Emory Digital Collections
The Digital Library Program (DLP) was a multi-year Emory Libraries initiative to promote best practices and provide long term access to Emory's unique digital assets and collections. A key offering of the Program is to develop a versatile and feature rich digital repository platform using the open source Samvera (formerly Hydra) framework. The Digital Library Program also involved close collaborations with the Collections Steering Committee and Digital Preservation Program to establish policies and best practices for digital collection development and digital preservation, and to determine guidance for which materials are ingested into the repository.
We launched version 1 release of the repository product suite in 2020. The public interface to our repository is Emory Digital Collections.
Program Staff and Contacts
| Name | Title | Role | Email Address |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emily Porter | Digital Repository Program Manager | Program Manager/Chief Product Manager | eporter at emory.edu |
| Kathryn Michaelis | Digital Preservation Program Manager | Digital Preservation Program Manager | kmicha3 at emory.edu |
Original Project Background
The initial Digital Library project was approved and funded based on the recommendations of the Repository Working Group in 2014, led by University Librarian Yolanda Cooper. The original project charter provided a multi-phased approach to the work:
Phase 1: Planning and Discovery (2016 - 2018)
In the project's Discovery Phase, seven working groups were convened in the following areas:
- Content Display
- Digital Preservation
- Repository Architecture
- Metadata
- Deposit
- Technology
- Repository Management
The Discovery Phase identified functional, user, and technical requirements and best practices for our future Digital Library: approved project deliverables and requirements are documented on this wiki space.
Phase 2: Technical Design (2018)
The project concluded its Technical Design Phase in 2018, identifying a systems architecture and product suite utilizing the Samvera framework.
Phase 3: Version 1 Implementation (2019 – 2020)
The Digital Library Program team began its first stage of implementation in 2019, focused on application development for digital curators (preservation, rights and metadata management, collection management) as well as a consumer-facing discovery interface. We launched our first two products in 2020.
