Background: the preliminary steps toward establishing a
digital initiative and vision
In 2006-2007, Lovejoy Library administration took the first steps
toward establishing a digital projects initiative by forming a
CONTENTdm committee and acquiring access to CONTENTdm
software as a member of the Consortium of Academic and Research
Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). The software is installed and maintained
on CARLI’s server. Two Lovejoy staff members received training in
the use of CONTENTdm; however, neither staff member was
empowered with a mandate to create a digital collection. The initiative
essentially stalled. When I joined the University as the Library’s first
catalog and metadata librarian in May of 2007, I recognized that
getting Lovejoy fully engaged in the creation of digital collections was
a main priority of the position. The aforementioned staff members
immediately and gratefully handed their CONTENTdm workbooks
over to me and notified the consortium that I was now the primary
contact for coordinating the Library’s use of this software. I had never
previously used CONTENTdm but became intimately familiar with it
over the course of the next several months. Lacking training or
experience, I relied heavily on support services at CARLI to effectively
leverage the software. I also took a generic metadata creation
workshop and studied Dublin Core.