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Ok, the Digital Collectionswebsite is ready for beta testing. Registered users can comment, vote on comments, and tag records - and updated version of the “bookbag*” will be added soon. Collections with content include; Peace and War in the 20th Century, Russell Library, and World War II Concentration Camp Correspondences. At this time, AICT, and Kirtas Book Collection are outlines for content to be added later.

For the technical nerds…The site runs on Drupal, and takes advantage of the CCK Module. Each collection has it’s own content type, allowing it to expose it’s own unique metadata. All of the collections share Dublin Core fields, which combined with a modified version of the OAI2 module, provide OAI2 compliancy. As of the right now, there are approximately 165,000 nodes - with the great majority of those records being an experimental version of BRACERS (more of this some other time).

*the bookbag is a feature that allows registered users to bookmark records

ummmmm, I don’t know how to make a post about the Institutional Repository funny or witty, so I’ll go a little corporate sounding. bleh. I have been updating the repository quite a bit since the beginning of this year. We were apart of the first batch of upgrades from Bepress last month. We added categories and series, for most of the departments on campus so faculty can begin submitting scholarly output. Three additional journals that reside at McMaster are also in the process of being setup on the IR. Global Labor Journal, a completely open access journal that will launch on our IR. Energy Studies Review will follow an access model similar to the Russell Journal, where the current four years are subscription based, and the back catalogue is open access. 18th Century Fiction is in the works, the process of putting the journal in will begin in July. Finally, with the help of colleagues, I formed a Instituional Repository Steering Committee. The committee will:

1. Form a “collection” plan (strategy for getting specific types of materials into the DC (subject/formats ; McMaster faculty output, university archives, explore the possibility of creating a “subject” archive where none currently exists to serve a broad scholarly community http://hsc.unm.edu/library/sc/links.shtml#SUBJECT
2. An infrastructure, whereby scholars can easily contribute materials
3. A communication plan for raising awareness about the IR on campus
4. Regular updates to stakeholders on progress (once/term)

So, we have this robot now, and it loves to ingest books just like Johnny 5. It isn’t quite as spectacular as Johnny 5, but it gets the job done so far. It is the center of a top secret project here at McMaster, code named “otto.” [need input, need more input] Ok, I’ll get a little serious…The machine is a Kirtas 2400RA and can scan up to 2400 pages in an hour. It is powered by two 16.7 Canon DSLRs, uses a vacuum to pick up the pages, and numerous pages sensors to let the operator know if it picked up more than one page, or dropped one. Hence the beeping. More information on the project will be provided later…after the May 26th launch here at Mac. In the mean time, here are some pics that you are more than welcome to salivate over.