Sarah W. Blog 2: Digital Library of Appalachia

The Digital Library of Appalachia is administered by the Appalachian College Association Central Library. There are 34 member institutions of this association. As a group, they hope to promote scholarly interest in the region upon which this digital library is centered. Once interesting part of this digital library is that it gives you the opportunity to create a list of your favorite items found in the collection. You can then save your results as a webpage.

Collection Principles

According to The Digital Library of Appalachia, their goal in providing this material online is to provide "online access to archival and historical materials related to the culture of the southern and central Appalachian region. The contents of the DLA are drawn from special collections of Appalachian College Association member libraries."

The objectives as stated on their about page are as follows:

1. To improve scholarly access to research resources related to Appalachia. Improved access, particularly to primary source material, will strengthen academic offerings in Appalachian Studies.
2. To bring together research resources that are currently scattered throughout geographically remote locations. The digital library allows items to be viewed side-by-side, even if they are physically located in different states. The opportunity for comparison and contrast will foster new learning about Appalachian experience.
3. To share information about Appalachia with scholars worldwide. Students, faculty, and researchers will be able to draw upon the Digital Library of Appalachia for authentic information, and thereby gain a greater understanding of the region.
4. To broaden opportunities for classroom instruction. Faculty will be able to design new or revised courses based on the resources newly made available through the Digital Library of Appalachia. Likewise, students and teachers in regional schools may find the Digital Library of Appalachia revitalizes their courses in state and local history and culture.

The digitized materials are browsable by institution and topic. There is also a search bar with an advanced search option. The advanced search option allows you to search multiple institutions at a time. For example, when searching by a topic such as music, a webpage is pulled up that has further search options such as searching by performer, song title and keyword. There are also links provided to essays related to the topic. Links are provided in a brief introduction about Appalachian music to recordings in the collection such as banjo recordings, guitar, harmonica etc.. There are also links to genres such as ballads, yodeling and gospel songs.

Object Characteristics

The objects in the collection consist of photographs and audio recordings that are available mp3 files. I found an example of a book that was scanned as a PDF file which allows you to zoom in and out on the pages. Not all of the pages were scanned, but there was more than just the front of the book. For images, there are capabilities of either zooming in and out of the image. There is also an interesting program that allows one to click on a part of a scanned painting and get a closer view of that section. I could not find any information about the type of image file used for the photographs or the scans of prints such as engravings and paintings. Each object in the digital library was assigned a subject term/key word which can be searched in the keyword box on the home page. These key words are also linked so you can find related items to a topic one is interested in searching. The key words are not linked on the full page listing of items, but on the page with the metadata of the object which I find rather inconvenient.

Metadata

By clicking on the object the metada for that particular recording or photograph is provided. These are the fields that metada is provided for: title, primary performer/group, description, subject, DLA category, publisher, place, time period, holding library, type, format, identifier, relation, rights, file size, and a notes field. This metadata is very extensive and thorough. However, there is no information regarding where the object would be found within the holding library/institution. If there is a text version of a book, metadata is provided about that book such as format, date, publisher and holding library.


Intended Audience

The intended audience, as stated by the association, are scholars of Appalachian studies. I would also conjecture that another part of that audience would be scholars of rural communities and life. Overall, I found this site very hard to navigate and not user friendly. When navigating the site I felt like there were too many search options and so many items that it would be easy to miss something important.