Volume 35, Issue 2

Introduction By the late 1990s, Harvard University's Library Digital Initiative (LDI) program had funded a number of ambitious collections digitization projects, but it was not until 2002 and the establishment of the Open Collections Program (OCP) that a large number of bound, published volumes would be selected for digitization. This paper outlines the methodology that guided the design and implementation of the first OCP book digitization workflow and follows the changes that were implemented based on that experience. The authors discuss the reasons for these changes as well as their implications. While OCP digitizes photographic images, manuscripts, and other archival materials as well as books, the focus of this paper is the published monographic and serial works that were selected for inclusion in the Program's first two projects.

The Mississippi Digital Library was founded in 2003 with the help of an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to develop the framework to support a lasting cooperative digital library program for the state. This pilot phase is a joint venture between Delta State University, Jackson State University, Tougaloo College, The Mississippi Department of Archives and History, The University of Mississippi, and The University of Southern Mississippi; it focuses on Civil Rights era materials of national intellectual and educational value. The Mississippi Digital Library is providing leadership in a cutting-edge field by creating an alternative model for digital collaboration and by continuing to develop a mechanism for resolving intellectual property and privacy rights issues for 20th century collections.

Throughout the 1960s the challenges to acquiring scholarly materials from Southeast Asia were acute. Unstable political climates, inflation, and conflict in the region all made identifying and preserving historical materials and records from nations like Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and others difficult. Government documents proved exceedingly difficult to acquire, as most agencies refused to allow their publications to be sent out of country.

A large collection of yellowing newsprint documenting Vietnam's war era is being archived for posterity, thanks to cooperative microfilming projects undertaken by Cornell University's Carl A. Kroch Library and other institutions.