
UT Austin provides free access to more than 22,000 images of library materials - Petiver
http://blog.hrc.utexas.edu/2015/06/29/open_access_reveal/
======
fernly
Kudos for having their hearts in the right place.

No kudos for presentation. I've tried to look at two works, typewritten MSS by
Vachel Lindsay and Sara Teasdale, and the text display is awkward. The initial
presentation is too small to read. Looked long for a zoom control. Finally
tried "full browser" link which does display the current page with a zoom
control and the ability to drag that page around in a small frame to read it.

While it is nice that UT is doing this, it is sad that each uni has to do its
own thing. Can there be no one virtual repository where all such collections
-- or at least their catalogs -- could be amalgamated? It's like the bad old
days of physical libraries: the scholar has first to find out which collection
has the thing she needs, and may never learn that it exists. If they don't
want to deal with google books, how about using TIA as a front end?

Edit: ...and then I looked at the URL, hrc.contentdm.oclc.org and thought,
huh, that doesn't look like UT or EDU... turns out oclc.org is something like
I was just asking for, a front end content distribution platform for multiple
libraries. OK then. TIL and all that.

~~~
userbinator
It always irritates me when these sorts of sites decide to implement their own
often quirky document-viewing web app and hide everything behind it instead of
just providing a direct link to a PDF or similar. I mean, if you're going to
have this material freely available anyway why not make it easy to access?

IMHO archive.org is a good example to follow; I know their recent redesign is
somewhat controversial, but they have not changed the fact that it is _easy_
to get to the content directly, and their URLs are also mostly descriptive.

------
BHSPitMonkey
My university does something similar with its Digital Library and its related
projects. The main repository hosts around 140,000 objects which can be
accessed alongside metadata and in multiple formats here:

[http://digital.library.unt.edu/](http://digital.library.unt.edu/)

The Django app and libraries running the site are built and maintained in-
house, and are open source:

[https://github.com/unt-libraries](https://github.com/unt-libraries) (the
Django project/app itself is 'coda')

------
contingencies
This library is famous, I had often used it online even years ago. When I left
the US I donated a lot of material from Asia gathered over a decade or so to
their excellent map collection
[http://lib.utexas.edu/maps/](http://lib.utexas.edu/maps/) (much of which is
digitized) since shipping anything _out_ of the US is ridiculously expensive.

~~~
mcguire
Technically, the Perry-Castañeda Library and the Harry Ransom Center are only
loosely related, if that. (The HRC is the big fortress/vault-looking building
at 21st and Guadalupe and the Pickle is the warm and welcoming architectural
monstrosity at 21st and Speedway.)

But the HRC, it's forbidding exterior notwithstanding, is pretty nice, too.

------
juddlyon
Cool! Looks like they're free to use with attribution.

Direct link to the collections:
[http://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/#nav_top](http://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/#nav_top)

~~~
greglindahl
Nicely done -- they admit that they don't have a copyright where appropriate,
and ask for attribution, without requiring it.

------
ncphillips
UPEI has digital library system called Islandora[1] that does this sort of
thing. I worked for them for about 6 months. It's a set of Drupal modules that
interact with the Fedora[2] Repository (not the OS). They're pretty
successful, with hundreds of installations all over the world. They have been
scanning hundreds, if not thousands of books, newspapers, and maps so that
they can be stored digital and accessed freely.

One example I think is pretty interesting is Island Newspapers [3] where they
have scanned every issue of a newspaper in PEI, Canada called the Guardian
going back to 1890.

[1] [http://islandora.ca/islandora-
installations](http://islandora.ca/islandora-installations)

[2] [http://fedorarepository.org/](http://fedorarepository.org/)

[3] [http://islandnewspapers.ca/](http://islandnewspapers.ca/)

