SERVICES, SYSTEMS AND PROGRAMS

The Arch

Both NYU students and faculty continually request the ability to identify electronic resources broadly applicable within their discipline. In order to support this, NYU Libraries have created The Arch, a HTTP/Z39.50 gateway which exploits enhanced descriptive metadata within the BobCat OPAC system to allow NYU's users to hunt for electronic resources by topic and format.
http://library.nyu.edu/collections/find_ejournals_subject.html

DigiTool

DigiTool is a product of Ex Libris,one of the world's leading vendors of library automation software. DigiTool includes all the tools required for building and managing digital collections and as such constitutes a major component of an overall digital strategy. NYU's Digital Library Team, in partnership with Ex Libris and Sun Microsystems, is working to further develop the DigiTool product and enhance its usefulness to the larger digital library community.

DSpace

The increasing amount of content contained within NYU's digital library server has mandated the quick implementation of a repository system to assist in the process of managing our content. We have selected the DSpace software as the basis for our digital library repository. We will be working with the DSpace Federation to try to augment the DSpace code to add support for the enhanced descriptive, administrative and structural metadata that libraries need to manage complex content.

Encoded Archival Description

The Encoded Archival Description format is an XML document format for the encoding of archival finding aids maintained by the Society of American Archivists and the Library of Congress. The Digital Library Team seeks to promote the use of EAD in the NYU libraries by development of encoding tools and stylesheets to simplify both the creation and dissemination of finding aids in electronic form.
Finding Aids for Archival Collections in the NYU Archives

METS: Digital Library Object Encoding

Management of digitized primary source material requires recording and maintenance of descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding both the original source and its digital incarnation. Working with the other members of the Digital Library Federation, the NYU Digital Library Team is developing METS, an XML schema that libraries can use as a standard mechanism for encoding and communication of digital objects.
Project Lead: Jerome McDonough (jerome.mcdonough@nyu.edu)

Shibbolized Darwin Streaming Server

NYU's Digital Library Team has implemented the Shibboleth system for authentication and access control in the Database of Recorded American Music (see above). This involved developing a bridging mechanism to allow the credentials established in a Shibboleth-based login taking place through an Apache module to be carried over into the user's interaction with the Darwin Streaming Server we are employing for delivering streaming audio files. Both the Apache code and our modifications to the Darwin Streaming Server are available upon request.
http://dram.nyu.edu/