Western Waters Digital Library

About the WWDL

The Western Waters Digital library (WWDL) began as a collaborative regional project created by twelve university libraries from eight western states under auspice of the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA). The initial phase of the project was funded through a two-year National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The original proposal for the WWDL project stated that, The Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) proposes to build a digital library of water resources information for the western United States. The West is affected by a natural aridity, which limits water in the region. Coupled with the highest current population growth in the nation, that factor makes knowledge of the region’s history requisite for effective planning. The Western Waters Digital Library (WWDL) will create a much-needed information resource by bringing together digital collections from a geographically dispersed consortium of 30 major universities (GWLA is now has 32 member universities). The currently available resources include classic water literature, government reports, legal transcripts, water project records, personal papers, photographic collections, and audio/video materials associated with the major river basins of the Trans-Mississippi West.

Mission

The Western Waters Digital Library mission is to develop and support online digital initiatives that enhance, enlighten and further the knowledge base regarding the water issues in the Western United States. The overall objectives of the consortia projects is to create an online resource center for researchers and other interested patrons, where the widest range of materials related to issues of the Trans-Mississippi region (including Hawaii) is made available. This will include historic materials, published works, bibliographies, audio and video media, online exhibits, related web resources, RSS feeds, and any other resources that are deemed appropriate to the research community’s needs and expressed interests.

Objectives

*  Support projects that preserve and enhance access to valuable library resources useful to the broader community in the 21st century and  that foster the abilities of libraries to build  community partnerships that support the development of learning communities and the needs of all learners throughout their lifetimes.

*  Provide a standardized, production-quality collection of water resources for researchers and citizens that will be freely accessible via the Internet.

*  Collaborative projects, especially projects of a state-wide, regional or national scope, designed to increase access to related collections; collaborative projects that provide evidence of good stewardship of materials in all formats; and that exemplify or help to develop standards and best practices for the creation and management of digital collections.

*  Create a regional collaborative digital collection, led by an established consortium of research institutions, with seamless access to materials on distributed servers. Follow accepted open standards for digital formats, metadata, and resource sharing; standards include DLF benchmarks, Dublin Core and OAI for metadata, and cooperation with the IMLS-funded Western Trails project.

Participation/Technical Information

The Western Waters Digital Library encourages the participation of any organization with materials appropriate to the collection policy of the project. However, all participants must be able to meet the standards for participation as determined by the participating organizations:

1.) The content must be relevant to the issue of water in the region west of the Mississippi River. This may include the historic development of water resources (ex: reclamation projects; local irrigation/agriculture; surveys; maps; legislation, well-known figures in water history, etc.), hydrological/geology (datasets, dams, weather, geological, prehistoric), Native Peoples (water-rights; early agriculture; contemporary use, etc.), etc. All proposed projects will be reviewed by the project committee prior to posting at the WWDL website.

2.) Projects must conform to OAI standards.

3.) Dublin core metadata elements must be adhered to.

4.) All online materials must adhere to the principals of open access.

Technical Information:

DFL Draft benchmark for digital reproductions of printed books and serial publications (June 2008)
NDCC Handbook for Digital Projects
CDP Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices, Version 2.1.1 (September 2006)

Projects and Sponsors

The first phase of the Western Waters Digital Library (WWDL) project was led by the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) and funded in 2003 with a two-year National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). National Leadership Grants fund projects that "…provide creative solutions on issues of national importance and provide leadership for other organizations". To establish the Western Waters Digital Library, twelve academic research libraries in eight western states created digital collections focused on four principal river basins: the Platte, Rio Grande, Colorado and Columbia. Project participants were successful in establishing a sustainable technical infrastructure, a model for institutional cooperation and collaboration, and a core collection of digital resources about water in the west. This project laid the foundation for on-going growth and development of the WWDL.

Water Wise Utah was funded by a two-year grant from The Partnership for a Nation of Learners (PNL) beginning in 2006. PNL "encourages museums, libraries and public broadcasters to address community needs by working together." Water Wise Utah is a collaborative University of Utah project led by the Utah Education Network (UEN) in partnership with KUER, KUED, the Utah Museum of Natural History, and the J. W. Marriott Library. Our aim is to raise awareness of critical water issues and encourage water conservation throughout the state of Utah. Water Wise Utah will offer TV documentaries, K-12 educational events, a museum exhibit, a Web site linking to the Western Waters Digital Library, and collaborate with Utah water agencies and community organizations to target five Utah communities with high rates of water consumption. The Western Waters Digital Library Water Wise Utah collection is a continually growing digital resource about critical western water issues and the need to conserve.

The Foundations of Western Water Policy project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) with a grant from the Division of Preservation and Access in 2007. "These grants support projects that preserve collections and create intellectual access to collections that, because of their intellectual content and value as cultural artifacts, are considered highly important for research, education, and public programming in the humanities." Four academic research libraries at Colorado State University, Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, and Washington State University will partner with the famed Water Resources Center Archives at the University of California at Berkeley to create a new digital collection for the WWDL. Together, we will provide integrated access to key archival holdings related to water policy and environmental history for the Colorado and Columbia River basins.