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For many years, the librarians at University of Wyoming’s George William Hopper Law Library fielded questions about the history of the law school and alumni. Unfortunately, no one collection of institutional historical documents was available to search for relevant answers. The result was a decision to collect historic materials in a digital archive to make them available to anyone in the law school who might field such inquiries and to preserve them for future interest. The purpose of this case study is to provide a blueprint for building a digital archives from the ground up.

The digital archive began with print-born historical documents, scanned as preservation copies and entered into a database of images and files to which searchable metadata could be added. In addition to historical materials, it was important to collect the materials that the law school and the law library were producing. Therefore, the project was twofold: collect, preserve and make searchable the printed historic materials in a digital environment and harvest, preserve and make searchable print-born and digital-born materials as part of an ongoing process. To do this, appropriate software had to be identified.

The following steps blueprint the building of an archive on a digital platform: establish the site’s internet address, title and description; select a look and feel template and personalize the archive; create collections; identify Dublin Core preferences; add items and files using controlled vocabulary; experiment with any available plugins; and promote and provide access to the archive.

The digital archives project initiated by the library has led to other initiatives and opportunities for service.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the challenges to born-digital institutional archiving using a New York Archive Museum (NYAM) as a case.

The digital record-keeping practices at NYAM were studied using three data sources: focus groups with staff, totaling 81 individuals, or approximately one-third of all staff; analysis of network file storage; and analysis of digital records in archival storage, or specifically removable media in acid-free archive boxes.

This case study indicates that the greatest challenges to born-digital institutional archiving are not necessarily technological but social and cultural. Or rather, the challenge is getting individuals to transfer material to a digital archive so that it can undergo the technological transformations needed to ensure its long-term availability. However, transfer is impeded by a variety of factors which can be addressed through education, infrastructure development and proactive appraisal for permanent retention.

This paper highlights the challenges to born-digital institutional archiving, yet notes that these challenges can be overcome by following a multi-pronged approach.

This paper outlines the challenges to born-digital institutional archiving, which is not often discussed in the literature outside of the context of higher education.

Digital collections are becoming more commonplace at libraries, archives and museums around the world, creating potential for improved accessibility to information that may otherwise remain hidden and further support for intellectual exploration. As a result of the growing potential for digital collections to inform and influence, the conversation surrounding ethics and digital collections needs to be continually examined and adapted as technologies evolve, user expectations change and digital information plays an increasing role in our everyday lives. In this context, this paper presents an overview of multifaceted ethical realities that impact the how, why and what digital information is created, accessed and preserved.

Written from the perspective of a digital collections librarian, this paper relies on existing research in presenting ethical considerations and complements that research with professional observations in providing subsequent reflections on addressing challenges in the age of digital information.

There are and should be considerations given to not only what information is contained in a given collection, but also how that information is selected, accessed and consumed by the public. The conclusions offered are designed to provoke reflection on the evolving and interconnected nature of information and ethics in the context of digital collections.

Information ethics is multifaceted, with one of those facets relating directly to digital collections. This paper demonstrates that digital collections are more complex than simply a collection of digitized documents and photographs. As the field of information management continually evolves and adapts, so, too, do the ethical realizations identified in this paper, all of which go beyond the (virtual) walls of a library, archive or museum, and carry the potential to have a long-term impact concerning information and its integrity, equity and access.

Rice University has adopted the DSpace platform for its institutional repository, but has pushed the traditional limits of how that is defined. To accommodate a wider range of scholarship that includes digitized multimedia source materials integrated with educational modules and geospatial resources, the technical infrastructure of DSpace has been enriched. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the developments and decisions required to support this range of scholarship beyond born‐digital scholarly pre‐prints and reports.

This paper presents the Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA), a digital archive that makes use of DSpace to preserve and present images and texts, as a case study in using DSpace as both a repository and archive framework. TIMEA integrates two additional systems for presenting digital content, Connexions, which focuses on educational modules, and ArcIMS, which makes available dynamic GIS (Geographic Information Systems) maps.

Although DSpace was originally intended to be an “institutional repository” for born‐digital materials such as scholarly reports, it can also serve as an archive for digitized items such as XML‐encoded texts and digital images. However, making DSpace work as a digital archive for TIMEA has required customization, including building‐in XML support, working with DSpace's flat metadata structure, implementing a customized, XML‐driven user interface using Manakin, and performing additional programming to integrate functionality for GIS and educational modules.

The practical implications of using DSpace as both institutional repository and digital archive have required a number of modifications, including additional functional software development, reworking the metadata structure, redefining repository policies, format access modifications, and customizing the look and feel of the repository.

The discussion in this paper, of the challenges and decisions inherent in using an institutional repository with a digital archive will assist other institutions working to integrate resources as will the portal structure to facilitate harvesting from multiple relevant repositories and direct users to digital resources independent of their native repositories. Likewise, enhancements to DSpace, such as support for XML document presentation, are contributions to the institutional repository community.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the modes of digital content creation for digital libraries and discuss the associated copyright issues with the types of digital content.

Prevalent copyright laws in India in the context of digital content have been studied and issues related to specific types of digital content have been discussed.

In addition to two known types of digital content, namely born digital and turned digital, a third type, gained digital has been delineated. It is found that extant copyright laws, particularly in India, allow scope for forming opinions with regard to digital content thereby giving room for insecurity for digital content creators.

Copyright laws in the context of World Intellectual Property Organization and India only have been discussed.

The paper will be useful to digital content creators and digital library managers/administrators to understand copyright issues relevant to the digital library.

The classification of digital libraries based on content as has been delineated in this paper is an original work and has reported for the first time. The linking of digital content with the copyright issues makes it useful.

The purpose of this paper is to present a high‐level investigation of the physical‐conceptual continuum occupied by both digital and physical libraries.

A framework is provided for thinking about the notions of place and library. The issue of materials and the ideas they represent is considered. Places for people are considered, including issues of people's sense of place in physical and digital spaces. The issue of physical and digital spaces as places for work, collaboration, and community‐building is considered.

As more digital libraries are built, and as more physical libraries offer electronic access to parts of their collection, two trends are likely to result: the role of the library as a storage space for materials will become decreasingly important; and the role of the library as a space for users, for individual and collaborative work, and as a space for social activity, will become increasingly important.

Digital libraries are unable to fulfill some of the functions of the physical library as physical spaces, but are able to offer functions beyond what the physical library can offer as cognitive spaces.

Areas of likely future development for digital libraries are suggested, as vehicles for enhancing cognitive space by augmenting representations of ideas in materials.

This paper argues that in many ways digital libraries really are places in the conceptual sense, and will continue to broaden and enrich the roles that libraries play in people's lives and in the larger social milieu.

When faced with events, such as the global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), libraries have a unique opportunity to develop a community facing response through born-digital collections. These collections provide challenges for metadata creation, collection development policies, workflows, and digital preservation. This paper aims to provide an overview of the Utah COVID-19 digital collection, with a discussion of impact and lessons learned.

This paper provides a case study of a born-digital collection initiative undertaken at the University of Utah in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project prompted engagement with the University of Utah communities and people across the state. Workflows, metadata management and partnerships are discussed, to provide a model for institutions developing similar projects during a time of crisis.

While the project was launched with open-ended and flexible goals, the response from the community has been both surprising and gratifying. Statistics and examples demonstrating reuse of collection materials are provided to highlight the impact and potential of community engagement.

Digital collecting projects during a historical event are not new, however the restrictions placed upon people worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic created interesting circumstances for building this collection. Several lessons were learned throughout the project which will be useful for other institutions embarking upon related projects.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the challenges imposed on libraries by the presence of digital resources.

The paper reviews the main challenges and key issues of digital archiving from the point of view of librarians.

Information technology and the presence of the web are challenging the role of librarians in preserving library materials for future generations. Preserving digital resources is not going to be the same as preserving traditional resources and is absolutely a new responsibility for digital librarians. They are facing many new issues and concerns in digital preservation. These issues can be divided into three areas: technical issues, organisational issues and legal issues.

The paper provides insights into the current issues and challenges in digital archiving.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce PDF/A to replace TIFF as the preferred file format for digitization of textual documents. In addition, PDF/A can be used as an open archival information system (OAIS) submission information package (SIP) container to reduce digitization and digital preservation costs.

The author first reviewed the current digitization guidelines, the OAIS model and provides on an overview of the development PDF and PDF/A as international standards. Then literature review of the uses of PDF/A is presented. The author analyzed pitfalls of TIFFs as the preferred format for digitization, and showed how to use PDF/A to code digitization SIP.

TIFF file format has been the preferred master file format by Federal Agency Digitization Guidelines Initiative digitization guidelines for the past 20 years. However, there are drawbacks of TIFF format. Literature reviews show that PDF/A has been the preferred standard for coding born-digital documents in court, government and business sectors. PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3 are relatively new standards released after 2010. However, few understood the standards and have utilized the full potentials in digitization. The author shows that PDF/A can be used as an OAIS SIP container.

In order to delivery OAIS SIPs, current practices require a combination of files, directories and various types of metadata. The author shows that PDF/A (PDF/A-2 and/or PDF/A-3) can be a better file format for textual document digitization with coding various types of metadata in extensible metadata platform and arbitrary file/data can be coded in PDF/A-3. These features in PDF/A provide much better ways to deliver SIPs in a cost-efficient manner.

PDF/A has been recognized as the preferred standard for born-digital documents, but it has not been used as the preferred file format for digitized materials. The author recommends that: PDF/A with lossless JPX compressions as the preferred file format; and PDF/A with lossless JPX compressions along with metadata/data as the preferred OAIS SIP container. As a result, the uses reduce costs in digitization and digital preservation and also increase productivity. The author recommends to update the national and international digitization practices using PDF/A.