Digitisation of Cultural Heritage at the National Library of Latvia:
Past and Future
Uldis ZariņšHead of Strategic Development
National Library of Latvia19.06.2014
Goals
To digitise and make as widely accessible as possible the entire Latvian published cultural heritage
To support digitisation with IT infrastructure, services, common standards and methodology
To create digital services and embed the digital content in today’s information landscape
Tasks
To digitise analogue and acquire born-digital cultural heritage materials
To ensure long-term preservation of digital heritage
To ensure availability and access of digital heritage
To maintain standarts, methodology, best-practice, research on digitisation
To lead the co-operation in digitisation on a national and international level
History
Pilot projects – 1999-2006 Establishment – 2006-2009 Development – 2009-2014
Content
23 digital collections – mostly pilot projects to develop methodology and test technologies, some to be merged • 3+ m pages of periodicals (~1000 titles)• 1+ m pages of books (~7000 titles)• ~50 000 images (maps, posters, photos etc.)• ~2000 audio files• ~3000 harvested internet sites of .lv domain
Periodicals (1)
2000. – Mantojums 1– Scaning, PDF, no OCR
2008. – Periodika.lv v.1.– Scanning and segmentation, OCR and full-text search
2012. – Periodika.lv v.2.– Scanning and segmentation, OCR and full-text search,
interactive features
Periodicals (2)
Timespan: 1760. – 2011. Content: newspapers, magazines, journals Languages: Latvian, German, Russian, Latgalian
etc.
3 000 000 pages 1 000 titles
Periodicals (3)
Periodicals (4)
Books
Photos
Maps
Audio records
Infrastructure
DOM2 – system for management and preservation of digital objects
Specialised front-ends for different types of content
Tool for building digital collections on top of DOM2
Piping – data and file transformations, user management, import/export, etc.
Know-how
Digitisation handbook Translation and adaptation of standarts Training and consultations Co-operation with partners
Future (1)
Aggregated search A mobile front-end New front-end for images National academic repository Digitisation on demand service
Future (2)
Contextualisation, data models, semantic search Use of crowdsourcing Discoverability and usability of resources Synergies with education, research, tourism,
creative industries National and international partnerships
Towards national approach
• Strategy for digital cultural heritage 2014-2020• Coordinated approach
– Content priorities – Build-up and distribution of know-how– Shared standarts, data models, vocabularies– Content distribution– Shared infrastructure (?)– Centralised services (?)
• A national network based around 1-3 competence centres
Goal
To create a united and freely accessible digital environment for Latvian cultural heritage with an aim to strengthen the national identity and to ensure accessibility, preservation and inclusion of Latvian national cultural and scientific heritage in the European and world digital cultural landscape.
