Digital Collections Assessment

A Collection Featuring Created Surrogates from Existing Holdings

The Darlington Digital Library was created from the first major collection of materials donated to the University of Pittsburgh. This donation included books, manuscripts, atlases, images and maps that had been assembled by William M. Darlington, an attorney and native son of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, born in 1815. His family and estate made the donation in 1918, some 29 years after his death. The online collection is made up of surrogate digital images created by the university from its physical holdings in a special collection called the Darlington Memorial Library, and is presented on the website http://digital.library.pitt.edu/d/darlington/.

Of particular note, the collection includes two major works of John James Audubon: a complete set of Birds of America and a companion work, Ornithological Biography. Both books are a prized part of the assembled materials of Mr. Darlington. Audubon created these two important works simultaneously, and they were acquired by Darlington in the mid 1800’s. The collection website states that “The University of Pittsburgh is fortunate to own one of the rare, complete sets of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. It is considered to be the single most valuable set of volumes in the collections of the University Library System. Indeed, only 120 complete sets are known to exist.”

Because of the singular nature of these books, a special Audubon Website was created, http://digital.library.pitt.edu/a/audubon/, to dipslay them. The quality of the artwork and of the scientific data contained in this site is impressive. I am not an ornithologist, nor have I had any real interest in the study of birds. However, exploring this site was captivating. The available viewing tools allow the user to enlarge the images to a significant degree and the detail of these prints is astounding. Further, the variety and breadth of Audubon’s work is obvious and easily detected immediately, even for one as unschooled and inexperienced as I am in this field of study.

The main body of the Darlington Digital Library reveals Mr. Darlington’s interest in the colonial history of the United States, particularly the development of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The materials are eclectic in nature and cover areas of interest from civil war soldier escapades, 18th and 19th century methods of advertising and publishing announcements, and correspondence between British noblemen and American colonists. The maps provide an historical view of the development of the United States, as populations moved westward. The scope of the collection is large and varied.

The material is organized into category headings and is searched by these headings: Atlases, Books, Broadsides, Images, Manuscripts and Maps. Users will also find a detailed description of the digitization process executed by the library staff, and a helpful background explanation on how the collection came to be. The site also provides links to published overviews of the collection and the Darlington family, which places the materials in an historical context and helps to explain its eclectic nature.

The 1,680 books in the collection can be searched by author, title and subject. Bibliographic, Boolean and proximity searches are also available, and a general search box on the books page offers a general word search. All search attempts provided quick results, whether broad or targeted in scope. In addition to the books, there are only 5 atlases, 51 broadsides, but 1,825 images and 853 maps in the digital collection. Digitization of the manuscripts is still underway, and none are available digitally at this time. Each of these categories offers similar search features and organization structure, where applicable, as the books category.

A researcher desiring information on a specific period or episode of US history can easily
determine if it exists in this collection, and, if extant, locate it in the collection. Certainly, it is not a comprehensive collection on any one subject, but the organization of the materials makes each item easy to find. An ornithologist will definitely enjoy a review of the special Audubon Website appendage to the collection.

A Collection Featuring Third-party Domain Sources

From the Internet Public library main page, various collections are available for selection. The “Special Collections” section includes an interesting and informative collection about US Presidents, called POTUS, accessed through the URL: http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/.

On the POTUS site main page the forty-four presidents are listed and linked to articles containing information on the IPL site under the following standardized category headings: Presidential Election Results, Cabinet Members, Notable Events, and Internet Biographies, Historical Documents, Media Resources, Other Internet Resources and points of Interest. Clicking on a president’s name will display that president’s page with detailed information under those headings.

Within those category sections, links are available to third-party sites that give extensive and detailed information about the president selected. These third-party sites are not standard on each president’s page, but are similar in nature. The Media Resources category doesn’t provide any links for presidents prior to Grover Cleveland, since recording technology was only just being developed in the 1880's.

The user can easily find much detailed information about each president. The format is simple to understand and it takes only a few seconds to a minute for the user to identify the structure of the information. From that understanding a search strategy can be formulated and executed leading to a significant volume of web information. A searcher will have to verify authority of the third-party sites, which can be done through corroboration of the multiple sources of information. Cross-checking with encyclopedias and other reference sources, some of which are linked to this site, may be necessary to achieve full confidence in the veracity of the information, if the need exists. For less than in-depth research, significant information about a president is available through this collection.

The collection is remarkably current. Complete video of President Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations General assembly given today, September 24, 2009, is already accessible from this site by cyberlink.