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About Us
Overview
The Knowlton School of Architecture (KSA) Digital Library is an online media resource library that contributes to the KSA's goal of excellence in design and planning. The collections primarily support the Architecture, Landscape Architecture, City and Regional Planning, and related curricula and research at the School of Architecture. The KSA Digital Library gathers the diverse media used in the Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City and Regional Planning disciplines in one virtual space. The entire Library is accessible to faculty, researchers, and over 55,000 students in the OSU community, with selected portions available to the general public.
Scope
Contents of the Library currently include over 28507 multimedia files relevant to the KSA curricula as well as unique products of faculty and student research. Special projects will continue to be added in the future to expand the breadth and depth of the collections. Acquisitions are solicited or acquired by the Visual Resources Curator. Media sources include faculty collections, the KSA student archives, and commercial and other sources.
The KSA Digital Library has been developed through the Web Media Collective (WMC), a campus-wide effort to share media assets through a virtual library infrastructure (wmc.ohio-state.edu). In the near future, digital images, audio files, and video works from the OSU departments of History, the History of Art, and the Huntington Archives will be searchable and available from a single web page; this type of cross-collection searching is at the forefront of digital collection management.
Access to the Online Library
Anyone with an Ohio State University login and password has access to all media in the Digital Library from on or off campus. Only selected images will be accessible to the general public. These are determined based on their copyright status. The library can be accessed from a Mac or a PC platform. A Macromedia Flash Player is needed in order to view the Flashpix (image with a zoom and pan feature) files. A static image (JPG) will be loaded as a default if a Flash Player is not installed on the computer from which the collection is accessed. Users will need the latest version of the Flash Player regardless of platform (see links below).
Browser Recommendations for Viewing the KSA Digital Library:
Mac OS 10.2: Safari 1.0 & higher
Mac OS 8.1 - 10.1:Netscape 7.0 & higher or Mozilla 1.0 & higher
(Note: Internet Explorer (IE) on the Mac should have at least 10MB of memory allocated to the program.)
Windows 9x, NT, 2000, XP: Internet Explorer 5 & higher
Unix: Netscape 7.0 & higher, Mozilla 1.0 & higher
Macromedia Flash Player links:
(needed for viewing zoomable images)
Macromedia Flash Player 6 for Power Mac
Version: 6,0,79,0
Platform: Power Macintosh
Browser: Internet Explorer, Netscape or Netscape-compatible
File size: (.hqx ) 1177 K, (.Bin) 868 K
Date Posted: 3/3/2003
Language: English
Macromedia Flash Player 6 for MAC OS X
Version: 6,0,79,0
Platform: Mac OS X
Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape or Netscape-compatible
File size: (.hqx ) 1414 K, (.Bin) 1034 K
Date Posted: 3/3/2003
Language: English
Macromedia Flash Player for Windows:
Version: 6,0,79,0
Platform: Windows
Browser: Internet Explorer
File size: 405 K
Date Posted: 3/3/2003
Language: English
QuickTime player link:
(needed for viewing movie and 3D model files)
Free QuickTime player:
For: Mac OS 8.6/ 9/ X or Windows 98/ Me/ 2000/ XP
Database Design.
The KSA Digital Library was designed and developed through a collaboration of Lorrie McAllister, the KSA Visual Resources Curator, the Web Media Collective, and the members of the Digital Library Committee. The committee, composed of faculty and staff, includes: Robert Livesey, the School's Director; Jane Murphy, Head of the Committee and faculty member in Architecture; Jane McMaster, Architecture Librarian; Maria Manta Conroy, faculty member in City and Regional Planning; and Brooks Breeden, faculty member in Landscape Architecture.
The KSA Visual Resources Curator chose to develop the digital library through the Web Media Collective for many reasons; among them are, 1) the collaborative effort to create digital collections using a shared infrastructure was already in place, 2) the expertise and experience of having already created 4 digital media collections, 3) the flexibility to develop a custom system for the diverse media and descriptive information used in the School, which could not be accommodated by exisiting software packages on the market, 4) participation in the WMC would allow the KSA to share resources with other members of the Collective, and 5) the opportunity to contribute to the body of research in digital library technology at OSU.
You can learn more about the Web Media Collective projects, mission, and goals at: http://wmc.ohio-state.edu. The Web Media Collective was nominated by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates for the 2003 Computerworld Honors Program. Within this honors program, the Web Media Collective has further been selected as one of 5 finalists for the 21st Century Achievement Award. From the Press Release, April 2003: "Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft and member of The Chairmen’s Committee, nominated Ohio State University for inclusion in the 2003 Media, Arts & Entertainment category. Their case study now becomes part of a collection of over 300 case studies in ten categories from 33 countries. The 2003 Collection, which will now be archived in libraries, museums and academic and research institutions around the world, will serve as primary source material for scholars and as a resource for individuals who hope to use information technology to build solutions that benefit society."
Current visual resources standards and practices, library cataloging tradition, and the current curricula and research environment at the KSA contributed to the database structure and design. The structure was designed to be compatible with other national and international visual resources libraries as well as other traditional library systems. The Visual Resources Association (VRA) set of Core Categories, 3.0 is the metadata scheme for the library. The VRA Core Categories may be mapped to Dublin Core, MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging), and other major standard schema, which will allow the KSA to contribute and share records with diverse catalogs on a national or international level in the future.
The database was designed to accommodate multiple controlled fields requiring authority work and subject indexing. These fields are intended to encourage resource discovery by enabling users to browse images in the catalog. It is a goal of the Visual Resources Library to maintain the highest standards of image identification and description in order to assure that images are cataloged with the same precision as bibliographic materials.
The database uses a Sequel database with a ColdFusion interface, and is housed on the Web Media Collective's TrueSpectra file server. FPX (Flashpics) files were chosen as the delivery file type for raster images. It is maintained by the WMC system administrator and the KSA Visual Resources Curator.
Administration.
The primary focus of the Curator's position is to plan and implement the digital library and then to populate and curate the collection. The Curator reports to the Director of the Knowlton School of Architecture. The Library currently has 1 full-time librarian, and a minimum of 3 part-time graduate assistant and 3 part-time work-study employees during the academic year.
The Library was made possible by a TELR grant and contributions from the Knowlton School of Architecture. It is privately supported by the Knowlton School of Architecture Digital Library Fund established by Frank Elmer (Knowlton School of Architecture class of 1967) and Ruth Gless. They are founding partners in the Lincoln Street Studio
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