The Hot Docs Doc Library

For four or five years, I have been an avid attendee of the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival held annually in Toronto in late April and early May. Their sheer variety of films and topics available at the event can feel overwhelming but I usually walk away having learned something new and seeing interesting techniques in film making. As with many other film festivals, some fraction of films shown will become more wildly available on either television or cinemas but it is hard to know which ones are “see it here or never!” versus “see it here or in theatres in a few months.” During this year’s festival, I learned about a new project called the Hot Docs Doc Library where you can see a wide variety of Canadian documentary films for free.

According to the site, this project was supported partially through the federal government’s Canadian Culture Online Strategy program. The leadership of the Department of Canadian Heritage in supporting films like this deserves to be supported. As a librarian, I would like to see the library have better organization. It is difficult to search the films or even easily figure out how many there are (my guess is close to three hundred films, including shorts). In the future, I look forward to seeing more Canadian films posted here and seeing how the site evolves over time. Perhaps the administrators of the service will consider taking on librarians and educators to further develop and expand the site.

Europeana: Europe’s Digital Library

I first read about Europeana almost a year ago and it seemed promising but not ready for prime time. In reading a fascinating and critical discussion of the project by Ricky Erway at OCLC Research in Liber Quarterly that points out the website’s shortcomings. I would have to second the concern about uneven participation; not all members of the EU are represented. That said, they are off to a strong start. As of today, there are contributions from: the UK, France, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Poland, Italy, Spain and others. Of course, I had some fun browsing around the service and running searches to see what I could find. The search results are a little confusing since you get text (which apparently includes library catalogue records but not the actual item), audio, video and images. Based on some previous experimentation, it looks like this service is best at obtaining images. The search interface is top notch when it comes to providing faceted search; you can drill down on date, country, contributor and so forth.

Online communities and a timeline browsing tool are two of Europeana’s more promising aspects but they leave something to be desired. Compared to the World Digital Library, Europeana’s timeline browsing tool is not well implemented. I also wonder about the communities idea; there are six groups with less than four hundred members in total. Would it not make more sense to make connections to establishes social networks like Facebook rather than trying to get people to participate in Europeana broad topic based communities dedicated to classical music, museums and other cultural subjects. If you are interested in European culture and libraries, this is a website to check in on periodically.

You may want to read my posts on other digital library projects:

• Digital Library of the Caribbean: a review

• The World Digital Library: a review

Digital Library of the Caribbean: a review

A photo of Haiti's capital city, Port-au-Prince, from 1957

In reading news coverage about Haiti’s earthquake, I periodically came across references to the Digital Library of the Caribbean. It turns out that it is organizing efforts to help Haiti rebuild its libraries and archives; it is also providing training in digitization. Founded in 2006, the digital library has a variety of materials including maps, photos, archival materials and books documenting the history, culture and other aspects of the Caribbean. The image at the top of this post, a view of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city, came from the Digital Library. Even more impressive is the fact that the interface functions in the region’s three major languages: English, French and Spanish. There is also a geographical search tool where you can either enter latitude and longitude or draw the area you’re interested in. By using the map search tool, I was able to find a 2006 photo of Haiti’s archives. As impressive as the Digital Library of the Caribbean is now, it will only get more impressive later; it looks like there are plans to add oral histories, more newspapers and other resources. Some aspects of the interface strike me as a bit difficult to use and perhaps inelegant, but there is still much value to be had from it.

The World Digital Library

Unveiled last month, the World Digital Library is a project with much interesting potential. The actual content available is rather thin on the ground at the moment, but I presume that will change with time. What I like best about it is the option to browse for collections using a map of the world and/or using a timeline that covers thousands of years. At this writing, there are 1170 digital items from collections around the world (e.g. National Library of France, Library of Congress, Yale University Library, National Library of Sweden etc).

Even though there are no Canadian institutions participating in this UNESCO project, there are 13 items about or from Canada, mainly from the Library of Congress. I had a look at one item – changing of the guard at Parliament in 1984 – and I was quite impressed by the meta-data provided (not as complete as a Library catalogue record, but certainly good for a photo). I get the sense that the Library of Congress is the main contributor of content at this stage, but that may change.