This presentation compares how the British Library and New York Public Library are digitizing rare materials from their special collections and making them available through apps. Both libraries aim to provide broader access to collections and raise awareness of their holdings. The British Library's apps include "Treasures" and "Royal Manuscripts" which feature images and videos of manuscripts. The New York Public Library's "Biblion" app releases interactive magazine-style editions on specific themes drawn from library archives. Selection of materials considers costs, audience appeal, and difficulty of physical access.

1. Treasures in the Cloud: How the
British Library and New York
Public Library are using apps to
Present Rare Materials to the
World
A presentation by Jennifer
Collins

2. Technology is taking special collections
beyond the library walls.

3. The Research:
This presentation looks at the efforts to digitize collections into app formats
from two of the worlds leading libraries, The British Library in London
England and the New York Public Library in New York City, USA. These
“treasures in the cloud” are poised to take a bold step, allowing the
patron to interact with special collections content through a digital
medium in ways that were not thought possible a few short years ago.

4. Benefits of Going Digital
 Ability of digital technology to showcase special collections content in
dynamic and vibrant ways.
 Provide access to a significantly larger user base than previously thought
possible. Special collections can become places of connection rather than
merely being places of repository.
 Raise awareness of the Special Collections in a given library.
 With careful selection of which Special Collections to digitize libraries can
appeal to the broadest possible audience, stir up excitement and increase
demand for funding for further projects.
 As tablet devices continue to gain popularity librarians have the
opportunity to be a significant presence in offering content and services for
these devices.

5. Downsides of Digital
 Cost both of the digitizing itself and the cost of creating and maintaining
software capable of meeting the needs of specific projects.
 Software changes constantly. It is unlikely that any single organization will
be able to keep software up-to-date as well as convert old projects once
specific software or hardware has become obsolete.
 Often the items selected for digitization are those considered to have the
most value to scholars, this isolates significant parts of user populations.
 iPad collections tend to favor a more casual user group.
 Issues of Copyright and Digital Rights Management can cause significant
problems in the digitizing and distribution processes. This is more
problematic with modern materials than with those items outside of the
terms of copyright.

6. Apps from the
British Library

7. The British Library: Quick Facts
 New building opened in 1997
 1st Library designed with book preservation in
mind.
 180 million items in the collection. Ranging
from modern texts to ancient documents from
all over the world.
 Their goals are to acquire all books published
in the U.K., retain and preserve those materials,
and to make all materials available to the public.
 Apps from the British Library run on the iPad,
iPhone, and Android operating system.

8. “Treasures of the British Library”
“Treasures” is an app that features “highlights” from the
British Library’s substantial collection. These highlights
span great swaths of the collection and include access to
literary, historical, scientific, religious and medieval
manuscripts as well as music-related documents.

9. Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination
“Royal Manuscripts” contains 58 early royal manuscripts and over
500 high resolution images. To round out the app there are also videos
of British Library staff and historians explaining the significance of
the documents and images displayed.
Highlights include:
• Book of Hours
• Maps of an itinerary from London to Apulia
and to the Holy Land
• Shrewsbury book, presented to Margaret of
Anjou on her marriage to Henry VI in 1445

10. British Library 19th Century Historical Collection
The British Library's earliest app is the British Library 19th
Century Historical Collection containing 60,000 historical
titles taken from the British Libraries 19th Century book
collection. The British Library 19th Century Historical
Collection was the 2012 winner of the Publishing
Innovation Award in the Reference/Academic category.

11. Features and Layout
12/6/12
Touch screen interface.
Users select a category then items in that
category are arranged in a grid pattern.
High resolution images of
the primary document as
well as videos of scholars
and historians detailing the
items significance.
Users can zoom, scroll,
highlight, and interact with
some of the entries.
Users can mark favorite
entries to bookmark them
for later viewing and can
search the app for specific
materials.

12. Target Audience
The British Library to create it’s apps to
benefit education and learning for all age
groups.
The British Library strives to appeal to as
wide an audience as possible.
The primary goal is for users to see the apps
as entertaining education tools.

13. Selecting Materials
In selecting materials to be added to their Treasures
collection the British Library considers the following:
What are the information needs of the user?
Which items from the collection will appeal to the most
users?
How difficult it is for the average user to access an item in
person?
What would be the cost of digitizing the item? This includes
the initial cost, any distribution or other intellectual
property licensing costs, and the cost of upkeep once the
item is in a digital format.

14. Cost to User and Funding
The apps from the British Library range from free to
paying business models. A subscription to Treasures
costs $10.00 a month and in some cases a one-time
access cost of $6.99 is available for specific collections.
Development and maintenance of apps is funded
through the libraries budget as well as the British
Heritage Council.

15. Apps from the New York Public
Library

16. The New York Public Library: Quick Facts
 Main branch opened in 1911
 43,583,505 items in its collection as of June 2005.
 Has both scholarly research items and an extensive collection of non-scholarly
items for patrons to access.
 Currently Biblion apps only accessible on Mac iPad tablet devices.

17. Biblion The Boundless Library: World's Fair
“Biblion – The Boundless Library,” releases “issues” which allow users
to explore specific themes that contain materials drawn from some of
the most popular items in the books, sound, and image archives of the
New York Public library
The World's Fair issue of Biblion
has a wealth of information
including photos, videos, academic
essays, commentary and other
documentation about the 1939
World's Fair. All of the information
is taken from the archives and
special collections of the New York
Public Libraries.

18. Biblion The Boundless Library: Frankenstein:
The Afterlife of Shelley’s Circle.
- Galleries, essays by experts on the Romantic era.
- All surviving handwritten pages of Mary Shelley’s
original “Frankenstein” manuscript, Toggle between
the pages of this version and the complete text of
Shelley’s revised 1831 edition to see how she edited
the work.
- Early works by the great British Romantic Poets.
- Dramatic audio readings of key passages from the
novel.
In this edition users can browse and
interact with:

19. Features and Layout
Each issue has a different theme and a slightly different layout on
which users navigate an “info grid” that resembles a net across the
screen. It is this navigation system that primarily differentiates it from
its two British peers.

20. Target Audience
The New York Public Library Apps, with
their academic essays and in-depth analysis
are meant to cater to an academic audience.
The library views these releases as
“interactive magazines” rather than potential
research tools.

21. Selecting materials:
Each edition of Biblion is formatted as an interactive
magazine with a specific theme for each “issue”. To
select materials librarians must first determine what
the theme of the next edition will be.
Themes are chosen based on what collections see the
most use by patrons.
Once the theme is chosen materials are gathered
from the sound, video, and print archives of the
library and assessed for cost of digitization and
distribution.

22. Cost to User and Funding
The Biblion issues are each offered for free
from the New York Public Library which uses
tax payer money as well as funds raised from
various events to fund its digitization and app
building projects.

23. Selecting Items for Digitization
and Building apps: An Overview
 Do the materials that you want digitize merit the expense and time
of doing so? What is the scholarly value of the material?
 Is current access to the proposed materials so difficult that
digitization will create a new audience?
 Does the physical condition of the material limit its use?
 Will the proposed digital files be of manageable size and format?
 Who will create the app program? Will coding me done in house or
through private contracts?

24. Conclusions
Digital special collections are a means of creating webs of knowledge
across the world. Through the sharing of collections on tablet
computers like Apple’s Ipad, libraries and archives all around the
world are giving people a way to experience their collections for the
first time. Whether for education, pleasure or the personal pursuit of
knowledge, the collections presented by the British Library and the
New York Public Library are paving the way to what promises to be a
hopeful future in digital special collections.