Limestone's Director Of The Library Presents at Virtual Conference

Limestone College’s Director of the Library Lizah Ismail was one of four panelists who presented at the Association of College and Research Libraries 2017 Virtual Conference on Friday, March 24.

Ismail and the other panelists did a webcast presentation entitled “Transforming Hidden Collections for Teaching and Learning: Four Libraries and Their Journey Into Digitization,” which highlighted their use of the digital platform known as Shared Shelf. Ismail attended the conference in Baltimore and also did a webcast from there on her part of the presentation.

The other three panelists represented the University of Saint Mary, Central Methodist University, and Hampden-Sydney College.

The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) announced in 2015 the selection of 42 member colleges and universities that comprised the Consortium on Digital Resources for Teaching and Research.

Limestone College was one of only four schools from South Carolina selected to take part in the $2.2 million project. The other Palmetto State colleges picked were Coker, Presbyterian, and Wofford.

Through the use of a cloud-based uniform digital platform known as Shared Shelf, Consortium members are able to increase their capacities to store, preserve, and catalogue collections of digital images, documents, audio and video files, and other types of materials while streamlining administrative capabilities.

Consortium members have been able to improve teaching and learning and enhance faculty and student/faculty research on their own campuses by making lesser known or hidden collections searchable and accessible.

Limestone has focused on digitizing and archiving student research and creative works including conference papers, poster sessions, studio art works, creative writing projects, and oral histories.

The funding for the project was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.