THREE ARCHIVES ONLINE: ARANNE LIBRARY'S DIGITIZATION PROJECT BEN-GURIONUNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV Ruthie Kalman, Dr. Yehoshua Bar-On, Mira Vasana and Yael Kampf There are three archives in the Aranne Central Library. One of them functions as a documentary center and the other two are archives of well-known writers. All three archives contain important documentary material. In past years, researchers had to do their work at the archives; it is now possible to reach many documents via the Internet. This change has been made possible by meta-data. Our goals: 1. To conserve original materials, e.g., manuscripts, maps, documents and photographs 2. To enable optimal retrieval of information 3. To make special and rare materials accessible to the general public. Description of the archives at the Aranne Central Library: The DocumentaryCenter: The David Tuviyahu Archives of the Negev: The task of the Tuviyahu archives is to collect documentary materials concerning the Negev in a variety disciplines, e.g., geology, archaeology and agriculture. Documentary materials on the Negev and Sinai Bedouin also form an important part of the collection. Also included are the archives of the Palestine Potash Co., the archives of the Genesis Foundation for the Development of the Negev and personal archives. The collections encompass written documents, maps, photographs, slides, video tapes, newspaper clippings and local publications. The oral history section includes (to date) about 500 transcribed interviews with veteran residents of the Negev, each of whom has told his own life story. The Archives of Amos Oz and Aharon Appelfeld: The Amos Oz Archive has been located in the Aranne Central Library since 1993. The Aharon Appelfeld archive is rather new, having been established in 2003. The task of the staff of both these archives is to collect everything that has been written by these authors or published about them, e.g., literary critiques (in all languages), bibliographies, interviews with the authors and other people, lectures, productions (such as films), photographs, posters, audio-visual materials, books and manuscripts. The History of the Digitization Project: · The situation of the Archives before the age of meta-data · OCR and the reason for failure · Scanning by outside companies · Adapting to three different versions of the ALEPH program The Stages of the Digitization Project: · The make-up of the classification number · Subjects and citations · Scanning as .pdf · Cataloging in the computer · The link between scanning and cataloging Thanks: to the staff of the Archives, to the Director, Avner Smuelevitz, The computer advisor, Dalia Censor, and the library's computer technicians.
