About Digital Initiatives

 

MISSION STATEMENT

The Purdue University Digital Initiatives (DI) project is committed to the production and maintenance of archival quality digital reproductions from the unique collections in the Purdue University Libraries to be delivered via state-of-the-art networking technology to the University scholarly community and to the world. Digital Initiatives is a collaborative effort of the Libraries Archives and Special Collections, Technical Services, and Information Technology Departments. The collaboration capitalizes on the strengths of the Libraries to deliver unique materials for scholarly and research purposes.

BENEFIT OF THE PROGRAM

The overarching benefit of the program will be to provide access to the University Libraries' vast collection of unique materials to faculty, students and the world’s scholarly community. The scholarly community will be able to access finding aids and digital surrogates of many of these collections remotely via the Internet.

GOALS

  • Establish best practices for the digitization of archival materials
  • Establish best practices for the metadata describing archived materials
  • Extend the life expectancy of the archival materials by reducing handling of the original materials
  • Increase the visibility of the Purdue University Libraries in the area of digital delivery of information
  • Provide best practices guidelines and hardware specifications for the scholarly community
  • Digitize currently available collections for scholarly use
  • Design scalable workflow for future digital projects

Project Areas

Digital initiatives (DI) uses a variety of hardware and software to digitize a variety of materials. Posters, bound books and single sheets.

 

DI will develop standards for image capture using state-of-the art hardware and software. Metadata standards will be developed for describing digital surrogates. Media search and display software will be investigated. Methods of OCR capture will also be investigated.

Popular Digital Collections

  • George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers
  • Amelia Earhart at Purdue
  • Purdue University Board of Trustees Minutes (1865 to present)
  • Debris yearbooks, Purdue University
  • Purdue Buildings and Campus scenes
  • Purdue History in Print
  • and many more