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Historical note: The Libraries have a rich portfolio of collections, services, and public programming. Distributed in 14 facilities with collections including over 6.5 million volumes and a rapidly growing virtual collection of electronic resources, the Libraries provide critical resources in support of the University's comprehensive programs and land-grant mission. The Libraries are an integral part of the campus life and a significant collaborator within the state, national, and international research library communities.
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Browsing University Libraries by Subject "access"
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Item Born-digital agricultural resources: archives and issues(International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD), 2007) Eells, Linda L.Agricultural researchers and public users world-wide have ever-increasing access to a plethora of online resources, including "grey literature" not published in commercial or society publications. In the United States, most of the agricultural grey literature is contributed by land grant university Agricultural Experiment Station (AES) and associated Cooperative Extension Service (CES) units. Their publications and resources are often created in a digital format and presented online even when a parallel distribution option is maintained for a print or hard-copy version. While increasing the amount of free online agricultural information is critically important, many issues must be addressed to ensure that users can both easily locate and retain long-term access to this information. It is also imperative to create a user-friendly process that enables researchers, extension agents, and farmers to more easily contribute valuable digital agricultural content to online venues, while at the same time centralizing access points to enable faster, easier access by all users. Most importantly, literature being born-digital1 today must be described and archived in a manner that preserves access for searchers ten, fifty, or one hundred years from now, enabling them to learn from today's lessons rather than repeat them.Item Collaboration Across Borders, or Piiride-ülene Koostöö: Estonians and Americans Working Together Towards Accessible Archival Collections(Journal of Library Administration, 2019) Engseth, Ellen; Ramler, GristelA collaborative project to improve global description and thus discovery of library material is shared and analyzed after a decade of activity. The Immigration History Research Center Archives and the National Archives of Estonia work together to arrange and describe archival collections, utilizing the assets of the two different institutions. This project recognizes that the unique research material located in Minnesota holds importance to patrons in many countries, are a result of cultural and informational migration, and that access to this multilingual source material relies on robust description. The article provides the project’s context, and describes its administration.Item MapHappy: A User-Centered Interface to Library Map Collections Via a Google Maps “Mashup”(Journal of Map And Geography Libraries, 2009-07-01) Johnston, Lisa R; Jensen, Kristi L.Providing users with the best possible access to the unique cartographic materials found in libraries has been a constant challenge formap librarians. In a Web 2.0 world, existing mapping APIs make it possible to extend the library OPAC past the text-based search and enable users to locate maps using a familiar interface, such as Google Maps. This article describes how librarians at the University of Minnesota developed MapHappy, a “mashup” of their existing map MARC records into a geospatial Web application providing unique access to the print maps in their collections. As expected, this project raised many questions and produced a new set of challenges and opportunities; two such problems, the issue of missing or faulty map coordinates and aligning the interface design with user expectations, are discussed. And while still in beta, a variety of future plans are considered for further development and improvement of MapHappy. This project demonstrates that the representation of library records in a geospatial format provides a more intuitive and streamlined method of identifying maps and makes accessible a wide range of data previously meaningless or invisible to users.