Anna

Anna

I'm a librarian and Head of Digital Library Services at the Marriott Library, University of Utah

Selected Publications

You can also find my articles on my Google Scholar profile.

Books

The High-Impact Digital Library: Innovative Approaches for Outreach and Instruction

Published in ALA Publishing, 2024

Focusing on replicable outreach success stories, this volume considers the various ways digital library managers and staff can foster relationships with faculty, students, and the broader community to encourage awareness and use of digital library collections. Digital library terminology like “accessible,” “discoverable,” and “searchable” usually presumes passive collections waiting to be found by motivated information seekers. Rarely do we envision collection managers initiating outreach with those most likely to benefit from the collections. This new collection from Core flips the script, exploring the many ways that digital library practitioners at various types of cultural institutions proactively promote their unique resources.

Recommended citation: The High-Impact Digital Library: Innovative Approaches for Outreach and Instruction Neatrour, A., Myntti, J., Wittmann, R., Cummings, R., Monson, J., and McMillan, M. R. 2024. ALA Publishing. https://alastore.ala.org/highimpactdl
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Journal Articles

The Invisible Default: Examining Representation in Digital Collections.

Published in ITAL: Information Technology and Libraries, 2025

This mixed-method study investigates the representation of race and ethnicity within the J. Willard Marriott Digital Library at the University of Utah. The digital collections analyzed in this study come from the Marriott Library’s Special Collections, which represent only a fraction of the library’s physical material (less than 1 percent), albeit those most public facing. Using a team-based approach with librarians from various disciplines and areas of expertise, this project yielded dynamic analysis and conversation combined with heavy contemplation.

Recommended citation: “The Invisible Default: Examining Representation in Digital Collections.” Information Technology and Libraries. September 2025. Alexander, K., Kirby, J., Terry, D., Wittmann, R., and Neatrour, A. (peer-reviewed) https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/17306
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Documenting contemporary regional history: the Utah COVID-19 digital collection

Published in Digital Library Perspectives, 2020

When faced with events, such as the global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), libraries have a unique opportunity to develop a community facing response through born-digital collections. These collections provide challenges for metadata creation, collection development policies, workflows, and digital preservation. This paper aims to provide an overview of the Utah COVID-19 digital collection, with a discussion of impact and lessons learned.

Recommended citation: "Documenting contemporary regional history: the Utah COVID-19 digital collection" Digital Library Perspectives. July 2020. Neatrour, A., Myntti, J. and Wittmann, R.J. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-04-2020-0025
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From Digital Library to Open Datasets.

Published in ITAL: Information Technology and Libraries, 2019

This article discusses the burgeoning “collections as data” movement within the fields of digital libraries and digital humanities. Faculty at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library are developing a collections as data strategy by leveraging existing Digital Library and Digital Matters programs. By selecting various digital collections, small- and large-scale approaches to developing open datasets are explored. Five case studies chronicling this strategy are reviewed, along with testing the datasets using various digital humanities methods, such as text mining, topic modeling, and GIS (geographic information system).

Recommended citation: “From Digital Library to Open Datasets.” Information Technology and Libraries. December 2019. Wittmann, R., Cummings, R., Neatrour, A., and Myntti, J.https://ital.corejournals.org/index.php/ital/article/view/11101
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Western Name Authority File: A pilot regional name authority project.

Published in Journal of Library Metadata, 2019

The prospect of authority control in digital libraries creates unique challenges. Digital library systems and software often do not support integrated authority control, which can create issues in consistency for personal and corporate names representation in descriptive metadata. Standard practice for library metadata is to use existing controlled vocabularies such as the Library of Congress Name Authority File, but what can be done if the personal names and corporate bodies in local or regional digital collections are not represented in the Library of Congress? As digital collection managers look towards providing metadata for regional and statewide shared repository systems and national digital collection aggregators like the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), issues in digital collection authority control are magnified. This article explores the process in creating a shared regional authority file of personal names and corporate bodies existing in digital collection metadata records in several institutions throughout the Western United States.

Recommended citation: “Western Name Authority File: A pilot regional name authority project.” Journal of Library Metadata: Special Issue on Name Authority Work in the Linked Data Environment. May 2019. Neatrour, A. and Myntti, J.
https://doi.org/10.1080/19386389.2019.1589685
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Kindles, Card Catalogs, and the Future of Libraries: A Collaborative Digital Humanities Project

Published in Digital Library Perspectives, 2018

This paper aims to determine if the digital humanities technique of topic modeling would reveal interesting patterns in a corpus of library-themed literature focused on the future of libraries and pioneer a collaboration model in librarian-led digital humanities projects. By developing the project, librarians learned how to better support digital humanities by actually doing digital humanities, as well as gaining insight on the variety of approaches taken by researchers and commenters to the idea of the future of libraries.

Recommended citation: "Kindles, Card Catalogs, and the Future of Libraries: A Collaborative Digital Humanities Project." Digital Library Perspectives. Special Issue: Digital Humanities – The Shifting Contexts. August 2018. Neatrour, A., Callaway, E., Cummings, R.
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/DLP-02-2018-0004
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Massive Newspaper Migration – Moving 22 Million Records from CONTENTdm to Solphal

Published in D-Lib Magazine, 2017

Utah Digital Newspapers is a pioneering digital newspapers program at the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library. Recently, a small project team completed a successful migration away from CONTENTdm onto a home-grown system called Solphal, built using open-source applications. The migration process is detailed along with examples of scripts used to prepare and enhance metadata. Transitioning away from a limiting vendor-based solution to a home-grown system has enabled the Utah Digital Newspapers program to be more responsive to user requests as well as realizing greater efficiencies in hardware and software. The platform has opened up new possibilities for the future as the collection continues to grow.

Recommended citation: “Massive Newspaper Migration – Moving 22 Million Records from CONTENTdm to Solphal.” D-Lib Magazine. July/August 2017. Witkowski, A., Neatrour, A., Myntti, J., McBride, B. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july17/witkowski/07witkowski.html
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