Digital Libraries Workshop Towards an academic coordinated digital library scheme in Mxico

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Digital Libraries WorkshopTowards an academic
coordinated digital library scheme in México

• National Autonomous University of México (UNAM)
• Directorate for Academic Computing Services
• 1999

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Number of libraries in México
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The Libraries of UNAM in figures

• 142 libraries (One of them is Méxicos
  National Library)
• More than 7 million of documents
• 300,000 colonial and XIX century books 150
  incunabula
• 220,000 dissertations
• 300,000 regular users
• 10,000 active titles of journals
• 14,000 suscriptions to journals per year
• links to over 2,500 electronic data bases

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Computing and networking infraestructure of UNAM

• 30,000 computers over 500 servers
• 1,000 miles of fiber optics in campus
• 110,000 e-mail users 30,000 web pages
• 9 million of hits per month
• 21 Mbps output for internet
• 70 digital outputs to different campi
• 35 Videoconference classrooms
• Member of Mexican Internet 2 team

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Other Institutions with important collections and
projects

• ITESM (Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios
  Superiores de Monterrey) aka Tec de Monterrey
• ILCE (Instituto Latinoamericano de Capacitación
  educativa)
• University of Colima
• UDLAP (Universidad de Las Américas en Puebla)
• El Colegio de México
• IPN (National Politechnic Institute)
• CONACyT (National Council for Science
  Technology)

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The Mexican Digital Library is

• A Nation-wide coordinated scheme of academic
  digital libraries covering different levels and
  communities, with a content-rich, spreaded and
  explicitly defined set of collections, staffs,
  links and services

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Why a scheme of academic digital libraries ?

• Academic libraries in México are the ones who
  already own the greatest retrospective, subject
  collections, some of them already digital, or at
  least automated and digital to be federation
  structure, cooperative efforts, computing and
  networking minimum infraestructure, as well as
  trained multidisciplinary staffs.

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Which levels ?

• Basic Education (Elementary, high school)
  through the Ministery of Education, ILCE,
  Universities high schools system
• Undergraduate (through Universities schools
  systems)
• Degree studies (through All kind of Academic
  Institutions)
• Specialization (Idem)

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Which communities ?

• By type Researchers, professors, students,
  bussiness people, journalists, etc.
• By subject Medical, Phyisics, Chemistry, Music,
  Engineerings, Sociology, Law, Photography, etc.

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What is content-rich, spreaded ?

• Materials that go beyond the daily and surface
  contents usually found in non-academic or
  comercial publishing sites. Great collections in
  quality, geographic area, number of items,
  historic coverage, uniqueness, or diversity of
  media. Covering all nation and having a lot of
  links and contacts internationally with other
  digital libraries.

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Why a explicitly defined set of collections,
staffs, links and services ?

• In order to use the strengths of each academic
  institution participating in this project,
  avoiding black holes and overlaping in
  digitizing, collections, technology projects,
  etc., reducing cost and time in its development.
  Setting de facto standards while its
  construction for the next generation of
  institutions to join.

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Types of projects going on in DGSCA (UNAMs
Directorate for Academic Computing Services)
supporting the Digital Library Project

• Systems architecture
• Data bases and collections development
• Technology

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Systems architecture

• Federation of collections
• Designing of digital collections
• Electronic publishing
• Data mining

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Data bases and collections development

• Bibliohemerographic services ( Digitizing
  electronic newspapers, UNAMs books journals)
  More than 2 million hits per month already
• Cataloguing and qualifying videos
• PUMASI (Self production of Materials for
  curricular programs by professors)
• Multimedia products
• Corporate digital libraries (digitized archiving)
• Latindex (Index of Latin Journals)

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Technology

• Data cast
• Push technologies
• Video on demand
• Video compression
• SGML, XML
• Metadata for resource retrieving
• Complete text searching techniques
• VRML

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Technology

• In Internet 2
• Astronomical data bases
• Georreferenced Information Systems
• Distance education
• On-line Video
• Medical Imaging

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Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. (UNAM)
National Autonomous University of
MéxicoDirectorate for Academic Computing
Services (DGSCA)http//www.unam.mx
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Juan Voutssas. MALS Software Engineering
Development DirectorUNAMe-mail
voutssas_at_servidor.unam.mxAlejandro Pisanty.
Ph.DAcademic Computing Services
DirectorUNAMe-mail apisan_at_servidor.unam.mx
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Digital Libraries WorkshopAlbuquerque, New
MexicoJuly 1999