Contexts.

The Digital Library North project has been designed with a number of different research contexts in mind. The following pages outline these contexts in detail.

Digital Libraries ~ Metadata ~ Information Needs ~ Cultural Heritage ~ Multilingual User Interfaces ~ User Evaluation ~ Community-Driven Research ~ Partnerships ~ Bibliography

Partnerships.

One of our research collaborators, Cathy Cockney, will be instrumental in forming research partnerships with ISR communities and will facilitate the involvement and participation of members— especially elders—in the focus groups and interviews. Surveys will be conducted to gather data from students and staff of educational institutions as well as users of information. In order to identify the types and availability of information resources and services, an environmental scan will be carried out to identify resources and physical materials to be digitized and incorporated into the digital library.

Additional resources and materials recommended by the user community during the focus groups and interviews will be added to the collection. In particular, community educators will be involved in the identification of useful resources to be digitized. These resources may include: educational materials, oral history collections, images, audio files as well as the resources that are frequently consulted by the community members available in the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre. As one of the objectives of this project is to utilize the information and knowledge gained from the study to inform the design of a digital library, a critical assessment of software applications will be conducted. This process will include evaluation of open source applications (e.g. DSpace, Drupal, Greenstone, Koha) and proprietary software tools. The digitization of the identified materials will be conducted following current digitization and preservations standards and best practices. Depending on the nature of materials, the digitization of materials will take place in two locations, namely the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, and the School of Library and Information Studies and Canadian Circumpolar Institute at the University of Alberta, where research assistants will have access to digitization technologies, such as scanners, digital cameras and audio-video file conversion tools. The University of Alberta Library is well equipped with scanning technologies for various types of materials. Fragile and microfiche/microfilm materials will be contracted out to the University. The digital library server will be housed and maintained at the University of Alberta Library. The Library has a number of digital preservation technologies and platforms and makes use of LOCKS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). The proposed digital library will be incorporated into the Library’s digital archiving and preservation infrastructure.