Welcome to the site for Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small to Medium-Sized Digitization Projects, a new book published by the Metropolitan New York Library Council. We'll be posting excerpts from each of the 34 case studies here with links to download a PDF of each chapter for free. If you like what you read here, please consider purchasing a print or electronic version of the entire book here.
04/18/2011
Using Omeka to Build Digital Collections: The METRO Case Study
The following chapter excerpt is from the fourth section of Digitization in the Real World; "One Plus One is Greater Than Two: Collaborative Projects." A version of this article originally appeared in the March/April 2010 issue of D-Lib Magazine. Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the complete book online at Amazon.com.
View the collections here.
Authors
Jason Kucsma (Metropolitan New York Library Council)
Kevin Reiss and Angela Sidman (City University of New York)
Abstract
The digitalMETRO project was born from the Metropolitan New York Library Council's (METRO) 2007-2010 Digital Library Services Plan. The plan serves as a guiding document for METRO's work in helping member libraries build and maintain unique digital collections and provide access to them online. Since 2005, METRO has provided over $300,000 in digitization grants to fund over 30 digitization projects. METRO also provides a diverse curriculum of workshops focusing on digital conversion, metadata for digital collections, digital collection management software, and related areas of emerging technologies for libraries. In addition to ensuring these programs continue to provide training and resources to member libraries, the Digital Library Services Plan also recommends the creation of a directory of digital collections in the METRO membership.
With the charge of creating a directory of digital collections, Jason Kucsma, METRO's Emerging Technologies Manager, served as Project Manager and assembled a small project team to begin working on the directory in October 2008. He recruited Angela Sidman, then a Metadata Librarian at the Mina Rees Library at City University of New York's Graduate Center, to serve as the Metadata Librarian for the project. Kevin Reiss, then the Systems Librarian at the Mina Rees Library, was recruited as the project's Web Developer.
Choosing Omeka
One of the first decisions we had to make was which collection management system we would use to build and deliver the directory on the web. We considered three different options. METRO licenses a hosted CONTENTdm (CDM) instance from OCLC, so that was first considered as an option. Sidman and Reiss had worked extensively with CDM to build the METRO-funded Digital Murray Hill Project. While CDM is a system that supports collections with robust metadata and that contain a wide array of digital formats it lacks some characteristics that are desirable in a modern web digital exhibition tool. The out-of-the-box CDM user interface makes it difficult to browse collections by subject and set, and CDM does not support any of the interactive features that many users expect in a web interface such as tagging, social networking, and a mechanism to accept end-user feedback on the web. Though CDM does provide a basic Application Programming Interface (API) that allows for some modification of default CDM behavior, we felt that this API was an inadequate tool for building the types of features we wanted to include in the digitalMETRO website.
Our interest in deploying a feature-rich digital exhibition tool next led us to consider Omeka, a relatively new open source collection management system that was created by the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University. The Omeka software was the closest option to another open-source web content management system,WordPress, that we considered using for our project. WordPress has well-documented theme mechanisms for customizing the display of WordPress content, and an expanding pool of plug-ins that be used to modify content behavior. Unfortunately, WordPress does not have a well-developed mechanism for supporting the types of collection-building workflows and metadata-creation common to archives and libraries, and creating a plug-in to support these activities was beyond the modest scope of this project. Our exploration of potential content management systems overlapped with the Fall 2008 release of the 0.10 beta version of Omeka, and the growing number of projects using the system in beta made it worth considering.
Additionally Omeka's developers appear to have taken design inspiration from the highly successful general purpose open-source content management system Wodpress. Wordpress is widely known for it's ease of install and high-level of functionality. In this vein, Omeka developers have touted the platform as a "next generation web publishing platform for museums, historical societies, scholars, enthusiasts, and educators." Our project team thought libraries might also fit into that family, particularly smaller libraries with limited technical staff or financial resources to build and deliver digital collections online. The simplicity of installing and configuring the Omeka system rivaled WordPress's ease-of-use, leading CHNM Director Dan Cohen to suggest Omeka is “Wordpress for your exhibitions and collections.” Omeka also utilizes the same theme and plug-in mechanisms Wordpress utilizes to provide omeka users a means to customize and create new system behavior.
According to the CHNM website: "Omeka provides cultural institutions and individuals with easy-to-use software for publishing collections and creating attractive, standards-based, interoperable online exhibits. Free and open-source, Omeka is designed to satisfy the needs of institutions that lack technical staffs and large budgets."
Omeka was also an attractive choice because the strong and flexible approach to metadata representation built into the software. Additionally, Omeka Developer Dave Lester affirmed an advantage Omeka has for use in libraries and archives over a general-purpos CMS like WordPress on his blog, Finding America, “WordPress doesn’t use structured metadata the way that scholars, libraries, and archives do. We have controlled vocabularies, 50 ways of classifying the same thing, and need a system that allows us to easily do that.”
While Omeka does not currently support controlled vocabularies in the sense that catalogers use to maintain authority control for records, comments like this marked what we felt was a shift within the Omeka developer community from a focus on archives and museums to the digital collection building pursued by libraries. This, combined with the fact that Omeka appeared to be quickly developing a community of users and developers actively creating new features and posting improvements to the software, reinforced our decition to adopt Omeka for the digitalMETRO platform. Also, this relatively low-risk project would allow us to test the viability of Omeka as a collection building and exhibition platform that could be recommended to METRO members and othes small and medium libraries and archives.
Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the complete book online at Amazon.com.
References
2006 Digitization Survey Report. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://www.metro.org/images/stories/pdfs/ 2006_digsurveyreport.pdf
Digital Services Plan 2007-2010. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://www.metro.org/images/stories/pdfs/2007_digplan.pdf
Cohen, D. (2008, February 20). Introducing Omeka. Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities Blog. Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://www.dancohen.org/2008/02/20/introducing-omeka/
Dave Lester’s Finding America. New Omeka Release 0.10 Beta. (n.d.) Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://blog.davelester.org/ 2008/11/12/new-omeka-release-010-beta/
digitalMETRO. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://nycdigital.org/dmetro/
Explore Murray Hill through images and maps. Digital Murray Hill. (n.d.) Retrieved September 22, 2009, fromhttp://murrayhill.gc.cuny.edu/
Model–view–controller - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller
Omeka | Documentation - Omeka How To. (n.d.) Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://omeka.org/codex/Documentation
Omeka | Home. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://omeka.org/
OpenURL ContextObject in SPAN (COinS). (n.d.) Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://ocoins.info/
The April 16 Archive. (n.d.) Retrieved September 23, 2009, from http://april16archive.org/
WordPress Blog Tool and Publishing Platform. (n.d.) Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://wordpress.org/
Zend Framework. (n.d.) Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://framework.zend.com/
04/11/2011
From Argentina to Zambia: Capturing the Digital A to Z’s of a Child Art Collection
The following chapter excerpt is from the third section of Digitization in the Real World; "The Digital Campus: Digitization in Universities and Their Libraries." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.
View the collection here.
Author
Kathleen C. Lonbom, Milner Library (Illinois State University)
Abstract
The International Collection of Child Art, residing at Illinois State University’s Milner Library, is a collection of artworks produced by children and adolescents across a range of cultures and time periods, primarily mid to late 20th century. This chapter discusses the collection’s background and its role as a culturally expansive primary source. Information is provided about the Library Services and Technology Act grant funding awarded through the Illinois State Library to support the digitization project, Imagine Illinois and Beyond: Celebrating Creativity Through the Eyes of Our Children! The benefits and challenges of the digital conversion are discussed. Finally the chapter will look at alternate methods of image access, specifically audio description, to facilitate information discovery for viewers with a print disability such as vision impairment.
Collection Background
The International Collection of Child Art (ICCA) is a resource comprised of artworks created by children and adolescents from around the world. This cultural heritage collection reflects the visual expressions of young artists who capture themes from the fantastical to the familial and a myriad of themes that fall between. The collection was initiated more than forty years ago at Illinois State University (ISU), Normal, Illinois, and is now curated and administered by the University’s library. This primary source includes over 8,600 accessioned children’s artworks, from approximately 58 countries and cultures. The collection celebrates the creativity and innovative work produced by children with a multicultural perspective. The resource serves multiple audiences including students, academic scholars from across disciplines, and a wider public interested in viewing, learning about, and appreciating the imaginative vision that shapes a child’s creative pursuits.
ISU’s Milner Library acquired the ICCA in 2000 from the ISU School of Art, which inherited the resource following the closing of the University Museum in 1991. The collection had been stored in a classroom until the college could no longer accommodate it due to space constraints, lack of support staff, and less than optimal conditions for storing and maintaining this resource.
Virtual Shift: The Digital Project's Genesis
University libraries holding collections with parallel cultural and historical value have grappled with similar challenges and opportunities presented by the digital conversion of a unique resource. Questions, both philosophical and practical, invite those embarking on a digital project to entertain a range of considerations perhaps not previously attached to the physical collection. Digitization of the Eastern North Carolina Postcard Collection project members recognized the ambiguous nature of assigning subject headings to a stand-alone image, relatively free of contextual information. The postcards in this collection usually were accompanied by text caption, but did not always have context provided by a monograph (Dragon, 2009). Colorado State University’s project to digitize the University Historic Photographic Collection emphasized the collaborative process of converting a historic resource under a controlled timeline. The conversion involved a variety of project partners learning to speak each other’s professional language including archivists, metadata librarians, and digital project managers (Hunter, Legg & Oehlerts, 2010).). A Latin American political poster collection, part of the University of New Mexico Libraries Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, speaks to digitally documenting the transient nature of a resource by preserving ephemera such as posters. Similar to children’s art, posters are not typically created to last through time, but document a specific and often meaningful moment in time situated at the edge of societal mainstream perspective (Stephenson, 2006). Clifford Lynch’s discussion of digitizing cultural heritage materials comments broadly on the discovery aspect of placing resources in an open electronic environment where unexpected and at times serendipitous communities form around such a collection. Lynch posits it is the objective of a digital library, expansive in its capacity to “enable and facilitate implicit communication” to provide a construct for the community building that develops around a collection (Lynch, 2007).
The move to consider digitization of the ICCA was rooted in curricular needs to accommodate a generation of users already vested in electronic access. By virtue of the resource’s sheer size, aging condition, and location, physical access is limited. The collection of two dimensional artworks is stored in a multi-use university warehouse that also serves as the library’s storage site for a collection of less frequently used volumes and is the home of University Archives. The warehouse is off campus and largely off limits to the public. Although slides of the artworks were created in the 1970s to support teaching and study of the collection, the analog format was no longer a viable option to support use of the collection in the 21st century academic environment. Included in the collection are sixteen thematic traveling exhibits that have been displayed widely and have garnered attention for the resource. Several hundred of the slides, selected from the collection’s traveling exhibits, were converted to digital format in 2003, but overall the condition and quality of the slides was questionable and each image required color correction. The conversion of this small sample to a digital format brought attention to the collection when the images were mounted on the ICCA website and provided the spark that ignited the pursuit of funding to digitize the collection. Art, art education, English, and children’s literature faculty actively using the collection in classes were supportive advocates for moving the resource into a fully accessible digital format.
Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.
References
Audio description Illinois. (2009). Retrieved March 13, 2010 from http://www.alsaudioillinois.net/
Best practices for creating digital files. (2010). Retrieved March 9, 2010 from http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/ library/what_we_do/servicestechnologygrant.html
Dragon, P. M. (2009). Name authority control in local digitization projects and the Eastern North Carolina postcard collection. Library Resources and Technical Services. 53 (3), 185-196.
Dublin core metadata initiatives; Dublin Core metadata element set, version 1.0: Reference Description. (2009). Retrieved March 15, 2010 from http://dublincore.org/documents/1998/09/dces/
Educating Illinois 2008-2014: core values. (2008) Retrieved March 22, 2010 from http://www.educatingillinois.ilstu.edu/plan_sections/core_values.shtml
Hunter, N.C., Legg, K, & Oehlerts, B. (2010). Two librarians, an archivist, and 13, 000 images: Collaborating to build a digital collection. Library Quarterly, 8 (1), 81-103.
Illinois digital archives guidelines for images. (2010) Retrieved March 14, 2010 from http://www.idaillinois.org/cdm4/guidelines/
Illinois general assembly. (2007). Illinois information technology accessibility act. Retrieved on March 14, 2010 from http://ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/95/PDF/095-0307.pdf
Illinois state library: Library services technology act review criteria and rubric. (n.d.). Retrieved on March 22, 2010, from http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/library/what_we_do/pdfs/lsta10_rubric.pdf
Institute of museum and library services: our mission. (n.d.). Retrieved on March 22, 2010, from http://www.imls.gov/about/about.shtm
International collection of child art digital collection. (2009). Retrieved on March 21, 2010, from http://tempest.lib.ilstu.edu/index_icca.php
International collection of child art: research. (2008). Retrieved on March 20, 2010 from http://www.library.ilstu.edu/icca/research/
Lynch, C. (2007). Digital collections, digital libraries, and the digitization of cultural heritage information. In D.Kresh, (Ed.) The Whole Digital Library Handbook. Chicago: American Library Association.
Stephenson, N. K. (2006). Preserving dissent: The Sam L. Slick collection of Latin American and Iberian posters. Art Documentation. 2 (1), 20-24.
Van Den Bosch, A., Van Den Herik, J., & Doorenbosch, P. (2009) Digital Discoveries in Museums, Libraries, and Archives: Computer Science Meets Cultural Heritage. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 34, (2/3) 129-138. doi 10.1179/174327909X441063
Ronchi, A.M. (2009). eCulture: Cultural content in the digital age. New York: Springer.
Snyder, J. (2008). Audio description, the visual made verbal. In J. Cintas (Ed.), The didactics of audiovisual translation (192-197). Philadelphia , PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Still Image Working Group. (2009). Digitization activities project planning and management outline. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved March 12, 2010, from http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/stillimages/documents/ Planning.html
04/04/2011
Collaborating for Success: A Cross-Departmental Digitization Project (at Oregon State University Libraries)
The following chapter excerpt is from the fourth section of Digitization in the Real World; "One Plus One is Greater Than Two: Collaborative Projects." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the complete book online at Amazon.com.
View the collections here.
Authors
Sue Kunda (Oregon State University Libraries)
Abstract
In 2007 Oregon State University Libraries acquired the personal collection of Gerald “Jerry” Williams, a native Oregonian and former national historian for the U.S. Forest Service. The collection contains personal papers, historic images, serials, monographs, oral histories, maps, moving images, political posters, ephemera, and artifacts of the U.S. Forest Service and Civilian Conservation Corps. Four library units collaborated to catalog, digitize, and make available online more than 1700 (and counting) items from the collection. In this chapter are descriptions of the planning process, workflows, policies and procedures. The author documents technical and procedural obstacles, methods used to overcome these difficulties, and lessons learned in working through the barriers.
Introduction
In 2007 the Oregon State University Libraries (OSUL) acquired the personal collection of Gerald “Jerry” Williams, a native Oregonian with a lifelong passion for Pacific Northwest history. Williams began his career with the U.S. Forest Service in 1979, working as a sociologist with the Umpqua National Forest located in southern Oregon. After stints with the Willamette National Forest and later the Pacific Northwest Regional Offices, Williams was appointed, in 1999, national historian for the U.S. Forest Service. Throughout his career Williams was a prolific author and avid collector of Pacific Northwest historical documents, images, and artifacts.
The Gerald W. Williams Collection includes 35 years of Williams’ personal papers related to his more than 75 publications, 3100 monographs and serials, and over 6000 copies of documents from the papers of Gifford Pinchot, the first U.S. Forest Service chief. In addition, Williams collected more than 24,000 historic photographs, including photographic prints, postcards, sterographic images, and glass lantern slides. The voluminous collection also includes oral histories, maps, moving images, political posters, and ephemera from the U.S. Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps. (2008). After inspecting the collection and consulting with on-campus stakeholders about its value to the OSU academic community, OSUL purchased everything but several works of art and a group of miscellaneous artifacts.
Once the collection was transported to OSU library administrators agreed digitization of the textual items and historic images would take precedence over the digitization of other components. Many of the monographs and serials had no copyright restrictions and the OSUL Digital Production Unit (DPU) already had a well-established digitization workflow for printed matter. The historical photographs were compelling and had considerable potential value for researchers. In addition, University Archives and DPU worked together on a daily basis to digitize and make available online photographs and other images.
Digitization Project
Project Pre-Planning
With the help of Digital Access Services staff and student workers, the subject librarian for Forestry went through Williams’ shelf lists and notes for the library portion of the collection to ascertain which titles were currently owned by OSUL and/or which titles were possible candidates for digitization. The Forestry subject librarian created a detailed spreadsheet documenting this information and a more general digitization matrix indicating the number of holdings at OSUL and number of items eligible for digitization. These documents were shared with an administrative team (University Archivist, Digital Access Services Head, Cataloging Unit Head, DPU Head, Digital Production Librarian) in order to gauge library resources. The Cataloging Unit Head was assigned project manager while the University Archivist and Digital Production Librarian were given oversight of the digitization of the images and textual items, respectively.
The Cataloging Unit Head facilitated a meeting with Cataloging and DPU staff to hammer out workflows and responsibilities. Attendees brainstormed ideas, devised two separate cataloging workflows, and agreed to do a one-week pilot test of each set of procedures to determine which was more efficient. Workflow #1 required Cataloging staff to organize the library portion of the Gerald W. Collection into the four groups in the Digitization Matrix (Public Domain/Not Held at OSU, Public Domain/Held at OSU, Non-Public Domain/Not Held at OSU, Non-Public Domain/Held at OSU) before beginning the cataloging process. Workflow #2 allowed Cataloging staff to begin cataloging without organizing the collection according to the Digitization Matrix. DPU staff also developed digitization workflows that coordinated with cataloging workflows.
The University Archivist and Head of Special Collections perused the library portion of the collection and flagged items deemed rare and/or valuable. After processing, these items would reside in the OSUL Special Collections rather than the general circulating collection.
Digital Repository Platforms
OSUL currently supports two digital repository platforms: DSpace and CONTENTdm.
DSpace: an open-source institutional repository platform developed by MIT and Hewlett-Packard, was originally designed to manage, archive, and provide access to textual documents making it an obvious choice for the monographs and serials in the collection. DSpace provides full-text searching through the Lucene search engine, which is especially conducive for print materials, and its contents are routinely crawled by search engine spiders. DSpace also offers permanent URLs, licensing, flexible metadata, and multiple digital preservation features.
CONTENTdm: a proprietary-based digital content management system first developed at the University of Washington and later purchased by OCLC Online Computer Library Center, was originally conceived to store and provide access to digital images. The software automatically generates thumbnails, JPEG, and JPEG2000s from TIFF digital files. Users can perform basic editing functions (resize, rotate, sharpen, crop), pan and zoom JPEG 2000 files, bookmark favorites, and create personal slideshows. Because of these more image-based capabilities, OSUL chose to use CONTENTdm to store and display the historic photographs, slides, and artifacts from the Gerald W. Williams Collection.
Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the complete book online at Amazon.com.
References
Copyright Information Center. (2009). Copyright term and the public domain in the United States, 1 January 2009. Retrieved November 2, 2009, from: http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/ publicdomain.cfm
Oregon State University Libraries, University Archives (2008). Guide to the Gerald W. Williams Collection, 1855-2007. Retrieved November 27, 2009, from http://digitalcollections.library. oregonstate.edu/cdm4/client/gwilliams/index.html
Peterson, K. (2009). OSU enrollment jumps more than 8 percent to nearly 22,000. Retrieved November 28, 2009, from http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/ 2009/nov/osu-enrollment-jumps-more-8-percent-nearly-22000
Simmons, T. (2006). OSU recognized as Oregon’s leading research university. Retrieved November 28, 2009, from:http://oregonstate.edu/events/newsevents/carnegie.html
Springer, M., Dulabahn, B., Michel, P., Natanson, B., Reser, D., Woodward, D. et al. (2008). For the common good: The Library of Congress Flickr pilot project. Retrieved November 27, 2009, from http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_report_final.pdf
Stauth, D. (2006). OSU College of Forestry viewed as number one in North America. Retrieved November 28, 2009, from: http://oregonstate.edu/dept/nce/newsarch/2006/Oct06/forestryrank.html
The Commons. (2009). Retrieved November 27, 2009, from flickr Web site: http://www.flickr.com/Commons? GXHC_gx_session_id_=6afecb2055a3c52c
United States Copyright Office. (2009). §101. Definitions, Copyright law of the United States of America and related laws contained in Title 17 of the United States Code. Retrieved November 2, 2009, from http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#101
03/28/2011
Entering the Digitization Universe: One Catalog Librarian’s Experience at an Academic Library
The following chapter excerpt is from the third section of Digitization in the Real World; "The Digital Campus: Digitization in Universities and Their Libraries." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.
View the collections here.
Author
Mary Rose (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville)
Abstract
This chapter describes a catalog librarian’s experience with an academic library’s digital collection initiative. The author discusses how the library handled technical challenges and established policies and procedures during the process of creating its first digital collection. The effects of external pressures from consortial requirements and organizational change are also discussed. The author describes technical decisions specific to the first project and more general technical issues like customization decisions and decisions about filenaming convention. The processes involved in establishing selection criteria and rights and permissions policies are described. The author also provides a brief overview of three subsequent digital projects. The author concludes by speculating on how the library’s digital presence will grow in the future.
Introduction
Lovejoy Library at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) entered the universe of searchable digitized collections in 2008. We encountered several issues along the way to completing our seminal project. There were technical challenges to be met, and we had to establish procedures and policies. We also encountered external pressures due to our reliance upon consortial services and as a result of organizational changes at the University. This chapter is a narrative of this experience and a speculation about the future.
Background: The Preliminary Steps Toward Establishing a Digital Initiative and Vision
In 2006-2007, Lovejoy Library administration took the first steps toward establishing a digital projects initiative by forming a CONTENTdm committee and acquiring access to CONTENTdm software as a member of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). The software is installed and maintained on CARLI’s server. Two Lovejoy staff members received training in the use of CONTENTdm; however, neither staff member was empowered with a mandate to create a digital collection. The initiative essentially stalled. When I joined the University as the Library’s first catalog and metadata librarian in May of 2007, I recognized that getting Lovejoy fully engaged in the creation of digital collections was a main priority of the position. The aforementioned staff members immediately and gratefully handed their CONTENTdm workbooks over to me and notified the consortium that I was now the primary contact for coordinating the Library’s use of this software. I had never previously used CONTENTdm but became intimately familiar with it over the course of the next several months. Lacking training or experience, I relied heavily on support services at CARLI to effectively leverage the software. I also took a generic metadata creation workshop and studied Dublin Core.
I quickly became aware that two digitization projects were being spearheaded by two tenured faculty librarians as candidates for our initial digital collection: one somewhat aggressively as a grant project and the other more casually without the impetus of a grant. Being naïve with regard to the politics of the organization, I deferred to others who decided to give precedence to the grant-funded project. The CONTENTdm committee subsequently decided that the Library needed a process for evaluating and prioritizing potential digital collections. Perhaps this was a response to the way in which resources had been committed to the first project because of a schedule driven by external funding. Or perhaps it was the usual librarian caution that any new undertaking will grow to unmanageable proportions if fed too liberally. Perhaps the desire for oversight was motivated by recognition that the shape of our accumulated digital collections over time would define the character of the Library to a significant degree, and whether this was ad hoc or directed was not a matter of chance but of choice. Whatever the reason, a digitization selection subcommittee to the collection management committee was proposed by a tenured library faculty member at the first CONTENTdm committee meeting I attended.
The digitization selection subcommittee became entwined with the Library’s vision regarding digital initiatives. The subcommittee’s charge was officially established as being the body responsible for receiving and evaluating digitization project proposals and making recommendations to the parent collection management committee regarding acceptance and prioritization of said proposals. The advisory group comprising the subcommittee included all of the library faculty administrators plus the Director of Development (essentially the marketing administrator) and the Director of Academic Computing. The subcommittee was rounded out by the Catalog and Metadata Librarian (me), the Electronic Resources Librarian, the Archivist and Special Collections Librarian (serving as chair), and whichever subject librarian was participating in a specific digitization proposal. The group resolved to create a proposal form to guide proponents in describing the subject, extent, rationale, funding, etc. of their project ideas. Selection would be accomplished by carefully evaluating the relevance of a project to the Library’s mission and the advantages a digital platform was expected to provide for the particular included items, such as wider accessibility for heavily used resources, easier use of delicate or cumbersome materials, and improved access to text-rich content through electronic searchability. Selection criteria suggested by the Northeast Document Conservation Center were incorporated into the subcommittee’s official position. The Center frames selection around three basic questions (Gertz, 2007):
- Should [the materials] be digitized? Is the collection important enough, is there enough audience demand, and can sufficient value be added through digitization to make it worth the cost and effort?
- May they be digitized? Does the institution have the intellectual property rights to permit legal creation and dissemination of a digital version?
- Can they be digitized? Will digitization achieve the goals of the project, given the physical nature of the materials and their organization, arrangement, and description? Does the institution have the technical infrastructure and expertise to create digital files and make them available to users now and in the future?
Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.
References
CONTENTdm Collection of Collections. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2009, from http://collections.contentdmdemo.com/
Gertz, Janet. (2007). Preservation and selection for digitization. Retrieved December 10, 2009, from http://www.nedcc.org/resources/leaflets/6Reformatting/ 06PreservationAndSelection.php
The J. Paul Getty Trust. (n.d.). Art & Architectural Thesaurus Online. Retrieved December 8, 2009, from http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat/
Library of Congress Authorities. (2009). Retrieved December 1, 2009, from http://authorities.loc.gov/
Lovejoy Library. (2009). Digital rights and permissions. Retrieved December 1, 2009, from http://www.siue.edu/lovejoylibrary/ about/digital_rights_and_permission.shtml
Wisconsin Heritage Online Digital Imaging Guidelines (Version 2) (2009, September). Received December 2, 2009, from Wisconsin Heritage Online Wisconsin Library Services.
03/21/2011
Picturing the Museum: Education and Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History
The following chapter excerpt is from the second section of Digitization in the Real World; "A Diverse Digital Landscape: Digital Collections in Public Libraries, Museums, Cultural Heritage Institutions, and Knowledge-Based Organizations." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the entire book online at Amazon.com.
Access the collections here.
Author
Kelli Anderson, Barbara Mathé, Eric Muzzy, Stacy Schiff (American Museum of Natural History Research Library)
Abstract
The Research Library of the American Museum of Natural History received funding from the Metropolitan New York Library Council in 2007 to produce a web exhibit of 989 historic images. Picturing the Museum: Education and Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History served as the prototype for a comprehensive database for the Research Library’s extensive Photographic Collection. In the larger context of the history, development, and use of the Library’s Photographic Collection, this article describes the project's conception through a self-published book produced for the Trustees’ Library Committee, the funded project and the ongoing development of the larger database. One of the internal goals and results of the Picturing the Museum project was to analyze, codify, and document local practice, policies and workflow for more efficient delivery of images to the web.
The American Museum of Natural History Photographic Collection
Founded in 1869, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is one of the nation’s preeminent institutions for scientific research and public education. Throughout its history, the Museum has pursued joint missions of science and education. The Museum’s power to interpret wide-ranging scientific discoveries and convey them imaginatively has inspired generations of visitors to its grand exhibition halls and educated its visitors about the natural world and the vitality of human culture.
The Museum collections include over 32 million objects and specimens relating to anthropology, zoology, paleontology and the physical sciences. From the collected stories, clothing and material culture of the peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast to the dinosaur eggs unearthed in Mongolia, from meteorites brought back from Greenland on a wooden sailing ship by Robert Peary to one of the most comprehensive sets of fossil horses ever assembled, the breadth and variety of the collections is astonishing.
Illustrating the work of the Museum scientists and staff are over 1.5 million black and white negatives, color transparencies, lantern slides and photographic prints held in the AMNH Research Library. The majority of these photographs were taken by Museum explorers and scientists who documented their field work. At the same time, they photographed the local environment and the people who lived there. The physical growth of the Museum was recorded by staff photographers who also photographed the work of the exhibition and education departments. These images are requested by researchers, students, educators, and professionals from around the world for academic and general publication, educational broadcast and distribution, artists’ reference and personal use.
The dissemination of this extraordinary Photographic Collection can be traced directly to Museum founder Albert Bickmore, one of the earliest and most enthusiastic advocates of visual education. Bickmore’s lantern slide lectures were so successful that a new and larger theater was built in 1900 to accommodate the lines of teachers awaiting admission. To expand the Museum’s educational mission beyond its walls, Bickmore created a lantern slide lending library of over 140,000 slides. The slide library formed the basis of the Natural Science Study Collections that were delivered to schools throughout New York State. (see image above)
In addition to the slides, the Museum delivered specimens and, later, model dioramas accompanied by lectures prepared by the Museum’s educational and scientific staff. Bickmore’s initiative foreshadowed the digital distribution of images by over a century. It is now possible to create worldwide access to the Collection and the public has come to expect to be able to find images online. Organizing, describing and digitizing a photographic collection of this size, however, is an enormous undertaking.
Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the entire book online at Amazon.com.
References
PTM Cataloging Procedure. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2010 from http://images.library.amnh.org/photos/PTM_CatalogingProcedures.pdf
DCMI Metadata Terms. (2008). Retrieved May 1, 2010 from http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/
Encoded Archival Description Version 2002 official site. (2009). Retrieved May 1, 2010 fromhttp://www.loc.gov/ead/
Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2010 fromhttp://www.getty.edu/research/ conducting_research/vocabularies/tgn/
SAA: Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) (n.d.). Retrieved on May 1, 2010 fromhttp://www.archivists.org/ governance/standards/dacs.asp
Welcome to Solr. (2010). Retrieved March 30, 2010, from http://lucene.apache.org/solr/
Welcome to VRA Core 4.0. (n.d.). http://www.vraweb.org/projects/vracore4/
03/14/2011
Hudson River Valley Heritage: A Journey in Collaborative Digitization
The following chapter excerpt is from the fourth section of Digitization in the Real World; "One Plus One is Greater Than Two: Collaborative Projects." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the complete book online at Amazon.com.
View the collection here.
Authors
Jennifer Palmentiero (Southeastern N.Y. Library Resources Council)
Abstract
This chapter presents a case study of Hudson River Valley Heritage, a decentralized collaborative digitization effort coordinated by the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council (SENYLRC). The case study documents the journey of a network of small organizations with limited resources and limited digitization experience in developing an online digital repository of historical materials housed in libraries and cultural heritage organizations in an eight country region in New York. The intent of the chapter is to describe the process-- from inception, through planning to full implementation--and share what was learned for those who might be considering similar ventures.
Introduction
Libraries have always been about sharing--providing their user communities with access to information though a network of shared resources. The digital age has made sharing possible on a much wider scale than ever imagined. With these new opportunities comes the need for enhanced collaboration and an expanded notion of community. This chapter presents a case study of an effort to expand information sharing through a collaborative digitization project. The case study documents the journey of a network of small organizations with limited resources and limited digitization experience in developing an online digital repository. The intent of the chapter is to describe the process-- from inception, through planning to full implementation--and share what was learned for those who might be considering similar ventures.
Hudson River Valley Heritage (HRVH) is a collaborative digitization service coordinated by the Southeastern N.Y. Library Resources Council (SENYLRC). Several SENYLRC staff members were responsible for the conception, planning, and implementation of HRVH: John Shaloiko, Karen Starr, Patricia Carroll-Mathes, Christopher Hyzer, Tessa Killian, and Zack Spalding. I am also proud to be a member of this team as the Digital Services Librarian.
Our work would not be possible without the aid and support of a committee of regional professionals dedicated to helping move the service forward. The cultural heritage organizations that have risen to the challenge and enthusiastically learned to digitize their local history holdings make HRVH the valuable resource that it is today.
Background
SENYLRC is one of nine New York Reference and Research Library Resources Councils (“3Rs”). These multi-type library consortia, established and chartered by the NY State Board of Regents in the late 1960s, provide a variety of services to their members including continuing education, access to electronic resources, services to the health care community, consulting, information technologies, advocacy, and more recently digitization. Each New York 3Rs Council is “governed by a locally elected Board of Trustees and has substantial input from member libraries through a robust committee structure; and each receives operating and special program aid from the State of New York, along with locally generated funds.” The overriding goal of these systems is to do “collectively what their constituent libraries and library systems cannot do individually or what can be done better together” (NY3Rs Association, Inc., n.d.). It was in this spirit that HRVH was born.
SENYLRC’s mission is to support its members in the Mid-Hudson Valley in order to enrich their services and enhance access to information for their users. The council strives to achieve service excellence in libraries by:
- Thoughtfully applying emerging technologies to resource sharing, collection building, information access and communications;
- Providing imaginative, accessible and relevant development opportunities for staff at all levels;
- Becoming a focal point for the exchange of ideas, collaboration, the development of new tools and the promotion of the transforming power of libraries.
The Hudson River Valley of New York is one of America’s most historic locales. HRVH provides free online access to historical materials from digital collections contributed by public, academic and special libraries, archives, museums, historical societies and other cultural heritage organizations in the Mid-Hudson Valley region of New York State. HRVH documents the history of this eight-county region from the early colonial period to recent decades and includes photographs, manuscripts, clippings, cookbooks, scrapbooks, 3-D objects, yearbooks, oral histories, maps and newspapers.
The success of HRVH results from the effort and enthusiasm of a network of people committed to its growth. The roles and responsibilities for the development of HRVH are shared among SENYLRC staff, the organizations that contribute their unique resources, and an advisory committee of dedicated professionals. Participating organizations are responsible for the entire digitization workflow with generous help and support from the HRVH team at SENYLRC. The Council provides the technical infrastructure, access to CONTENTdmÒ digital collection software, equipment, documentation, and training. It is this model of collaboration and shared responsibilities that make HRVH a successful digitization service for the region. There was very little digitization expertise in the region when this journey began a decade ago and everyone involved had a lot to learn. At times it seemed like a “two steps forward one step back” process. HRVH is now a thriving digital service as well as a community of trained professionals working towards a common goal of providing unparalleled access to our region’s rich history.
Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the complete book online at Amazon.com.
References
Boock, M. (2008). Organizing for digitization at Oregon State University: a case study and comparison with ARL libraries. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 34 (5), 446.
Collette, M. (n.d.). Scanning backs. How they work. Retrieved March 10, 2010, from http://www.betterlight.com/how_they_work.html.
Cornell University Library. (2003) Moving theory into practice digital imaging tutorial. Retrieved March 31, 2010 from http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (2008) DCMI metadata terms. Retrieved March 31, 2010 fromhttp://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/
Gueguen, G. , & Hanlon, A. (2009). A collaborative workflow for the digitization of unique materials. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 35 (5), 470.
HOME-LOCKSS (2008) Retrieved March 31, 2010 from http://lockss.stanford.edu/lockss/Home
IMLS Digital Library Forum (2008) A framework of guidance for building good digital collections. Retrieved March 31, 2010 from http://www.niso.org/framework/Framework2.html.
JHOVE - JSTOR/Harvard object validation environment. (2009). Retrieved on March 31, 2010 fromhttp://hul.harvard.edu/jhove/
JISC Digital Media - Still images, moving images and sound advice (2010). Retrieved fromhttp://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/
Lampert, C., & Vaughan, J. (2009). Success factors and strategic planning: Rebuilding an academic library digitization program. Information Technology and Libraries, 28, 123.
MetaArchive Cooperative (2010). About MetaArchive: collaboratively preserving our digital heritage. Retrieved March 31, 2010 from http://www.metaarchive.org/about
North Carolina ECHO, Exploring Cultural Heritage Online (n.d.) North Carolina Dublin Core guidelines. Retrieved March 31, 2010 from http://www.ncecho.org/dig/ncdc.shtml.
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. (2004). Technical guidelines for digitizing archival materials for electronic access: creation of production master files – raster images.Retrieved March 31, 2010 fromhttp://www.archives.gov/preservation/technical/guidelines.html
03/07/2011
Digitizing Colorado State University’s Historic Photograph Collection: A Case Study
The following chapter excerpt is from the third section of Digitization in the Real World; "The Digital Campus: Digitization in Universities and Their Libraries." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.
View the collections here.
Author
Beth Oehlerts (Colorado State University Libraries)
Abstract
This chapter discusses the experiences of creating a medium-sized digital collection of the earliest photographs from Colorado State University’s Historic Photograph Collection. The entire collection of 500,000 photographs chronicles the history of Colorado State University, the city of Fort Collins, and Rocky Mountain National Park. Digitizing the first phase of this vast collection included capturing 5500 images from glass plate negatives, 750 images from magic lantern slides, and 7500 images from gelatin nitrate prints. These formats were chosen because they are the oldest and most fragile. The project was not without challenges, including utilizing untrained staff and students, coping with equipment problems, and creating avenues of communication to more than 40 people involved in the creation of the collection. This chapter will discuss these challenges and how we worked to resolve them.
Introduction
Beginning in the late 1990s, Colorado State University Libraries (CSUL) started large-scale digitization activities in partnership with the Colorado Digitization Project (CDP). The first of these was the Warren and Genevieve Garst Photographic Collection of wild animal photographs donated to CSUL and digitized with CDP funding (http://lib.colostate.edu/wildlife/). The Sidney Heitman Germans from Russia Collection was another early digitization project (http://lib.colostate.edu/gfr/index.html) funded by the CDP. These projects, and a series of smaller ad hoc projects over the next three years, were created following the CDP’s best practices guidelines and gave a few staff the opportunity to learn digitization.
In 2006 CSUL received the University Historic Photograph Collection (UHPC) a collection of 500,000 photographs documenting the history of Colorado State University, Fort Collins, and Rocky Mountain National Park. The collection came from the University’s Office of Instructional Services and was given to CSUL’s Archives and Special Collections Department with the understanding that it would be preserved and access given to a wider audience through digitization. Planning for the digitization of the first phase began in early 2007, as did creation of a finding aid for the earliest images in the collection, which included glass plate negatives, magic lantern slides, and gelatin nitrate prints from cellulose nitrate negatives. These photographs are also the most fragile materials in the collection. The goal was to digitize approximately 5,500 glass plate negatives, 750 lantern slides, and 7500 gelatin prints.
Although we had no budget line dedicated solely for digitization, our work did have the support of both the Colorado State University (CSU) and CSUL’s administrative teams. Funds were provided by the Libraries’ administrative team to purchase digital scanners, including an archival-quality overhead scanner used for later archival digitization projects. Administrative support provided extra funding in the project when we needed to hire students and acquire additional server space to house our digital master files.
Literature Review
Of the recent literature addressing digitization, the focus is often on the technical and preservation-related issues that arise following the creation of a digital collection; less of the recent literature focuses on the staffing issues encountered when creating digital collections. Boock and Vondracek (2006) found that when institutions begin digitization activities they often add these tasks to staff responsibilities rather than hire new staff dedicated to digitization. In a 2005 survey of ARL libraries, they found a majority of the responding institutions capitalized on the existing knowledge and skills of staff, encouraging current positions to evolve rather than hiring new digitization staff, as was the case at CSUL. Boock continues the discussion, focusing on how the Oregon State University Libraries (OSUL) reassigned several staff positions to a new digitization production unit, initially using staff for scanning, quality control reviews, and metadata creation using a metadata schema (Boock, 2008). OSUL relies on student employees for almost all of its digital imaging and metadata assignment, performing no quality control reviews on their work. In examining the organizational implications of digitizing, Sutton (2004) recalls how early digitization efforts were seen as temporary endeavors, requiring the temporary re-assignment of staff.
D’Andrea and Martin (2001), reporting on digitization workflows at Temple University, discuss utilizing part-time student staff to supplement the work of digitization staff. D’Andrea and Martin note, and our experiences confirm, there are positives and negatives in hiring students to work on digitization projects. The authors recommend hiring students whose interests match the project, not just those who apply for the job, and fully informing students about the nature of the work.
Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.
References
Boock, M. (2008). Organizing for digitization at Oregon State University: A case study and comparison with ARL libraries. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 34, 445-451.
Boock, M., & Vondracek, R. (2006). Organizing for digitization: A survey. Libraries and the Academy, 6, 197-217.
Cornell University Library. (2003) Moving theory into practice digital imaging tutorial. Retrieved on March 31, 2010 from http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial
D’Andrea, P. & Martin, K. (2001). Careful considerations: Planning and managing digitization projects. Collection Management, 26(3), 15-28.
Digitization of Local Collections Task Force. (2005). Digitization of local collections. Retrieved on March 31, 2010 from http://digitool.library.colostate.edu/
Illueca, C., Vasquez, C., Hernández, C., & Viqueira, V. (2002). The use of Newton’s rings for characterizing ophthalmic lenses. Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics, 18, 361-362.
Sutton, S. (2004). Navigating the point of no return: Organizational implications of digitization in special collections. Libraries and the Academy, 4, 233-243.
Viscomi. J. (2002). Digital facsimile: Reading the William Blake Archive. Computers and the Humanities, 36, 27-48.
Western States Digital Standards Group. (2003). Western States digital imaging best practices. Version 1.0. Retrieved on March 31, 2010 fromhttp://www.bcr.org/dps/cdp/best/wsdibp_v1.pdf
02/28/2011
The Mass. Memories Road Show: A State-Wide Scanning Project
The following chapter excerpt is from the second section of Digitization in the Real World; "A Diverse Digital Landscape: Digital Collections in Public Libraries, Museums, Cultural Heritage Institutions, and Knowledge-Based Organizations." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.
Access the collections here.
Author
Joanne Riley and Heather Cole (University of Massachusetts Boston)
Abstract
Introduction
The Mass. Memories Road Show (MMRS) is an ongoing, on-the-spot public scanning project in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, sponsored by the Joseph P. Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Mass Humanities, the state humanities council. The MMRS documents Massachusetts people, places and events through the contributions of individuals who bring their photos and stories to be digitized at public events throughout the state. Over the next few years, the project will partner with hundreds of local organizations to visit each of the 351 communities in Massachusetts, gradually building up a self-portrait of the Commonwealth through the contributions of its residents.
Project Background
The MMRS grew out of the place-based education initiatives of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s “Massachusetts Studies Project” (MSP), which provides resources for Massachusetts teachers and students in the areas of local history, culture and environmental studies. A series of casual brainstorming sessions with librarians, MSP board members, teachers and local historians coalesced in a vision of a public history project inspired by elements of PBS’s Antiques Roadshow (people bringing their personal treasures to a local event for professional perusal) and the Library of Congress’ American Memory Project (a library organizing digitized images from a common heritage to be shared on the World Wide Web, see The Library of Congress, n.d.) The subsequent development of the MMRS project was guided by the work of Daniel Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig (2005), Stuart Lee and Kate Lindsay (2009) and by the writings of Robert Putnam and others about the nature of civic engagement. We have borrowed elements from a number of superb online digital history projects, among them the Maine Memory Network (Maine Historical Society, 2009), for its richly productive collaborations with partnering organizations across the state, The Organic City (The Organic City, n.d.) for its place-based communal storytelling approach, the Coney Island History Project (Coney Island History Project, n.d.) for its effective application of social web tools, the Charlestown Digital Story Project (UMBC Digital Story, n.d.) at UMBC for its engaging multimedia oral histories created through student-elder collaborations, the Worthington Memory Project (Worthington Public Library, 2002) for its transparent application of best practices in indexing, and Orlando Memory (Orlando Memory, n.d.) for its solicitation of public contributions to a community history project.
The MMRS project was originally designed to meet two goals: collecting digital surrogates and personal annotations of locally held primary sources that document people, places and events in Massachusetts; and developing a searchable online repository of sources that could be used for educational purposes at all levels. As the project developed, we discovered that it met another important need that has been incorporated as a key goal of the project: community building. Road Shows have turned out to be deeply engaging community events that connect people within the community to each other and to others throughout the state, and have proven to be meaningful in lasting ways to the people who contribute and to those who volunteer. At its best, the MMRS seems to generate both of the types of productive social relationships that Robert Putnam describes in Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community (Putnam, 2000); that is to say, bonding social capital (holding together people who see themselves as being similar in social identity) and bridging social capital (bringing together people who consider themselves to be “unalike” in some aspect of social identity.) In the words of a Road Show volunteer and contributor:
“[The Road Show] brings the community together... [It] acknowledges to people that they are a part of the history-making... It brings people to understand and respect different cultures in their town through the old and new pictures... I think it is one of the great community programs to encourage the whole family to be involved.” (MMRS Letters of Support, 2008).
Since its launch in the fall of 2004, the MMRS project has organized Road Show events across the state, in the process digitizing thousands of photos and stories, collaborating with dozens of community organizations and generating the practical lessons we will share in this essay
Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.
References
Cohen, Daniel J. and Roy Rosenzweig. (2005), Digital history: A guide to gathering, preserving and presenting the past on the web. University of Pennsylvania Press. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory.
Coney Island History Project. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://www.coneyislandhistory.org/
Lee, Stuart D. and Kate Lindsay. (2009). If you build It, they will scan: Oxford University’s exploration of community collections. In EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol 32, 2009. Retrieved March 23, 2010 fromhttp://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/ EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/IfYouBuildItTheyWillScanOxford/174547#TB_inline?height=400&width=630&inlineId=sidebar1&modal=false
Maine Historical Society. (2009). The Maine Memory Network, a project of the Maine Historical Society. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://www.MaineMemory.net.
Mass. Memories Road Show. (2010). Mass. Memories Road Show - Your family's place in Massachusetts History. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://www.massmemories.net.
MMRS Letters of Support. (2008). Letters of support submitted for MMRS nomination for NCPH Public History Award. Unpublished documents. (January, 2008).
MMRS Post-Event Participant Survey. (2009). Unpublished data.
Orlando Memory (n.d.). Homepage. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://dc.ocls.info/.
Putnam, Robert D. (2000). Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://www.bowlingalone.com/
The Library of Congress. (n.d.). The Library of Congress: American memory. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html.
The Organic City. (n.d.). Homepage. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://www.theorganiccity.com/wordpress/.
UMBC Digital Story. (n.d.). Digital stories from Charlestown. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://www.umbc.edu/oit/ newmedia/studio/digitalstories/ctds.php
University of Massachusetts Boston. (2006). The Mass. Memories Road Show handbook: Procedures and protocols for a public scanning project. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from http://www.msp.umb.edu/MassMemories/handbook/MMRSHandbook.pdf.
Worthington Public Library. (2002). Worthington memory. http://www.worthingtonmemory.org/index.cfm.
02/22/2011
METRO Grant Success Story: Waterways of New York Project
The following chapter excerpt is the last from the first section of Digitization in the Real World; "Small is Beautiful: Planning and Implementing Digitization Projects with Limited Resources." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the book at Amazon.com.
Access the collection here.
Author
Claudia A. Perry and Thomas T. Surprenant (Queens College, CUNY)
Abstract
The concept of experiential learning is particularly useful when students are required to create database entries as part of an ongoing, real-life, online experience. A METRO grant resulted in an opportunity to use students to create a CONTENTdm database which, with the continued software support from METRO, has continued and evolved until the present. This chapter describes the experience of both faculty and students. Sections include the background, technical issues and implications for teaching, project procedures and workflow, successes and lessons learned, challenges and next steps. Of particular interest is the use of out of copyright postcards and the metadata that has resulted from intensive student study and evaluation of the data contained on these cards. Those contemplating a digitization project of their own will be able to learn much about best practices, project planning, management and the advantages/disadvantages of the CONTENTdm software.
Introduction
For many of us, hands-on learning is the best way to integrate an understanding of principles and best practices with a practical grasp of the actual challenges and learning opportunities of a project. This is particularly true for library school graduate students seeking to expand their theoretical, technical and management skills. As digitization is increasingly seen as a worthy endeavor for even the smallest institutions, it is worth considering the range of approaches available for gaining needed expertise, especially at the novice level. Examining the long-term development of an integrated, semester-long, course-based approach to digitization may be of value for those seeking an inexpensive approach for the creation of small to medium-sized digital collections.
A course entitled “Introduction to Digital Imaging” was first taught at the Queens College Graduate School of Library & Information Studies (GSLIS), City University of New York (CUNY), in the Fall of 2003. In the Spring of 2005, a year-long METRO-funded grant facilitated a co-operative project between the Rosenthal Library and the GSLIS to support student digitization of a portion of the Queens College Rosenthal Library Archives (e.g. see GSLIS, 2005-2009, Digitization projects). The project included a variety of forms and formats. The evaluation of this valuable learning experience identified a strong need to find a single standard format that was information rich and moderate in scope, but which lent itself to more uniform metadata standards and digital specifications. The evolving project, “Waterways of New York”, an online digital collection of historical postcards, was created in 2006, and partially supported by METRO through continued access to CONTENTdm. It continues to be extended by GSLIS students each semester the course is taught.
Scope and Format
The most important feedback provided to our team by METRO digitization experts regarding our “Rosenthal Library Archives” initiative was the value of working with a limited number of manageable formats and a relatively focused subject area and time frame. During the implementation of the grant a serious problem was the complexity resulting from too many different types of media, the overly wide range of subject matter, and the challenges these characteristics presented to the creation of consistent metadata.
One of the GSLIS professors, Thomas Surprenant, has an ever-expanding collection of Erie Canal and related New York State waterways antique postcards, which addressed many of the problems noted in the METRO feedback. In particular, by selecting a single, simple, information rich format—postcards published before 1923—copyright concerns were eliminated and only a single set of digitization specifications needed to be developed. METRO’s willingness to host the collection on their CONTENTdm server simplified selection of Dublin Core as the metadata standard, and use of a subset of the Library of Congress Thesaurus of Graphic Materials (TGM) for standardized metadata terminology (Library of Congress, 2007). This greatly aided our ability to develop a manageable set of project-specific guidelines that could be adequately addressed by the evolving documentation.
The choice of postcards as the source medium turned out to be far more interesting to the students than was expected. An initial option to describe the backs--as well as the front images of cards—was enthusiastically embraced by virtually all of the students and became the norm for subsequent classes. Hand-written messages, address conventions, postmarks, trademarks and other attributes of the cards were at times as much or even more rewarding to analyze than the front images themselves. Further, student interest in the varied aspects of architecture and activities of daily living portrayed in the postcards led to an expansion of emphasis far beyond the initial focus of the project on locks, canal boats, shipping, waterways and transportation.
Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the book at Amazon.com.
References
California Digital Library. (2009, September). “3.5 Guidelines for access and thumbnail image files.” CDL Guidelines for Digital Images, Version 2.0. Retrieved December 31, 2009, fromhttp://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/guidelines/bpgimages/
Chapman, S. (2000). Section III: Considerations for project management. In M.K. Sitts (Ed.) Handbook for digital projects: A management tool for preservation and access. Retrieved December 30, 2009, from http://www.nedcc.org/resources/pubs.php
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. Queens College, CUNY. (2005-2009). Digitization projects. Retrieved January 3, 2010, from http://qcpages.qc.edu/GSLIS/digitization.html
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. Queens College, CUNY. (2006-2009). Waterways of New York V. 2.1. Retrieved January 3, 2009, from http://cdm15052.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fqcgslis_f06
JISC Digital Media. (2008, November 11). Choosing a file name. Retrieved September 2, 2009 from http://www.jiscdigitalmedia. ac.uk/crossmedia/advice/choosing-a-file-name/
JISC Digital Media (2008, November 14). Project management for a digitisation project. Retrieved December 31, 2009, from http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/crossmedia/advice/project-management-for-a-digitisation-project/
Library of Congress. (2007). Thesaurus for graphic materials I. Retrieved December 31, 2009, from http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/tgm1/
North Carolina ECHO Project. (2007). Project planning. Digitization guidelines, 2007 revised edition. Retrieved January 2, 2010, from http://www.ncecho.org/dig/guide_1planning.shtml
Smithsonian Institution. (n.d.). Greetings from the Smithsonian: A postcard history of the Smithsonion Institution. Retrieved December 31, 2009, from http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/postcard/chronology.htm
02/15/2011
The Craft Revival Project: Library Leadership in Creating Connections Between Small Cultural Institutions
The following chapter excerpt is from the fourth section of Digitization in the Real World; "One Plus One is Greater Than Two: Collaborative Projects." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the complete book online at Amazon.com.
View the collections here.
Authors
Anna R. Craft, Tim Carstens, Jason Woolf (Western Carolina University’s Hunter Library)
Abstract
The Craft Revival Project is a collaborative digital project partnering a mid-sized academic library with six small cultural heritage institutions in order to document the historic effort to revive handmade crafts in the western part of North Carolina during the late 19th century and the early 20th century. The partnership among these diverse institutions has allowed for the creation of a product that no one of the individual institutions could have created on its own. This article describes the benefits of the project to the partners in this collaboration including those of increased technological capacity, raised collection care standards, and increased publicity for and visibility of the institutions. It also describes lessons learned from the project including those regarding the workflow and staffing levels that are most appropriate for a collaborative project of this kind.
Introduction
The Craft Revival Project (http://craftrevival.wcu.edu) is a collaborative digital endeavor led by Hunter Library of Western Carolina University (WCU), partnered with six small cultural heritage organizations, all located in the mountains of western North Carolina. The project sprang from a successful 2004 North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online (NC ECHO) planning grant that led to four years of funding, beginning in 2005. Hunter Library’s Special Collections, Penland School of Crafts, John C. Campbell Folk School, and WCU’s Mountain Heritage Center formed the initial partnership, with the Southern Highland Craft Guild joining in 2006. Two Cherokee organizations, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, joined the project in 2008, bringing the total number of project partners to seven. The project documents the historic effort to revive handmade crafts in the western part of North Carolina during the late 19th century and the early 20th century; this effort helped to revive mountain traditions, create networks of artisans, and boost the economy of the area. The website and associated database tell the story of this movement and the people involved in it through images, texts, and other digitized documents from the collections of the partner institutions.
The partner organizations all have holdings documenting Craft Revival history and all provide the public with access to their collections. A team based at Hunter Library oversaw the project and worked with staff coordinators at each of the associated partner organizations. Hunter Library employs approximately 45 full-time staff. Western Carolina University, part of the University of North Carolina system, is a regional comprehensive university of approximately 9,000 students.
Most of the partner organizations are quite small, some with only a single staff member to manage their archival collections. The Mountain Heritage Center (MHC), part of Western Carolina University, is a regional museum. Established in 1975, the MHC works through its collections, programs, and publications to interpret current studies of Appalachia. The other project partners are separate from WCU. The John C. Campbell Folk School was founded in 1925 in Brasstown, North Carolina, and was modeled after traditional Danish folk schools, or folkehojskoler. In its early years, the Folk School offered instruction in traditional handiwork skills such as woodcarving, weaving, dyeing, and farmwork. These traditions continue at the Folk School today, along with new and more modern courses on topics including photography, storytelling, and cooking. The Museum of the Cherokee Indian is located on the lands of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, in Cherokee, North Carolina. The Museum and its collections tell the story of the 11,000-year documented history of the Cherokees; the archives include photographs, books, and other materials associated with Cherokee history. Penland School of Crafts was originally founded as a community craft organization in 1923 in Penland, North Carolina, under the name Penland Weavers and Potters. Today Penland offers workshops in crafts including glass, metals, photography, textiles, and wood. Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual (QACM) is also located on Eastern Band lands in Cherokee, North Carolina. This cooperative craft organization was founded in 1946 to preserve and advance Cherokee arts and crafts, and this mission continues today. QACM showcases historical and contemporary examples of Cherokee crafts and provides an outlet for members to sell their craft items. The Southern Highland Craft Guild was chartered in 1930 as the Southern Mountain Handicraft Guild, with a mission to educate people about traditional handicrafts and to market the crafts of its members. Today the Guild is located in Asheville, North Carolina and provides juried membership to over 900 artists and craftspeople in the southern Appalachian mountains.
A planning committee comprised of members from the partner institutions, Hunter Library staff, and outside advisors made technical choices early in the project’s planning. This group based many decisions on the NC ECHO Guidelines for Digitization, which recommend Dublin Core as the basic metadata standard for digital projects in North Carolina (2007). The committee chose an OCLC- hosted instance of CONTENTdm for the digital collection management system, and for controlled fields adopted several standard thesauri, including Library of Congress Subject Headings, Library of Congress Name Authority Files, and the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus.
Numerous collaborative digital projects are documented in the library literature, including many that focus on regional or statewide engagement. The Colorado Digitization Program, now the Collaborative Digitization Program, is one such program that has created digital projects through relationships with museums (Bailey-Hainer & Urban, 2004). Digital Past, from the North Suburban Library System in Illinois, is another example of a project that has brought together libraries and museums of various sizes (Schlumpf & Zschernitz, 2007). The Southern Oregon Digital Archives has also pursued collaborative relationships for some of their collections, including the First Nations Collection, which brings together materials documenting the indigenous peoples of southwestern Oregon and northern California (2004). The Craft Revival Project is on a smaller scale than many of these projects and as such can provide some lessons learned about the challenges and rewards associated with small-scale digitization projects.
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References
Bailey-Hainer, B., & Urban, R. (2004). The Colorado digitization program: a collaboration success story. Library Hi Tech, 22(3), 254-262. doi:10.1108/07378830410560044
Cedar Face, M. J., & Hollens, D. (2004). A digital library to serve a region. Reference and User Services Quarterly (44)2. 116-121.
NC ECHO. (2007). Guidelines for digitization [Rev. ed.]. Retrieved from http://www.ncecho.org/dig/digguidelines.shtml
Schlumpf, K, & Zschernitz, R. (2007). Weaving the past into the present by digitizing local history. Computers in Libraries, 27(3), 10-15.
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