From Building a First-Generation Digital Library Infrastructure to Reimagining Discovery
Twenty-five years ago, Harvard University was in the early stages of a project to build a first-generation digital library infrastructure. The project was carefully named the Library Digital Initiative (LDI), signifying that ‘digital’ would be an integral and integrated aspect of ‘library’ and not a...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of Edinburgh
2025-06-01
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| Series: | International Journal of Digital Curation |
| Online Access: | https://ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/1068 |
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| author | Stuart Snydman Martha Whitehead |
| author_facet | Stuart Snydman Martha Whitehead |
| author_sort | Stuart Snydman |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Twenty-five years ago, Harvard University was in the early stages of a project to build a first-generation digital library infrastructure. The project was carefully named the Library Digital Initiative (LDI), signifying that ‘digital’ would be an integral and integrated aspect of ‘library’ and not a separate entity. The initiative aimed to develop knowledge and expertise relating to digital objects, as well as technical infrastructure to create, curate, access and preserve them, and to integrate the new digital collections with Harvard’s extensive tangible collections.
Today, we still benefit from the foresight of this first-generation development and the subsequent ones it spawned, but we are also at a pivotal point of reflecting on lessons learned and opportunities to be seized as we rebuild and reimagine our digital infrastructure and services in a vastly expanded data ecosystem. Predicting what libraries will look like two decades ahead is always conjecture. What we do know, however, is that while the themes and challenges from the past two decades endure, the way we are tackling them is different. This paper examines what has changed since early library digital initiatives, and the imperatives we see for the future.
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-34601e3bbe9d4f5dad37896b9536822e |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 1746-8256 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-06-01 |
| publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| record_format | Article |
| series | International Journal of Digital Curation |
| spelling | doaj-art-34601e3bbe9d4f5dad37896b9536822e2025-08-20T02:21:54ZengUniversity of EdinburghInternational Journal of Digital Curation1746-82562025-06-0119110.2218/ijdc.v19i1.1068From Building a First-Generation Digital Library Infrastructure to Reimagining DiscoveryStuart Snydman0Martha Whitehead1Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityTwenty-five years ago, Harvard University was in the early stages of a project to build a first-generation digital library infrastructure. The project was carefully named the Library Digital Initiative (LDI), signifying that ‘digital’ would be an integral and integrated aspect of ‘library’ and not a separate entity. The initiative aimed to develop knowledge and expertise relating to digital objects, as well as technical infrastructure to create, curate, access and preserve them, and to integrate the new digital collections with Harvard’s extensive tangible collections. Today, we still benefit from the foresight of this first-generation development and the subsequent ones it spawned, but we are also at a pivotal point of reflecting on lessons learned and opportunities to be seized as we rebuild and reimagine our digital infrastructure and services in a vastly expanded data ecosystem. Predicting what libraries will look like two decades ahead is always conjecture. What we do know, however, is that while the themes and challenges from the past two decades endure, the way we are tackling them is different. This paper examines what has changed since early library digital initiatives, and the imperatives we see for the future. https://ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/1068 |
| spellingShingle | Stuart Snydman Martha Whitehead From Building a First-Generation Digital Library Infrastructure to Reimagining Discovery International Journal of Digital Curation |
| title | From Building a First-Generation Digital Library Infrastructure to Reimagining Discovery |
| title_full | From Building a First-Generation Digital Library Infrastructure to Reimagining Discovery |
| title_fullStr | From Building a First-Generation Digital Library Infrastructure to Reimagining Discovery |
| title_full_unstemmed | From Building a First-Generation Digital Library Infrastructure to Reimagining Discovery |
| title_short | From Building a First-Generation Digital Library Infrastructure to Reimagining Discovery |
| title_sort | from building a first generation digital library infrastructure to reimagining discovery |
| url | https://ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/1068 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT stuartsnydman frombuildingafirstgenerationdigitallibraryinfrastructuretoreimaginingdiscovery AT marthawhitehead frombuildingafirstgenerationdigitallibraryinfrastructuretoreimaginingdiscovery |