Duke sets the standard! New service to users: Digitize This Book

Setting a standard!       New Library Service: Digitize This Book

The Duke University Libraries are pleased to announce a new digitization-on-demand service that lets you have out-of-copyright books scanned and delivered to you digitally for free.

 

From stacks to scanner to your inbox. We’re piloting a new service to digitize public domain books for Duke users on demand.

Starting this semester, Duke University faculty, students, and staff can request to have certain public domain books scanned on demand. If a book is published before 1923* and located in the Perkins, Bostock, Lilly, or Music Library or in the Library Service Center (LSC), a green “Digitize This Book” button (pictured here) will appear in its online catalog record. Clicking on this button starts the request.
Within two weeks (although likely sooner), you will get an email with a link to the digitized book in the Duke University Libraries collections on the Internet Archive. You—and the rest of the world—can now read this book online, download it to your Kindle, export it as a PDF, or get it as a fully searchable text-only file. And you never have to worry about late fees or recalls!

Research Librarians Consider the Risks and Rewards of Collaboration

Thanks to Dina Belluighi of CHERTL who alerted Jill and me to this in the Chronicle of HE 16 Oct 2011:

Washington — Big-scale collaborations and digital-era collection strategies took center stage at the Association of Research Libraries’ membership meeting, held here last week. The library directors and others who attended heard about ambitious research and preservation projects like the HathiTrust digital repository and the proposed Digital Public Library of America, plans for which are moving ahead.

At the final session, on “Rebalancing the Investment in Collections,” H. Thomas Hickerson, vice provost and university librarian at the University of Calgary, said libraries had painted themselves into a corner by focusing too much on their collection budgets. Investing in the right skills and partnerships is most critical now, he said. “The comprehensive and well-crafted collection is no longer an end in itself.”