Features

One downside of digitization is that it makes plagiarism easier. With cutting and pasting so effortless, and the existence of paper- and essay-mills online, UNH has been testing out two plagiarism detection software packages, SafeAssignment and Turnitin, that compare a student's work against a wide range of sources.

Money is a problem, too. In 1997, the library spent $60,000 on its first online databases from EBSCO Publishing, an Ipswich, Mass.-based company managed by Tim Collins '85. Now the library spends more than $1,000,000 a year on e-databases and peer-reviewed electronic journals—a cost that does not include giving access to off-campus alumni, which would increase the expense considerably.

With the cost of print subscriptions skyrocketing as well, UNH has joined a national movement of colleges fighting higher costs by creating free institutional repositories for faculty-written articles. Meanwhile, the art department wants its slide collection online. "The Honors Program has approached us about posting honors theses," Morner says. It would be useful to juniors, who "don't really know what an honors thesis looks like."

So vast is the mass of electronic data that the library is installing DigiTool, a digital collections management program. Next year, the plan is to follow this with MetaLib, a powerful search tool. The project is funded by $310,000 from the University System of New Hampshire to put online music, photos, film, rare books and manuscripts no longer protected by copyright.

Digitization is also changing the way scholars do research. When UNH psychology professor Ellen Cohn used to search for articles on delinquency 28 years ago, she'd wade through volume after volume of indexes of abstracts, and hope the library had the journals she wanted. Today, Cohn uses Web of Science, an interdisciplinary electronic database of scholarly journals. "It's an amazing time-saver," says Cohn, Lamberton Professor of Criminology and coordinator of the Justice Studies program.

Eliga Gould spent two years in the dark bowels of the old British Library in London and the Huntington Library in California, poring through a thousand aged and yellowed Revolutionary War-era pamphlets to research his first book. Today, the associate history professor could do much of that from his computer.

Eliga Gould spent two years in the dark bowels of the old British Library in London and the Huntington Library in California, poring through a thousand aged and yellowed Revolutionary War-era pamphlets to research his first book. Today, the associate history professor could do much of that from his computer.

Some say digitization and technology have also multiplied opportunities for confusion and duplication of information. Ross of Special Collection says the sheer volume of data is forcing the library to make tough choices. The library has hired consultants to help it assess the library's current status, users' needs and how best to meet them. "We're at the stage where we're establishing new priorities," says Ross. "Although it seems different, you still have a lot of the same concerns. It needs to be a meaningful collection and usable to people."

Clare Kittredge is a freelance writer in Portsmouth, N.H.

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