AMNH Library Digital Resources Management System

As part of the Digital Library program, the AMNH Library's Special Collections Dept. has been actively digitizing its holdings of photographs for inclusion in its Digital Resources Management System (DRMS). Funded in part by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 1999, DRMS will become a major resource for the scientific and scholarly community in providing access to the rich array of visual and textual archives held in Special Collections. Records for over 150,000 images have been migrated into the DRMS program and over 16,000 images are now imported into the system, which is currently in a beta-testing phase. Soon, DRMS will be available to AMNH staff for additional testing and data verification. DRMS currently holds over 4500 color images representing a wide variety of natural history and anthropological scenes, and 12,000 black and white views drawn from the photographic collections documenting important field expeditions, AMNH exhibitions, facilities, and community and educational programs dating back to the 1880's.

The Special Collections Dept. is also busy developing Electronic Resource Guides that describe the scope and content of its archival holdings. Current efforts are underway to highlight major field expeditions sponsored by AMNH as well as thematic and geographically-based collections. These finding aids are designed to give scientists, scholars and educators access to integrated access to resources related to a particular collection or expedition with links to bibliographies and other external resources related to the topic.

Electronic Resource Guide currently under development include:

• Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897-1902)
• Congo Expedition (1909-1915)
• Shippee-Johnson Peruvian Expedition
• Bahamas Digital Library Project
• Nels Nelson Southwest Photographic Collections