0.21 Recommendations  (Page 10/11)

New approaches are necessary to capture and integrate digital resources from different kinds of culturalheritage organizations, which have followed very different practices in describing and organizing their collections, and tomaintain the intellectual context of collections when they are digitized. A research project at the University of Illinois,Urbana-Champaign, has created a collection-level registry and item-level repository, based on the Open Archives InitiativeMetadata Harvesting Protocol, that allows browsing of collection descriptions as well as content searching within and acrosscollections. The project also serves as a testbed for research to improve the development of integrated, large-scalemultidisciplinary digital libraries.

Humanists and social scientists and their organizations must build the tools and standards they need: otherswill not do it for them. The summit on Digital Tools for the Humanities, supported by the NSF and held at the University ofVirginia in September 2005, is a promising first step toward improving coordination in developing tools. The Andrew W. MellonFoundation has also been funding the development of open-source tools. The Text Encoding Initiative Consortium is a long-standingand exemplary community-based standards organization focused on literary and linguistic texts, their uses, and their users.

8.create extensive and reusable digital collections.

Addressed to: TheNational Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), theInstitute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and other fundingagencies, both public and private; scholars; research libraries and librarians; university presses; commercial publishers

Implementation: National centers with a focus on particular methods or disciplines can organize a certain amountof scholar-driven digitization. Library organizations and libraries should sponsor discipline-based focus groups to discuss prioritieswith respect to digitization. When priorities are established, these should be relayed to the organizers of annual meetings oncommercial and nonprofit partnerships, and they should be considered in the distribution of grant funds by federal agenciesand private foundations. Funding to support the maintenance and coordination of standards will improve the reusability of digitalcollections. The NEA, NEH, and IMLS should work together to promote collaboration and skills development—through conferences,workshops, and/or grant programs—for the creation, management, preservation, and presentation of reusable digital collections,objects, and products.