IU Libraries digitization project creates rich repository of Hoosier authors: IU News Room: Indiana University

"An Indiana University Libraries project that will allow anyone to research Hoosier authors and their bibliographies online -- as well as access hundreds of digitized books -- is nearly complete.  Conceived years ago and funded in 2006 by a Library Services and Technology Act grant through the Indiana State Library, the 'Indiana Authors and Their Books' project oversaw digitization of a three-volume reference set published by Wabash College that covers nearly 200 years of Indiana's literary history.  The books include authors who were born, raised or educated in Indiana, or who lived in the state for a major portion of their lives.  The website hosted by IU Libraries includes more than 7,000 author entries and nearly 21,000 book citations. It links directly to about 400 digitized copies of selected titles and allows users to search for remaining titles via external services like Google Books, WorldCat, Hathi Trust Digital Library and the Libraries' online catalog, IUCAT.  Entries range from well-known authors such as James Whitcomb Riley, Booth Tarkington and Gene Stratton Porter to the lesser known, such as an entry for Ethel Mathilda Green Adams, a public schoolteacher who wrote a book about musical understanding in the 1960s. In addition to works of literature, there are a number of nonfiction works including histories of local towns, counties and churches. These sources, and a handful of regimental histories dating to the Civil War, are a genealogical gold mine.  'Our hard work on this project has created a really rich resource that is already receiving more than 28,000 unique visits per month from users,' digital projects and usability librarian Michelle Dalmau said. 'I see it as an important K-12 tool, while it can also assist scholars who are researching more obscure authors. Users are able to browse by author, book title or publication date, creating possibilities for deep textual analysis.'  Dalmau plans to share encoded texts and descriptive metadata with the state library to include in the Indiana Digital Library portal, Indiana Memory ..."