"American Memory" project at the Library of Congress
“Go digital.” Over the past few years, libraries all over the world are
building their own digital libraries. Starting 1995, the Library of Congress
National Digital Library Program (NDLP) began digitizing selected collections
of the Library of Congress archival materials that chronicle the nation's
rich cultural heritage. The aim is to assemble a digital library of primary
materials to support the study of the history and culture of the United States.
The American Memory Historical Collections, a major component of the National
Digital Library Program, are multimedia collections of digitized documents,
photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and text from the Library's
Americana collections. There are currently more than 100 collections in
the American Memory Historical Collections.
To let us know more about the project, the American Consulate General
and the Hong Kong Library Association jointly presented an “American Memory”
seminar in the evening of 16 September 2003 in the Hong Kong Central Library.
Mr. Michael Huff, the Information Resource Officer from the United States
Department of State, was invited to give an introduction to the technical,
managerial, and financial issues of the project as well as its wealth of
content. Topics included the conversion specifications, metadata harvesting,
preservation of digital content, repository development, scanning, text mark-up,
interface design, workflow and production. If you still want
to find out more, just go to http://memory.loc.gov/.
About 60 library colleagues attended the seminar. During an experience-sharing
session, 6 librarians representing their own libraries gave brief accounts
of their own digitization projects. Mr. C.W. Chan of the Hong Kong Public
Libraries, Ms. Teresa Kong of the Hong Kong Baptist University Library, Ms.
Lisa Kwan of the Polytechnic University Library, Mr. Leo Ma of the Chinese
University Library, Dr. Y.C. Wan of the University of Hong Kong Libraries and
Mr. Tommy Yeung of the Lingnan University Library shared with all participants
their digitization experiences and the models of the digital collections
in their own libraries.
The seminar and the presentations were followed by discussions among the
participants. Undoubtedly, all library colleagues looked forward to more collaborative
efforts amongst local libraries and information institutes in building a
“Hong Kong Memory” digital collection.
Jim Chang
Programme Coordinator
