Digital Library Featured in The Telegraph

Last month, Lehigh University’s Digital Library was featured in The Telegraph as part of an article titled, “The Best Online Culture Archives.” In this article, Florence Waters used the recent launch of Google Art Project as an opportunity to reflect on the state of digital archives, citing 15 projects as particularly innovative and useful. Waters included Lehigh’s I Remain among this list, describing it as a “lovingly-compiled collection.”

Interestingly, many of the other sites included in the list are much larger scale projects than the relatively modest collection of letters and ephemera that constitutes I Remain. However, this site compensates for its small size by the depth and quality of its contextual information, exemplifying Lehigh Digital Library’s niche within an environment which includes an increasing number of mass-digitization projects.

Much of the “love” Waters referred to in her article came from Megan Norcia, who organized and annotated the collection, while serving as our 2004-2005 CLIR Fellow. However, there were many others who collaborated in establishing this collection, including faculty, librarians, library staff, and students. For more on this process, see Megan’s article, “Out of the Ivory Tower Endlessly Rocking.” The site has continued to grow since its establishment in 2004, not in the quantity of digitized materials, but rather in the contextual information about those materials. This has included video documentaries, faculty research, and external scholarly contributions.

Please visit I Remain and our other Digital Library Projects and let us know your suggestions for supplementing and expanding the resources and contextual scholarship presented there. We are also always eager to hear ideas for new projects as well.