Littera Deusto

Modern Languages, Basque Studies and Humanities

Digital libraries

octubre 20th, 2009 · No hay Comentarios

A digital library is a place in which collections are conserved in a digital way, so we could say it’s a type of information retrieval system. Although this system might have some setbacks, it also has many advantages such as the fact that, as it’s not a building, anyone can access to the same information from all over the world by only using their computers- and the Internet.

There are many digital libraries but I’ve chosen two to talk about: The British Library and The Darlington Digital Library.

THE BRITISH LIBRARY

The British Library is a building located in London, but we can have full access to in via Internet. It consists of 14 million books, 920,000 journal and newspaper titles, 58 million patents, 3 million sound recordings, and so on. We can even find maps, serials or business information.

THE DARLINGTON DIGITAL LIBRARY

As the site of the library explains, “The Darlington Digital Library was created from the first major collection of books, manuscripts, atlases, and maps donated to the University of Pittsburgh. Most of the credit for assembling the Darlington Collection rightly goes to William M. Darlington, an attorney by profession who was born in Pittsburgh in 1815.

The collection consists on atlases, books, broadsides, images, manuscripts and maps:

  • Atlases: It includes more than one hundred volumes, some about world travel and exploration, and others are state atlases with county maps. It’s curious to see old atlases as they have illustrations not common in nowadays maps, such as beasts or unicorns.
  • Books: William M. Darlington was an inveterate collector of books and he collected works about the settlement of colonial America, local history, and the manners and customs of American Indians specially. To digitalize his books, PALINET’s Digital Services are used.
  • Broadsides: There are not many items, not even one hundred,  from the 1700s to the late 1800s.  There are also items of a big historical value, such as presidential documents or advertisements from theaters in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
  • Images: There are about two thousand items, including engravings, lithographs, and several photographs. There are images from the  1700s and 1800s, and we can find images of royalty, political leaders, inventors and religious and military figures.
  • Manuscripts: They focus on Western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley and mainly date from the 1700s to the first half of the 1800s. There are more than fifty individual collections.
  • Maps: Most of the maps are maps of states, colonies, and larger regions of the United States, most of them marked by annotations.

References:

  • Digital Library (October 14, 2009). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:45, October 20, 2009, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_library
  • The British Library. In The British Library, Explore the world’s knowledge. Retrieved 16:03, October 20, 2009, from: http://www.bl.uk/
  • The Darlington Digital Library. In the University of Pittsburgh site. Retrieved 16:12, October 20, 2009, from: http://digital.library.pitt.edu/d/darlington/maps.html
  • British Library (October 9, 2009). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:50, October 20, 2009, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library

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