Library

Library’s rare collections accessible electronically

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Fondren Library users no longer have to make a trip to the library to view some of the rare sheet music, architectural drawings, photos, letters, articles, speeches and other reference materials, thanks to the new Fondren Digital Collections (FDC) available at <www.rice.edu/fondren/hyperion/>.

Officially launched Jan. 12, the FDC houses high-quality digital files of original photographs, letters, drawings, rare publications and other items presented in JPG, PDF or other file formats that can be accessed on the Web. Sound files and other formats will be added soon.

The FDC currently features three collections, the largest of which is the William Ward Watkin Architecture Collection (www.rice.edu/Fondren/hyperion/collections/watkin_info.htm). Stored in the Woodson Research Center, this collection consists of the papers of William Ward Watkin, the first supervising architect of the Rice Institute and first chairman of the Rice architecture department. More than 600 architectural drawings, photographs, items of correspondence, articles and speeches are included in the collection, which dates from 1903 to 1956.

“This collection represents the physical birth of the Rice campus because Watkin was the architect who built the first buildings,” said Amanda Focke, archivist and special collections librarian at Fondren, who helped design and implement the FDC. “And because this collection is heavily used at Woodson, we chose it to represent the beginning of the Fondren Digital Collections as well.”

The other two collections consist of music from Fondren’s Brown Fine Arts Library. Both are underrepresented “gems” that haven’t been used much because many people are unaware of their existence, Focke said. Barbara Shreffler, a former music cataloguer for Fondren, worked on the two music collections as part of her internship for a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of North Texas.

The Illuminated Sacred Music Manuscript Collection (www.rice.edu/Fondren/hyperion/collections/medieval_info.htm) includes rare 15th- and 16th-century original Southern European music manuscripts depicting religious hymns and songs in Latin, hand-drawn and beautifully illustrated with brilliant tempera paints on large vellum sheets.

The Schumann Collection (www.rice.edu/Fondren/hyperion/collections/schumann_info.htm) consists of original materials related to 19th-century German composer and music critic Robert Schumann, including a contemporary manuscript report of Schumann’s conducting at Dusseldorf.

The Fondren staff spent the past three years preparing the FDC. Once software was selected for the project, each of the items in the three collections had to be scanned or digitally photographed; then a description of each item, including the title, date of origin, creator and details about the collection to which it belongs, had to be written so the viewer can put everything into context.

Fondren selected the digital content management software Hyperion for the FDC because it’s compatible with SIRSI, the library’s catalog system. Extensive custom programming was created by Karen Oster, senior SIRSI database administrator at Fondren, with input from Rice Web Services and Fondren librarians Susan Leister and Focke. “We had to transform Hyperion’s rudimentary, somewhat confusing search screens into an intuitive, helpful and visually pleasing user interface,” Focke said.

The Watkin Collection was used as a test pilot for the FDC during the past year. Rice faculty, staff and students had a chance to view it and provide feedback about problems they encountered so that the Fondren staff could fine-tune the system.

Now that the FDC is online, the information it contains is available not just to the Rice community but scholars and researchers around the world. Some of the documents in the collection are full-text searchable; others are limited to keyword searches.

The Fondren Digital Resources Steering Committee, chaired by Geneva Henry, selects material for the FDC on the basis of known research interests as well as other less-known but valuable collections. Later this year the committee plans to add The Rice Institute Pamphlets, an interdisciplinary scholarly journal published at Rice between 1915 and 1981. The journal features some of the most important speeches given on campus, and the digitization project will cover volumes 1 (1915) through 32/33 (1946). Debra Bailey, science librarian at Fondren, is project coordinator for the Rice Institute Pamphlets. Suggestions for other materials to add to the FDC can be submitted to <Fondren-digital@rice.edu>.

“The digital resources being made available through the FDC are important in the overall Rice Digital Library Initiative, enabling the larger communities of Rice, Houston and scholars worldwide to experience some of the interesting, widely used collections in Fondren,” said Henry, executive director of the Rice Digital Library Initiative. “The ability to share these resources, as well as linking to other assets — both digital and nondigital — provides new avenues that empower students, faculty, staff and other interested learners to grow their knowledge and generate new ideas to further contribute to humanity.”

Fondren departments that collaborated with the Digital Resources Steering Committee on the FDC include the Brown Fine Arts Library, Woodson Research Center, Cataloguing and Information Technology. The committee also received advice and support from the Electronic Resources Center at Fondren, Rice Information Technology and Rice Web Services.

To celebrate the launch of FDC, Fondren will host a reception for the Rice community at 2 p.m. Jan. 27 in the Kyle Morrow Room.