Thursday, July 25, 2002

U. of Texas at Austin Plans Online Gateway to Digitized Resources By DAN CARNEVALE The University of Texas at Austin is digitizing images of Bibles and dinosaur bones, among other artifacts, so the public can study them through a new Web portal. Called the Digital Knowledge Gateway, the resource will let anyone with Internet access peruse the university's collections and research. And Texas residents will be able to create customized portals that will let them search for information and sign up to be notified when data that fit their interests are added. Dan Updegrove, vice president for information technology at the university, says the Knowledge Gateway will initially be geared toward Texas teachers, enabling them to use the university's vast resources in classes. In later stages, the project will be marketed to other groups, such as scientists and art historians. A prototype of the Knowledge Gateway should be available in March 2003, and a working model should be available in March 2004. To get the project off the ground, the university is converting its reservoir of research data into digital form so it can be posted online. Books, manuscripts, artwork, and photographs will all be scanned by digital equipment over the next few years. But the project's scope and many of its practical details remain to be worked out. The digital conversion, along with maintenance for the project, should cost "a couple million dollars" initially, Mr. Updegrove says. Although the budget hasn't been determined, university officials plan to raise the cash they need from businesses and foundations, and to avoid using state or university money. "This will be a multiyear, multimillion-dollar project," Mr. Updegrove says. "There's potentially no end to it." The university has already digitized its copy of the Gutenberg Bible for the online resource. The university has one of 48 surviving copies of the 15th-century book. The 15-pound, two-volume Bible was converted to digital format using special scanning equipment brought from France. Instead of flopping the priceless book on top of a typical scanner, the curators relied on digital equipment that sits above the book and uses a mechanical arm to scan each page's text and elaborate artwork. Digitizing all 1,268 pages took 15 hours. "It's an exciting blend of new technology and the very first book ever printed," says Richard W. Oram, head librarian of the university's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, where the Bible is kept. Mr. Updegrove says few people have had the opportunity to see the Gutenberg Bible. Schoolchildren and academic researchers alike will be able to study it up close when it and other resources are placed online. Also digitized for the project have been historic maps, animations of molecular orbits of chemicals, and three-dimensional representations of dinosaur bones. "Lots of Texas citizens tune in 10 Saturdays in the fall to see how our football team is doing," he says. "Very few of them have been in the Harry Ransom Center to see what priceless artifacts we have in there." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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