|
Vol. 1, No. 2 Spring 2004
by Charles Lockwood, Digital Services Librarian
and Jack Ray, Associate Director
|
| Photo courtesy of Charles Lockwood, Digital
Services Librarian |
The Loyola/Notre Dame Library has digitized the
back issues of the journal Olifant, which is devoted to the analysis
of medieval epic literature in the Romance languages. The Library
was commissioned to digitize the back issues by the Société
Rencesvals, Canadian-American Branch; the current President of
the Société is Dr. Leslie Zarker Morgan, Associate
Professor in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at
Loyola College.
One example of a typical article one might come
across searching the Olifant site is “Oral Tradition Style
in the Chanson de Roland: 'Elaborate Style' and Mode of Composition.”
The Chanson de Roland is an Old French epic poem (c. 1100) dealing
with the historical Battle of Roncesvalles (Roncevaux) in 778.
It is acknowledged by scholars as a masterpiece of its genre (“Chansons
de geste,” or “song of deeds,” a group of Charlemagne
legends). And “olifant,” an old form of the word “elephant,”
is a reference to Roland’s famous battle horn (made from
an elephant’s tusk) in the Chanson de Roland.
The Library’s Digital Access Department,
with input from the Cataloging Department, began work on this
project in 2003. As work began, it became evident that the materials
would have to be made available in two different platforms, one
for access by the body of Société Members worldwide,
and another to provide a digital archive in ENCompass (Library
software that organizes digital repositories). While the latter
platform remains in development, the “worldwide” site
for Olifant back issues is now live. It can be found at http://webdev.loyola.edu/Lndl_test/olifant/master.htm.
Since the project’s inception the Digital
Access team has scanned and processed over 6,000 pages, making
up over 700 entries. Coverage is from 1973 to 1998. Article reviews
and abstracts are free-text searchable to anyone who visits the
site. The full text in PDF is available within the Library, and
to any members of the Société (individual scholars
and libraries around the world). While the archive is already
live, the team has enlisted a library school intern with a Ph.D
in English literature to contribute abstracts for each article,
another “value added” to the paper version. Other
aspects of interface design and access management will be ongoing.
The first research library to include a link
to the Olifant project site is Johns Hopkins University, which
has included it on their French Language and Literature subject
page. Since information about the site can be found by Internet
search engines such as Google, the Olifant project already receives
frequent inquiries from individuals worldwide. This increased
exposure is welcomed by the Société Rencesvals,
which stands to increase its membership (and Olifant’s likelihood
of being cited by other scholars) this way.
The Digital Access
team sees this project as a model for academic libraries, which
can join with faculty in creating and preserving their scholarship
in digital form. The Library anticipates that Olifant will be
the first of many similar digitization projects. Questions can
be directed to Charles Lockwood, Digital Librarian (clockwood@loyola.edu
or clockwood@ndm.edu),
or John McGinty, Director (jmcginty@ndm.edu
or jmcginty@loyola.edu).
Back
to index
|
