NAL Digital Collections – Building a National Resource Melanie Gardner NAL Manager, Innovation & Collaboration NAL Digital Collections, AgNIC, VIVO USAIN 2012

Points to be covered - About NAL Rethinking the role of a “research library” Building a “national” collection Moving forward

The National Agricultural Library About: –“The National Agricultural Library is one of four national libraries of the United States, with locations in Beltsville, MD and Washington DC. It houses one of the world's largest and most accessible agricultural information collections and serves as the nexus for a national network of state land-grant and U.S. Department of Agriculture field libraries.”

Research Libraries today Changing context –Recent innovation actually breaks with past –Self-contained models are evolving to distributed models Collection development –From “just in case” - to “just in time” –Paper - to digital –Complete control - to access Known research & teaching approaches – to inter-disciplinary Limited Access - to Open Access User seeks library sources – to User seeks Google sources Much more

Library’s Role Traditional –Capture, Describe, Protect –Public & Technical Services paradigm –Staid, solid, unchanging, enduring –Risk adverse New role? –Capture, Describe, Protect –Infrastructure, Content & Services paradigm –Flexible, dynamic, innovative – enduring –Able to take risks Major risk of not changing: library role becomes smaller and smaller

New Vision for NAL Offer high-level of access to: –Complete [mostly] USDA collection –Large rare & special collections, unique manuscript collections –USDA research articles [are Open Access] –Large number of USDA and other data sets –Images, videos, etc. –More …

What is “more”? Vision is to partner with other research institutions to share –Metadata –Digital content –Data & tools –Host other open content –Infrastructure

Drivers “National” library Federal Library Mandates – –Federal Research Public Access Act –Public Access to Digital Data Meeting the challenge of a new role

Creation of NAL Digital Collections Specific USDA series USDA peer-reviewed research USDA monographs Specifically funded collections Special & Rare collections Hosting external collections, Animal Images Collection and others

Prototype – Youth Development Research Archive Collaboration between universities, NAL, and non-profits, lead by U of MN Cyfernet Creating a model project for transferring high-quality, peer-reviewed materials into NALDC Prototype due over the summer

Questions? Melanie Gardner,