Gina Costello
Associate Dean, Technology and Special Collections
Louisiana State University
Jason Battles
Deputy University Librarian
University of Georgia
Governance, operations, and technology infrastructure vary among statewide digital libraries, although many are supported or administered by the state’s flagship university. Louisiana State University and the University of Georgia are instrumental in developing and sustaining their longstanding statewide digital libraries. Each provides a different model for partnerships and technology sharing and each has evolved their approaches to provide better access to the resources and visibility to the partnering entities that contribute their substantial content. The presenters will discuss their state digital library landscapes and how their flagship institutions contributed to recent digital platform changes and lead reinvestment in these resources. Included will be a discussion of external partnerships, strategic and diverse content management, governance and sustainability, technology development approaches, and assessment of these issues for the general and future directions of digital libraries.
Technical notes: In 2018, Louisiana State University completed an over two-year-long project to migrate the Louisiana Digital Library from CONTENTdm to Islandora and substantially redesign the user interface and administrative portal. In the past year, the University of Georgia also finished an extensive project to move the Digital Library of Georgia from Solaris to Linux and to adopt Solr and Blacklight in completely redesigned user and administrative interfaces.
Sheila McAlister (Director of Digital Library of Georgia, University of Georgia) and Scott Ziegler (Head of Digital Programs & Services, Louisiana State University) were contributors to this project.