Indiana University

About

The Virtual CD-ROM / Floppy Disk Library is a partnership between the United States Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries on behalf of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). The Library makes available online publications that were originally distributed to federal depository libraries on CD-ROM, DVD, and floppy disk format. The site is designed to provide a central location through which federal information can be identified, located and downloaded. While the project provides the information as it was originally presented on tangible media (DVD, CD-ROM, or floppy disk), it cannot provide software which might be needed to fully operate the resource. Records provided inform the user about software specifications and may refer users to "read me" files. Consultation with local computer administrators may be required. With the ever-increasing number of products being released by the GPO, this service hopefully enables libraries to either fill in gaps in their collections, or provide an immediate access point for patrons. While the collection represents over 2,500 titles, the collection is not complete. The IU Bloomington Libraries welcomes contributions from your library's holdings and suggestions for titles that might be added.

This web site provides public access and preservation services for the nearly 5,000 CD-ROMs, DVDs, and floppy disks distributed by the GPO under the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). These tangible products have been received through the FDLP since the 1980s and consist of millions of individual files containing fundamental data on economics, the environment, population, and life and physical sciences. The products will be more easily accessed through this project as the collection becomes more comprehensive.

This project is based on proven technologies and techniques that have been developed in the research lab of Dr. Geoffrey Brown, Professor of Computer Science in the School of Informatics and Computing at IU Bloomington, with input from Lou Malcomb, Head, Government Information and the Geosciences Library. It supports browsing the digital documentation and other files such as data, images, audio, and video in convenient alternative formats, as well as searching the collection metadata and full text via a search engine on the site or through popular web search engines. Additional access is provided to the collection through IUCAT (Indiana University's online library catalog), the Indiana State Library Catalog, and OCLC WorldCat.

The tangible floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and DVDs will be housed in IU's Auxiliary Library Facility, though stable long-term access in these formats cannot be guaranteed. The web site and online versions of these materials are hosted by the IU Digital Library Program. The Digital Library Program, with support from both the IU Libraries and University Information Technology Services, is committed to provide ongoing storage and access to digital collections from across the university. Content and metadata are stored on servers housed in the University Information Technology Services data center in Bloomington, with 24/7 monitoring by onsite staff. System backups are stored in both Bloomington and Indianapolis, and master files will ultimately be stored in IU's Scholarly Data Archive (SDA), which is mirrored between Bloomington and Indianapolis and is supported by base funding for continued expansion and lifecycle hardware and media replacement.

For further information contact Lou Malcomb: malcomb@indiana.edu.

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