Sufficiency
Plan on their current website. We will initially contact the
Klamath Tribal Council to meet with them to discuss the project and
obtain names of representatives from the tribal government’s
various departments to establish a tribal advisory group. We will
work closely with this advisory group to collaboratively develop a
selection policy with criteria for choosing materials for the project.
These clear selection criteria will be based on factors including,
but not limited to, historical value, educational value, preservation
needs, potential for high use, access, and benefit to the tribe, the
university, the region, and nation. The SOU Library will be sensitive
to tribal concerns about appropriateness of materials to digitize
(for example, we would in all probability omit geographic information
about sacred sites). We hope to digitize some 100 to 200 items during
the course of the project.
Local Government Information
Collection: We will examine cataloging
records for city and county documents in the SOU Library collection
and will select primarily budget and planning materials from the three
county region of our project. Other local government publications
such as the Josephine County Historical Resources Inventory, 1983‑1984
will also be selected. In addition we are examining a list of
uncataloged Oregon city and county planning publications owned by
the University of Oregon for those that are relevant to our project.
We will interlibrary loan and digitize those that apply to our areas.
At the same time Library staff will contact other relevant city and
county agencies to acquire additional items within the scope of the
project that we do not currently own. If we cannot get copies for
our collection we will seek to borrow, digitize and return them. We
anticipate initially including some 100-200 items in the collection.
b) Preparation. Most
documents will have their bindings guillotined and will be fed through
a form feeder for scanning, following appropriate collating, an initial
review for completeness, and determination of any special needs during
digitization. Original documents will be rebound with a simple paper
binding. A small number of materials may be copied page by page by
hand from the original due to preservation reasons. When
available, we will obtain digital versions of current federal, state,
city, county, and tribal publications. During this process we expect
to set in place the foundations for future cooperation with these
municipal and county governments.
c) Scanning. Scanning
will usually begin with the title page or front cover unless there
are other instructions by project staff. All parts of each publication
will be scanned including tables of contents, introductions, indexes,
bibliographies, maps, tables, and foldouts. After scanning we will
make acid-free copies of all documents and have them bound.
Archival quality images will
be created using a nonproprietary TIFF format and stored to hard disk.
It is possible that an additional archival copy of each image will
be stored on CD-ROM. The scanning process will also involve the creation
of an OCR’d file favorable for full text searching. Further
scanning procedures will be followed as developed during the planning
phase of the project.
d) Quality Control.
Project staff will perform quality control checks as an ongoing process.
We anticipate that the digitization assistants will do a quality control
check after scanning of each page and after the text is marked up.
At a minimum, they will review each document for completeness and
legibility.Other quality control checks may be determined as a result
of the project’s planning phase.
e) Post-Scanning Processing.
All images will be attached to database
records for the purpose of full text searching and retrieval on the
web. Database records for the Southern Oregon Bioregions Collection
and the Local Government Information Collection will, whenever possible,
be converted from existing OCLC cataloging records. Most of the materials
in the Indian Tribal Materials Collection will require original cataloging.
At the minimum, each image in all collections will be searchable by
author(s), title, subjects, and the full text of the document. Specific
post-scanning procedures will be developed based on our selection
of database and scanning software.
f) Delivery System.
We will choose database software such as Endeavor’s ENCompass
or the University of Washington’s Content as a result of the
planning phase of the project. The three collections will be searchable
from appropriately designed web pages linked to the SOU Library’s
website. We will hire a web designer to ensure the website’s
attractiveness and usability.
g) Cataloging and Metadata.
All of the publications digitized for the project will have MARC records
with full Library of Congress (LC) cataloging and notes fields containing
further descriptive information as needed to provide rich access and
description. While many of the government publications selected for
the project already have full MARC records, they will need to be edited
to provide links to the digital records. Some publications, especially
the local government publications and tribal materials, will require
original cataloging. The records will be available through the SOU
Library Online Catalog as well as through the OCLC bibliographic utility
and the Orbis consortia catalog. Links from the MARC records to the
digital texts will be provided by clickable URLs in the MARC 856 field.
This field is accessible through the SOU Library Online Catalog.
SOU Library project staff will
determine the exact descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata
after researching the available implementation standards. We will
most likely use the Dublin Core standard. At this time we expect to
avoid redundant cataloging in MARC and metadata creation through the
OCLC CORC service. Other methods by which we may create metadata
include: extraction from our online catalog records, extraction from
the digitized items, and direct keying by project staff.
Phase III – Finalizing
Infrastructure & Sustainability:
September 2003 - December 2003. The focus of this period of
the grant will be refining processes and procedures to create a sustainable,
ongoing operation for Southern Oregon University and to disseminate
information about the regional digitization model to other libraries,
including the creation of pages on the project’s website that
describe the model processes and equipment. The Principal Investigator
and Project Manager will consult with the external evaluator to review
and improve the digitization process and organization, and to assess
the Archives’ role in the larger digitization picture in Oregon.
They will develop plans for the next stage of the Southern Oregon
Digital Archives, lay out an ongoing budget, identify possible funding
sources, and work with campus administrators to institutionalize the
Archives.
Management Plan and Personnel
The Principal Investigator
for the project will be Teresa Montgomery, Associate Library Director
and Technical Services Coordinator, who will spend 15% of her time
over the two and a half year project (vita of the key project staff
members are in Appendix B). She will oversee the project development
and will coordinate the efforts of the Project Team. She will work
with the Project Manager and Haley to develop cataloging and metadata
specifications and procedures, and with the Project Team to develop
documentation of standards, workflow, and quality control procedures.
She will coordinate the evaluation of the project and the dissemination
of its results. Montgomery oversaw the implementation of the SOU
Library’s III automation system in 1994 and acted as its manager
from 1994-1999. She served as Acting Director from Sept. 1998 - July
2000. She has worked with cataloging and automation systems since
1981.
James Rible, Systems Librarian,
will serve as the Project Manager, giving 25% of his time to the day-to-day
management of the project. He will serve as the principal researcher
of software applications and hardware to be used in the project including
OCR and database software, scanning equipment, and servers. He will
assess staff performance in maintaining digitization standards and
will supervise the full-time digitization assistant to be hired for
the project. Rible has been responsible for a variety of electronic
systems and services including managing access to the University Library’s
electronic databases and maintaining the Library’s local area
network since joining the Library in 1987. He was an early adopter
and campus instructor in the use of the internet and served as the
campus webmaster for three years. He is a frequent presenter at Online
Northwest and publishes regularly in the field of information technology.
Deborah Hollens, Government
Publications Librarian, will devote 10% of her time to the project.
During her sabbatical Spring Term 2002 this will increase to 60%.
She will oversee the selection of materials for the Southern Oregon
Bioregions Collection and the Local Government Information Collection.
Working with Haley and Montgomery she will help determine the metadata
elements for government publications in the project. She will lead
and coordinate efforts to establish ongoing relationships with local
federal and state agencies and state and county governments to assure
the acquisition of difficult-to-find documents. Hollens has 22 years
of experience in government publications and is a state leader in
acquiring fugitive documents and an active member of the Documents
Interest Group of Oregon. She has developed the most complete collection
of Oregon state publications in the state.
Mary Jane Cedar Face, Collection
Development Librarian, will devote 10% of her time to the project.
She will take the lead in coordinating selection of items for the
Indian Tribal Materials Collection. She will serve as liaison to
the Klamath Tribes and will develop a collaborative relationship with
appropriate tribal personnel. She will be responsible for selecting
materials from our existing holdings relating to the Klamath Tribes,
will work with the Klamath to digitize materials from their archives,
and will engage in the requisite research for locating Klamath materials
in the public domain from other repositories. She has many years
of experience with Native American research and community involvement
and for a number of years served as the advisor to Southern’s
Native American Student Union.
Lisa Haley, Cataloging Coordinator,
will devote 50% of her time to the project. She will work with Montgomery
and Hollens to establish the cataloging policies, procedures, and
metadata elements for the digitized materials. She will do original
cataloging of items in the project. Haley will hire and supervise
the half-time cataloger. She has seven years of progressively responsible
cataloging experience in a wide range of formats and media including
government publications and electronic resources.
Sue Burkholder, who has served
as Library Director since 1985, will manage the project budget and
with Montgomery will coordinate project activities with ongoing Library
operations.
Anne Richards, Government Information
Specialist, will assist Deborah Hollens in acquiring additional fugitive
federal publications and local city and planning publications and
in establishing quality control activities, spending 10% of her time
on the project. She has worked for 19 years in the SOU Government
Publications Department and has developed the necessary personal relationships
with federal and state agency personnel for securing rare publications.
Karen Menzie, Cataloging Technician
III, will devote 10% of her time assisting Haley and the Cataloger
in copy cataloging tasks for the digitized materials. She has 16
years of progressively difficult cataloging experience in a variety
of formats including software and electronic databases.
A half-time Cataloger will
be hired to catalog materials digitized in the project. Lisa Haley
will supervise this position. A full-time Digitization Assistant
will be hired to prepare materials for scanning and to perform quality
control. This person will supervise the student assistants and will
be supervised by Rible. A half-time Digitization Assistant will be
hired to assist Hollens, Cedar Face, and Richards with correspondence,
telephone calls to government agencies, quality control, and other
miscellaneous tasks. Deborah Hollens will supervise this position.
Student assistants will be hired for scanning tasks. They will be
overseen by the Digitization Assistant.
All members of the Project
Team will meet regularly to coordinate project activities.
Budget and Contributions
The budget for the two and
a half year project and the contributions to be made by the Library
are outlined in the budget sheets.
Evaluation
The success of this project
will be measured in several ways and will be carried out with the
assistance of an external evaluator. A mid-point evaluation will
take place during July 2002 to assess progress to that point and to
suggest any changes, additions or corrections that might need to be
made. The final evaluation of the full range of the project’s
outcomes will be made during December 2003. Both quantitative and
qualitative measures will be used.
At the simplest level the Library
will assess whether we have achieved the goal of digitizing 700-900
volumes in the three collection areas outlined above, whether we have
acquired appropriate equipment, hardware, and staff experience to
create an ongoing digitizing capability at the SOU Library, and whether
we have built the relationships with the local federal and state agencies,
municipal and county governments, and tribal administrators to assure
continuing receipt of these difficult-to-obtain items.
The website access to the Southern
Oregon Digital Archives will be evaluated by the number of people
who visit the site and its various components. The ease of use and
utility of the site will be ascertained through a user survey on the
site and through analysis of Reference questions asking for help with
the Archives web pages.
The value of the digitized
documents will be assessed with the help of the outside evaluator
through such mechanisms as looking at student paper bibliographies,
contacting scholars in appropriate disciplinary fields, and comments
recorded by visiting scholars to the website.
The appropriateness and the
value of the digitization model created for regional libraries will
be assessed through discussions with other libraries in Oregon, particularly
during presentations at Online Northwest and the Oregon Library Association
annual meeting, by determining whether other libraries have used the
model in setting up digitizing projects, and through the assessment
of the outside evaluator.
Dissemination
The Southern Oregon Digital
Archives will be available to everyone through a carefully designed
web page. All the items will be fully searchable, with extensive
and appropriate metadata, and will be completely cataloged in the
SOU Library catalog, the catalog of the Orbis consortium, and OCLC’s
World Cat. The website will also include full information about the
project and the model for regional digitization projects that was
developed, including the equipment and processes used.
The Principal Investigator
and Project Manager, along with other project personnel, will make
interim and final project reports to regional meetings, such as the
Oregon Library Association annual meeting and the annual Online Northwest
meetings. At the end of the project, the leaders expect to submit
articles to refereed professional journals. If requested, members
of the Project Team will be available to consult with other regional
libraries in setting up similar digitization projects. During the
course of the project regional professional colleagues will be apprised
of progress through Orbis consortium committees, the Documents Interest
Group of Oregon, the LibsOr listserv, and other appropriate organizations.
To publicize the Indian Tribal
Materials Collection of the Archives, project staff will not only
meet extensively with members of the Klamath Tribes but will also
attend meetings of tribal elders of other tribes in Southern and Eastern
Oregon. Presentations are planned for the Oregon Indian Education
Association meetings and other appropriate Native American meetings.
Project staff will officially
inform all relevant local government agencies of the Local Government
Information Collection and invite them to use the materials. The
collection will be an excellent beginning point for any research on
the Southern Oregon area by planners, local businesses, researchers,
developers, students, and the general public.
Sustainability
One of the primary project
goals is to create a realistic and sustainable program of ongoing
digitization at a regional academic library such as Southern Oregon.
By the end of the grant period we expect to have the necessary hardware,
software, processes and procedures, and staff experience and expertise
to be able to integrate a modest level of continuing digitization
activities into our regular workload. We expect to augment the Archives
through continuing the relationships built during the project period
and thereby continuing to receive relevant publications. As more
material is created and disseminated digitally we will seek to become
the repository where these Southern Oregon materials are preserved.
In addition we expect to use the experiences during the Creating the
Southern Oregon Digital Archives project to gain sufficient knowledge
to allow the Library to apply for additional private, state, and federal
grants. The Library is committed to maintaining the Southern Oregon
Digital Archives website after the end of the grant period.
More specifically our work
with the Klamath Tribes should result in both an ongoing relationship
with those tribal elders to receive tribal documents and a model to
follow in developing similar relationships with the other federally
recognized tribes outside the Willamette Valley.
The University is currently
engaged in a number of multi-agency partnerships relating to the Southern
Oregon bioregions including the Applegate Partnership and a cooperative
program to locate the Ashland Ranger District office of the U.S. Forest
Service on our campus. Alliances such as these will assist the Library
in continuing our digital collection building activities with fugitive
materials available only from local district offices. We anticipate
adding 50 volumes a year to this collection, thereby providing a growing
permanent resource for scholars and students studying this unique
region
For tribes, agencies or local
governments that are already producing material in digital form we
expect that the Southern Oregon Digital Archives will offer a site
that can collocate financial and planning information from all over
the region and that will provide a commitment to preserving these
digital materials.
