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ERIC Number: EJ808163
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006
Pages: 4
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1528-5324
EISSN: N/A
Library Services for a Digital Future
Aldrich, Duncan M.; Stefanelli, Greggory
EDUCAUSE Quarterly, v29 n1 p70-73 2006
The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) Libraries initiated its spin on digital libraries as a partner in a W. M. Keck Foundation grant awarded to the university in 1997. The overall grant ($2,250,000) supported a variety of earth science-related projects at UNR. The UNR Libraries's portion ($450,000) funded establishment of the W. M. Keck Earth Sciences and Mining Research Information Center (the Keck Center), a series of digital collections and services accessible on the Web. The Keck Center was an integral part of a proposal submitted to the W. M. Keck Foundation to create a center focused on the geosciences. Keck Center staffing has evolved since its implementation to meet the challenges specific to managing a growing digital library providing both services and collections. The group that operated the Keck Center was reorganized as the library's DataWorks work group in 2002. The DataWorks group subsequently became a library department in 2003, and in 2004, the library administration established the KnowledgeWorks committee, which functions as an umbrella advisory group over DataWorks and other library digitization efforts. The name KnowledgeWorks resonates well with the University Libraries's change of focus from information to knowledge, demonstrated by construction of the Knowledge Center to replace the library in 2008. Just as the Keck Center is much more than a collection of digital objects, the new Knowledge Center will be more than a library. Within the Knowledge Center, the Keck Center will continue to provide a virtual platform on which visitors not only locate warehoused data resources but also manipulate materials with analysis and visualization software and store their own data for personal, collaborative, or public use. In this sense the tools and resources that DataWorks makes available enable Knowledge Center users to transform information into "small k" knowledge. A simple example is downloading census data from the Web and creating a digital map project using GIS software. This is the sort of added value the new Knowledge Center will make possible in a variety of ways.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Nevada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A