Advanced networks are making it possible for libraries to expand access and outreach opportunities in never-before imagined ways. By digitizing their collections, libraries are re-envisioning how scholarly research is completed. New, privacy-protecting authenticated access to digital collections developed by the advanced networking community is making the digitization of collections possible on a global scale. Libraries around the country are expanding outreach through virtual author visits and book signings using interactive video.
Discover the possibilities for the Library Community through MAGPI.
The Library Congress is collaborating with the Internet2 community to leverage its advanced network infrastructure to facilitate wide-scale digital preservation projects and to enhance the development of an Internet-based database of U.S. newspapers. C-SPAN has digitized its entire holdings from 1998 to the present and allows educators and researchers to access this collection via the Internet2 Network. The video library is searchable using an extensive number of fields such as topic, speaker, organization, committee, keywords and has an optimized word searching tool that includes abstracts and closed captioning text. The National Science Digital Library (NSDL), a project funded by the US National Science Foundation, is using Internet2 resources to permit secure, privacy-protecting authenticated access to its holdings.
The Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image at The University of Pennsylvania
Re-envisioning scholarly research through digitization
The University of Pennsylvania Libraries have made over 12,000 images from various collections of rare books, manuscripts, papyri, photographs and sheet music are available over the network through the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI). Since 1996, SCETI has been enhancing the research and scholarly use of rare books, manuscripts and other primary source materials by making them easily accessible to the worldwide community. They create archive-quality digital facsimiles and make them available online through web sites tailored to the each individual collection. Several of their projects are collaborations between the University of Pennsylvania Library and other libraries, museums and private collections.
