Civil Rights Digital Library

Civil Rights Digital Library, Toby Graham Digital Library of Georgia

Video archive: 30 hours historical newsfilm
Learning objects component: provide instructional support
CRDL portal: draws together related content for a seamless virtual library

They developed Voci, written in Java and a Postgres database. The software is now available through SourceForge.net. CRDL was in development for two years.

Has relevance weighting for metadata elements. Browse is a canned search. Voci is not good at proofreading, global updates for metadata. They use another home grown product, "Ultimate" to handle that workflow. Voci doesn't hold digital objects. It's a tool for collecting and managing metadata from other aggregators.

Sustainability: after the grant ended, the programmer was hired full-time, as was the video editor. The metadata librarian was hired half-time. Partners are still adding material. News stations gifted the newsreel archives to the university, and signed over copyright as well.

-30-

This is an impressive project. Two years from start to finish... starting from scratch, even. I definitely want to look more closely at Voci. South Carolina is poorly represented in the CRDL... I wonder who's working on that? I did mention to Graham SCETV's Civil Rights Road Show... it would be a solid addition to the pedagogic section of the DL.