By Ryan Hoffman

By the start of the Fall 2009 semester, the West Virginia University Evansdale Library will feature a brand new coffee house and other renovations.

“The whole idea is to reconfigure the first floor,” said Mary Strife, Evansdale Library director.

Although the numbers are not final, the renovation, including the cafe is expected to cost between $750,000 and $1 million, Strife said.

The money will come from the Office of the Provost and WVU Libraries, although the details are not yet final.

The spending plan must be finalized by June 30, 2009, the end of the fiscal year.

All monies must either be spent or designated to a specific area of spending; otherwise the funds will be lost.

“We are very excited about the renovations and hope that it is a very busy summer for us,” Strife said.

Bidding on the project is set to start in April.

The still unnamed coffee shop will be run by the Mountainlair, similar to the Downtown Library Complex’s coffee shop, Eliza’s.

“We could potentially have a name-the-cafe contest open to students in the next year,” Strife said.

The Evansdale cafe will look more like a Starbucks or a Barnes and Noble cafe rather than Eliza’s.

It will have large leather chairs, will use lighter wood colors to give it a contemporary feel and feature an outdoor patio near the front doors of the building.

“We want to make it a place where students want to hang out, get a cup of coffee before class or meet with professors,” said Shelley Johnson, interior design manager for WVU.

She added that the Evansdale Library is not used as much as it could be because of its out-of-date look.

The new first floor layout aims to give the library a more open feel by adding new carpet, fresh paint, larger study spaces, a new front desk and furniture on wheels for easy mobility.

The new tables and chairs will make it possible for students to work in groups without the hassle of moving heavy furniture.

“We have had conferences where people have talked about flexible work areas, so we figured if we are going to redo that carpet we might as well reconfigure the space,” Strife said.

The project is still in the planning phase and all the materials still need to be ordered.

There is still time for student input.

Strife is looking for students to participate in focus groups to voice their opinions on the renovations.

The groups are scheduled to meet next week, and on Monday and Tuesday undergraduate focus groups will meet at 6 each night.

A focus group for graduate students will meet Wednesday at 6 p.m.

“We are looking for students who use the Evansdale library to participate in the groups,” Strife said.

To participate in a focus group, contact Mary Strife at mary.strife@mail.wvu.edu.

By Katlin Stinespring

The West Virginia University Libraries are mailing 10 books this week to Fort Wayne, Ind. to be digitized for public access from any location via the Internet.

This plan is part of a grant project which makes digitized copies of books available online on www.archive.org, and makes out-of-print or out-of-copyright books available to anyone. The books are scanned and imported to the online archives.

The University is sending books selected from the rare books collection, many of which are written on the history of West Virginia, WVU and the Civil War.

The digitization of the rare books makes the content more accessible, where in the past, patrons had to make an appointment or in some cases, come to Morgantown.

“Rare books in the WVU libraries are not for browsing because it causes too much damage to the pages. But when it’s online, an entire class of students could read the whole book prior to a lecture or the professor could pull the book up during class,” said Monte Maxwell, the Development and Public Relations Representative of WVU Libraries.

Other books selected are from the Appalachian collection, which is one of the top three collections in the United States of Appalachian-themed books.

“What is interesting in the instance of rare books or archives is that you may be able to see notes that previous readers made, such as the actual author of the book or historical figures,” said Maxwell.

When placed online, the books are formatted as flipbooks and the pages remain unchanged from what they were long ago.

“Just like when someone opened this book in the 1800s, you are seeing exactly what they saw hundreds of years ago,” said Maxwell.

Dean of WVU Libraries, Francis O’Brien also chose older materials collected by a previous dean about Africa.

In the future, the WVU Libraries will be able to choose additional selections to be digitized for online browsing and research.

O’Brien said the archiving program is particularly important to developing countries and people who live far from research universities or other institutions.

When the hard copies show up on the computer screen, it’s in a flip book format – exactly as they would appear in one’s hand.

The copies remain original along with any kind of notations or library identifications.

“It’s not the same as looking at the primary source material, but for most references (the digitized books) will be fine,” O’Brien said.

Once the book is placed online, keywords can be found using a search function. The book displays clickable yellow tabs on the edges of the pages which signify the keywords.

The West Virginia University Libraries are among 14 institutions picked to participate in a book digitization pilot project. The goal of the project is to digitize a selection of rare and significant books from the participants’ collections and make the electronic versions available via the Internet.

“I hope books never go away, and I don’t think they will, but digitization makes a book available to anyone, anywhere in the world, who has an Internet connection,” said Frances O’Brien, Dean of the WVU Libraries. “I think that’s valuable for people who live a distance from a research library.”

William Rafter, Head of the Libraries’ Cataloging Department; Frances O’Brien, Dean of Libraries; Jo. Brown, the Libraries’ Appalachian bibliographer; and Harold M. Forbes, Rare Books Collection Curator; examine a sketch in one of the books selected for the book digitization pilot project.

The project is led by PALINET, an organization of hundreds of libraries, information centers, museums, and archives, that promotes library cooperation and resource sharing, and is partially funded by a $1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Unlike other book-digitization projects currently underway, in which entire collections are being scanned and posted online, the PALINET Collaborative Digitization Service has a more defined mission and scope. Their focus is on providing free and open access to an array of rich cultural heritage materials belonging to the group’s institutions.

“This is an exciting time for PALINET members,” said Catherine C. Wilt, PALINET’s Executive Director. “Members will soon begin to create vital digital assets and share them through the Internet Archive, ensuring unprecedented open access to the important historical and archival resources in our region.”

During the pilot project, each institution will submit five to ten books to be digitized. After the pilot phase, the initial target will be to convert 60,000 books into digital format and place them on the Internet Archive, www.archive.org.

On this site, users can search by author or title to find a book. After selecting a book, the reader views the book as a flipbook and can flip through the pages with a few mouse clicks. Because the pages are scanned, users see vivid pictures of the actual pages, not simply typed text.

This means readers see all sketches or pictures in the original manuscript. The same goes for any dog-eared pages, underlined sentences, or scribbled notes in the margin.

“They are not sterilized images,” O’Brien said. “You’ll see the book as if you went to the library and requested the book. You see the bookplate, library ownership stamp, and any markings.”

The text of the virtual books is also keyword searchable. Type a word in the search box and the software flags the pages where the word appears and highlights the word on the page.

Another benefit of the project is preservation. Harold M. Forbes, Rare Books Collection Curator, said the chief dilemma for people who work with rare books and archives is allowing access and yet providing for the maximum amount of preservation.

“These books are old and they’re fragile, and there is always the difficulty of preserving a book that is used a lot. Maintaining that balance is essential. It’s a fine line that we’re always on,” Forbes said “Book digitization is a way of providing access and assuring preservation of the original.”

O’Brien is currently working with Forbes and Jo. Brown, the Libraries’ Appalachian bibliographer, to identify what books to send as part of the pilot. William Rafter, Head of the Libraries’ Cataloging Department, has compiled the books’ metadata, which is information that describes the book for cataloging purposes.

Books will come from the Rare Books Collection, the Appalachian Collection, and the Africana Collection created by former Libraries Dean Robert F. Munn. To avoid copyright concerns, the project is focusing on materials published prior to 1923.

Among the Libraries submissions are two volumes by Dr. David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa. There is, of course, also a major focus on West Virginia during the 19th century.
Along with a book on the creation of the state and one on sightseeing on 1850s’ railroads, Forbes is including two books that debate the medical benefits of West Virginia’s many natural springs.

Brown is contributing a biography of a revenue officer from the 1800s and a 1902 response to the hillbilly stereotype.

The exact number of books the WVU Libraries will submit throughout the overall project has not yet been determined, but Forbes doubts the Rare Books Collection will run dry of unique and interesting contributions anytime soon.

“These selections are just the tip of the iceberg. We have hundreds more,” Forbes said.

O’Brien is excited for the WVU Libraries to participate in the PALINET Collaborative Digitization Service. Although the WVU Libraries have won praise for several digital projects that librarians and staff have already developed, digitizing text is a new frontier. O’Brien welcomes the learning experience.

“We’ll learn something new that will be part of our digital future,” O’Brien said. “We’ll then need to make the decision of how much of our future text digitization is going to be.”