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Digital Libraries & Repositories

Our Digital Libraries:

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech creates, curates and manages digital libraries to preserve and provide access to Libraries' Special Collections, university research data, works of scholarship, and learning objects created by Virginia Tech faculty, students, and staff. 

 

Our Development Projects:

The University Libraries is also active in conducting research into and the development of digital library infrastructure, systems, applications, and services supporting knowledge management and dissemination at Virginia Tech and beyond. 

Our software development team is building a multi-tenancy, cloud-based, template driven Digital Libraries Platform as the successor to our legacy digital library infrasture including Omeka, Wordpress, and Hydra/Fedora.

Mission Statement: The Virginia Tech Digital Libraries Platform’s mission is to preserve and provide access to data, support knowledge, discovery, and creativity by maintaining Virginia Tech’s contributions to the scholarly record.

Brief Description: Virginia Tech is a land-grant university, and its Libraries strive to provide persistent access and preservation to all University digital assets. The VTDLP is a cloud-native digital library solution supporting preservation and access. It is a collection of CloudFormation templates, code implementing microservices to support digital library functions such as persistent identifier minting, identifier resolution, file characterization, file fixity validation, and web applications providing user access. The VTDLP accepts content from our institutional repository VTechWorks, our Special Collections and University Archives, our Digital Imaging Lab, and individual faculty and student researchers. It is also in development to accept content from the Virginia Tech Data Repository and learning objects repository Odyssey in the future (https://about.digital.lib.vt.edu/).

Designated CommunityVirginia Tech University Libraries (VTUL) seeks to share information and knowledge regardless of geographic, institutional, or financial barriers, through our growing open data and research repositories (VTUL About). The Virginia Tech Digital Libraries Platform primary community consists of Virginia Tech:

  • Students
  • Staff
  • Faculty
  • Affiliated researchers

Secondary user community includes:

  • Citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia
  • Global community of researchers and scholars
  • Elementary and secondary schools
  • General public

 

View our Digital Library Policies and Documentation
 
Host a Collection in our Digital Library Platform by Completing a Deposit Agreement
 

Development of a curation workbench for an IMLS funded project to automate digital preservation microservices for research data submitted with electronic thesis and dissertations.

 

A repository system for a CLIR funded project to digitize and publish architectural drawings and associated assets from our International Archive of Women in Architecture collection.

IMLS funded research on library cyberinfrastructure that can handle big datasets (a partnership with Virginia Tech Digital Library Research Lab and Smart Infrastructure Lab)

IMLS funded research on library adoption of 3D and virtual reality services (a partnership with Indiana University Libraries and University of Oklahoma Libraries)

 Contributions to community driven digital library R&D including DSpaceFedoraSamveraAltMetrics, and Web archiving.

Digital Archiving

We digitize archival materials and artifacts for new digital collections, including cultural heritage and natural history collections at the University and from around the region. 

We preserve our digital library and repository content to ensure future accessibility and usability of digital assets using local digital preservation systems and geographically distributed digital preservation networks such as MetaArchive and Academic Preservation Trust, and by performing a biannual crawl and harvest of Virginia Tech’s web presence using Internet Archive’s Archive-It service.

Sensitive Content Statement

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech recognizes that some materials may contain content that does not reflect the university’s Principles of Community. Without endorsing any content, we are committed to equal and free access to original, unaltered historical information for the purposes of research and study, and we support the university’s statement on offensive photographs. We encourage individuals to use library resources to gain contextual knowledge and understanding of content, and we follow procedures to review content that is insensitive toward historically underrepresented groups.

Newman Library, stairway

Special Collections

Contact

Digital Libraries:
digital-libraries@vt.edu