Digital Publishing Group

• About the Digital Publishing Group
• Services
• Personnel
• More about the Digital Publishing Group

About the Digital Publishing Group

The Digital Publishing Group is a unit that was established within the CDLA in 2007. Its major component is the well-established, award-winning digital publishing program Documenting the American South (DocSouth), which grew out of a Web site launched in January 1996. DocSouth draws on the Library's historic collecting strengths to supply teachers, students, and scholars everywhere at every level with a wide array of carefully selected and arranged materials that support scholarly, educational, and individual research. DocSouth is a truly collaborative initiative as it reflects the efforts of dozens of librarians, faculty members, students, and others who have contributed to its development and growth.

Decisions made at the inception of the DocSouth digital publishing program built a solid foundation for further growth of the program and for developing more digital publishing and digital humanities initiatives. We believe that the demonstrated achievement derives not only from the inherent worth and interest of the digitized materials, but also from the carefully considered values and procedures that have guided the creation and building of our digital collections:

• Editorial model
• Technical standards and best practices
• Experimentation

Editorial model

From the very beginning, a formally constituted editorial board has guided the development of DocSouth collections. The board, consisting of librarians, faculty members from a variety of disciplines, technology experts, and representatives from the UNC Press, provides suggestions for development. In addition, digital collections are associated with one or more faculty advisors. Scholars take an active role in selecting titles—sometimes even a specific edition or copy of a work—to digitize. Advisors also provide the essays and other interpretative information that are included as part of each project. This editorial model helps to guarantee the integrity, consistency, and intellectual quality of the site.

Technical standards and best practices

Our digital publishing collections are notable for scrupulously and continuously adhering to relevant technical standards and best practices. For example, all DocSouth digital texts are encoded according to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines and all receive full-level MARC catalog records that are available through OCLC's WorldCat service. Image files are created and stored in standard, widely-recognized formats, as TIFF files for archival purposes and delivered for online access as JPEG files. Creation of technical, administrative, and descriptive metadata that conform to current national standards and best practices is an integral part of project workflow. We are committed to open access, and we use open source technology and protocols when possible.

Experimentation

DocSouth develops and deploys leading technologies where appropriate. One example is the "Oral Histories of the American South" collection, which features technology developed by the library to synchronize an audio recording with its written transcript. Researchers can listen to the audio while following the transcript for clarification, or can first search the transcript for relevant sections and then mouse-click to launch the corresponding audio. Our current work with GIS technology (georeferencing and geotagging) provides valuable context and additional information for researchers, students, and the general public, enabling them to use our online maps in a more convenient and creative way. "North Carolina Maps" and the "Going to the Show" collection show the results of our experimentation with the GIS technology.

Services

• Digital Humanities: project management, development, and consulting
• Copyright and Permissions
• Education
• Field Experience and Hands-on Experience to UNC SILS Students

Digital Humanities: project management, development, and consulting

The Digital Publishing staff has extensive experience in conceptualizing, managing, and successfully implementing digital projects that benefit online teaching, learning, and research. We are eager to share our experience with colleagues.

Copyright and Permissions

The Digital Publishing Group receives 15 to 25 requests per month for the use of images that appear on the DocSouth site. If a public domain JPEG is requested, the patron may use it without obtaining formal permission. High-resolution images, on the other hand, are provided to patrons for a fee, and also require a permissions agreement. If the requested image is under copyright, we provide the patron with the contact information for the institution holding the copyright.

Education

The Digital Publishing Group works closely with Library Instructional Services and the School of Education to create an educational component for digital collections.

DocSouth Summer Teachers' Institute

The staff collaborates closely with the School of Education and Library Instructional Services to conduct summer teachers' institutes, a service that we are able to provide to the citizens of the state. To date we have conducted five such institutes:

• June 2003: 26 middle and high school teachers from 11 N.C. counties
• June 2004: 15 local teachers
• June 2005: 24 teachers from 12 N.C. counties
• June 2006: 22 N.C. teachers (in cooperation with the N.C. Humanities Council)
• July 2007: 30 teachers from across the U.S. (in cooperation with the NEH-funded Thomas Day project)

Institutes focus on three main objectives: to introduce teachers to the DocSouth collections, to help teachers use the DocSouth collections effectively in the classroom, and to work on creating lesson plans.

The result of our collaborative work with Library Instructional Services and the School of Education are the Stories of the American South. These stories are based on historic materials found in the special collections the University's Wilson Library.

K-12 Educational Components

We have sought opportunities to facilitate and enhance the use of DocSouth for K-12 education. The "Classroom" section features a "Teacher's Toolkit" with suggested activities, sample lesson plans, and additional resources. The lesson plans, which cover U.S. history, North Carolina history, and African American history, are also part of the Learn N.C. Web site, which is maintained by UNC's School of Education as a resource for K-12 teachers.

Field experience and hands-on experience to UNC SILS students

Working with graduate students around the campus has been one of our most gratifying experiences. Over 100 graduate students from the School of Information and Library Science and the departments of English, History, and Religious Studies have worked on creating digital collections and have had a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience from experts in the digital library field.

Personnel

Graduate and Research Assistants

Undergraduate Assistants

More about the Digital Publishing Group

History | Who We Serve | Collections | Recognition