Buffalo A multidisciplinary team of IT professionals, librarians, and professors work together to preserve and provide access to a vital teaching and research resource.
Faculty use the collection to enrich their lectures and seminars.
It's an unparalleled resource of recorded visual history. Problem was, the collection was often inaccessible, filed away behind closed doors. Appointments to review slides had to be made with the slide librarian, whose office hours often conflicted with scheduled class time. On visiting the collection, users discovered to their dismay that the slides were deteriorating, improperly cataloged, or in some cases simply missing. Recognizing that access to its slide library could be improved and resources conserved, the university assembled a team from the library as well as the Departments of Architecture and Information Technology to create an online database prototype.