Digitization in the Real World

Local Objects, Local People, Local History: Creating the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database

The following chapter excerpt is from the second section of Digitization in the Real World; "A Diverse Digital Landscape: Digital Collections inPublic Libraries, Museums, Cultural Heritage Institutions,and Knowledge-Based Organizations." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the book online at Amazon.com.

Access the collections here.

Author

Emily Pfotenhauer (Wisconsin Heritage Online, Wisconsin Historical Society and the Chipstone Foundation)

Abstract

The Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database is a digital collection of three-dimensional artifacts from the collections of historical societies and museums throughout Wisconsin, hosted by the Wisconsin Historical Society and supported by the Chipstone Foundation. Since 2006, the project has documented nearly 1,000 examples of furniture, ceramics, textiles and other decorative arts made by early Wisconsin craftspeople and held in the collections of over 40 institutions throughout the state. This case study examines the genesis of the project, the photographic standards and metadata specifications established for object documentation, and the unique challenges of developing a diverse digital collection of museum artifacts from a wide variety of local and regional institutions.

Introduction & Background

In the past decade, the work of state- and regionally-based digitization programs across the country has resulted in an explosion of local history resources available online. These initiatives are collaborative efforts among libraries, archives, and museums to make their collections freely available to a broad audience of students, teachers, historians, and genealogists. Some of the earliest and most influential of these programs include the Maine Historical Society’s Maine Memory Network, the Minnesota Digital Library, and the Colorado Digitization Project (now known as the Collaborative Digitization Program at the Bibliographic Center for Research). For the most part, programs such as these have focused on what some museum professionals refer to as “the flat stuff”: photographs, books, manuscripts, and other two-dimensional materials. This focus on the digitization of archival materials belies the fact that three-dimensional artifacts form the core of the collections of most local historical societies and museums. Moreover, the everyday objects people create and consume (for example, furniture, clothing, and tools) are considered by many scholars to offer significant evidence for historic research, as much if not more so than historic photographs or original manuscripts. Yet most institutions participating in collaborative digitization programs have not made their collections of three-dimensional objects available online at the same rate as their two-dimensional holdings.

Case studies of statewide and national digitization programs reveal the challenges common to most collaborative digital endeavors, regardless of the types of material being digitized. Roberto (2008) describes the lack of consistent standards in place for describing collections among even the largest and best-staffed museums in Great Britain. When collaborations are expanded to include small, local historical societies and museums, the creation of consistent collections data becomes even more challenging due to a lack of available staff, resources, and expertise (Rowe & Barnicoat, 2009). These obstacles are compounded when working with three-dimensional objects, which require more space, equipment, and technical expertise to photograph and more research and subject expertise to catalog.

This chapter examines the development of one digital collection of three-dimensional objects from multiple institutions: the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database (http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/decorativearts). This project was initiated in 2006 by the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Chipstone Foundation of Milwaukee, a private foundation for the study of American decorative arts and material culture. Chipstone and the Society had three goals in mind at the outset of the project: 1) to bring to light objects held in the collections of Wisconsin historical societies and museums and share them with a broader audience, 2) to document examples of furniture, ceramics, textiles, and other decorative arts made by nineteenth and early twentieth-century Wisconsin craftspeople in order to reveal settlement patterns and the persistence of handicraft traditions in the state, and 3) to add the first three-dimensional artifacts to Wisconsin Heritage Online (http://www.wisconsinheritage.org), a research portal that brings together a diverse range of digital collections from Wisconsin libraries, archives, museums, and historic sites.

Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the book online at Amazon.com.

References

Blackaby, J. R., Greeno, P., & The Nomenclature Committee. (1995). The revised         nomenclature for museum cataloging: A revised and expanded version of Robert G. Chenhall’s system for classifying man-made objects. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Bourcier, P., Rogers, R., & The Nomenclature Committee. (2009). Nomenclature 3.0 for museum cataloging: Third edition of Robert G. Chenhall’s system for classifying man-made objects. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Collaborative Digitization Program Metadata Working Group. (2006). Dublin Core metadata best practices (version 2.1.1). Retrieved from http://www.bcr.org/dps/cdp

Hawkins, T., Cohen, J., & Debevec, P. (2001). A photometric approach to digitizing cultural artifacts. In Proceedings of the 2001 Conference on Virtual Reality, Archeology, and Cultural Heritage, 333-342. New York: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/584993.585053

Holland, R. (1966). The last wooden beer barrels. Wisconsin Tales and Trails 7, 12-16.

Levoy, M., & Garcia-Molina, H. (2000). Creating digital archives of 3D artworks [White paper submitted to the National Science Foundation’s Digital Libraries Initiative]. Retrieved from http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/dli/white-paper/dli.html

Miller, S. J. (Ed.). (2006). Wisconsin Heritage Online metadata guidelines (version 2.0). Retrieved from https://wiheritage.pbworks.com

Niven, P. (2001). Frank L. Horton and the roads to MESDA. Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 27, 1-147.

Roberto, F. (2008). Exploring museum collections on-line: The quantitative method. In J. Trant and D. Bearman (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2008: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. Retrieved from http://www.archimuse.com/ mw2008/papers/roberto/roberto.html

Rowe, P., & Barnicoat, W. (2009). NZMuseums: Showcasing the collections of all New Zealand museums. In J. Trant and D. Bearman (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2009: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. Retrieved from http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/rowe/rowe.html

Building the ALBA Digital Library (at NYU's Tamiment Library)

The following chapter excerpt is 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 online at Amazon.com. 

Access the collections here.

Author

Jill Annitto (Archivist)

Abstract

This chapter serves as a case study of how a professional digital library can be successfully built with a small staff and budget. It discusses the planning and experiments with beta versions of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) Digital Library, the final version of which is available on ALBA’s website, through Metropolitan New York Library Council’s (METRO) Digital Metro New York program, and OCLC WorldCat. The sensitive issues of digitizing another institution’s collection while maintaining ownership of the final product are also explored.

In 1979, recognizing the vital importance of their radical history, and the need to collect writings, letters, photographs, oral histories and artifacts that would preserve their story, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American volunteers who fought with Republican forces against Generalissimo Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA). Today ALBA lends its name to a major archive at New York University's (NYU) Tamiment Library and independently supports cultural and educational activities related to the war. The ALBA collections are the most requested at the Tamiment Library. ALBA’s relationship with NYU is non-traditional, which makes the ALBA Digital Library unique. NYU owns and maintains the Archives and hosts many of ALBA’s programs, yet the ALBA name gives a different impression.

This chapter explores the challenges of digitizing a collection that is owned by another institution and how to overcome working with a limited budget, dated technology, and minimal staff to produce a professional digital resource. The ALBA Digital Library (Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, 2008) evolved from an ineffective form-based website tool to a fully indexed resource using CONTENTdm in a matter of months.

ALBA Goes Digital

Until a full-time Executive Director was hired in 2007, ALBA was initially run by a group of volunteers followed by a string of part-time administrators. The ALBA Board of Governors hired me as the Assistant Director in May 2008 just as they began reconsidering their outdated website, a major step for the small organization.

By June 2008 the Executive Director had resigned, leaving me as ALBA’s only employee. It provided me with a great opportunity to help redesign the website alongside a subcommittee of the Board of Governors. The Web Committee, consisting of four history professors living across the United States, set a timeline of four months for the site’s overhaul, with an anticipated launch date of early October. The Board wanted to stake a claim as the premier electronic resource for information on the Spanish Civil War.

Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the book online at Amazon.com.

References

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. (2008). ALBA Digital Library. Retrieved March 30, 2010, from http://www.alba-valb.org/ resources/digital-library

Dublin Core metadata initiative. (2010). Retrieved March 30, 2010, from http://dublincore.org

New York Heritage. (2008). Retrieved March 30, 2010, from http://www.newyorkheritage.org

Simkin, J. (1997). Spartacus educational. Retrieved March 30, 2010, from http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Spanish-Civil-War.htm

University of California, San Diego. (n.d.). Southworth Spanish Civil War Collection. Retrieved March 30, 2010, from UC San Diego Libraries website, http://libraries.ucsd.edu/locations/mscl/ collections/southworth-spanish-civil-war-collection.html

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (n.d.). Spanish Civil War Collection. Retrieved March 30, 2010, from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Rare Book and Manuscript Library website, http://www.library.illinois.edu/rbx/SCWPeople.htm

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. (2006). Transportation around the World, 1911-1993. Retrieved March 30, 2010, from Digital Collections -Transportation around the World, 1911-1993 website, http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/transport/index.cfm

Picturing the Past and Planning for the Future: Central Florida Memory

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 book online at Amazon.com.

View the collections here.

Author

Lee Dotson, Selma Jaskowski (University of Central Florida Libraries)

Abstract

Central Florida Memory is a collaborative digitization project to create a collection of primary sources related to Central Florida’s history that provides a compelling look at Central Florida before the area became a tourist destination. Through cycles ranging from limited resources to ample grant funding, the collaboration has grown from a small pilot project with three partners to over 80,000 images contributed by seven partners. Organized for the user, the website has been enhanced to create more user friendly methods of access and includes storylines, lesson plans, and links to other sites of interest. This paper provides lessons learned about how to incorporate a variety of materials from diverse institutions into a single digital collection.  

The Beginning -- 2002

When the directors of the University of Central Florida Libraries and the Orange County Library System came up with the idea for Central Florida Memory (CFM) over drinks in 2001, it seemed like a friendly way for the two institutions to collaborate on a project that would serve both academic and public library patrons and foster inter-institutional understanding.

With the addition of the Orange County Regional History Center, the three institutions had the necessary resources to begin building an exciting digital collection. In 2002, the group began meeting to evaluate the collections of the three partners and determine what materials in each collection would provide the most compelling and engaging look at Central Florida’s history.

Coming from very different missions and working environments, the partners recognized early on that this collaboration would take some work. Staffing, funding, and the capacity for participation needed to be discussed and an understanding of each institution’s identity and purpose gained. Through quarterly meetings where brainstorming was center stage, the group identified the strengths each partner could bring to the project. Committees were formed and populated with members from each institution to foster communication among participants as well as organize functional responsibilities. While the full group discussed and agreed on overall structure and support, the committees focused on operational tasks such as selection, metadata and cataloging, storyline, marketing, and evaluation and assessment. The scope of the project was defined, collections examined and material chosen for inclusion in what was hoped would become the definitive site on the history of Central Florida.

Pilot Project -- 2002

When the directors of the University of Central Florida Libraries and the Orange County Library System came up with the idea for Central Florida Memory (CFM) over drinks in 2001, it seemed like a friendly way for the two institutions to collaborate on a project that would serve both academic and public library patrons and foster inter-institutional understanding.

With the addition of the Orange County Regional History Center, the three institutions had the necessary resources to begin building an exciting digital collection. In 2002, the group began meeting to evaluate the collections of the three partners and determine what materials in each collection would provide the most compelling and engaging look at Central Florida’s history.

Coming from very different missions and working environments, the partners recognized early on that this collaboration would take some work. Staffing, funding, and the capacity for participation needed to be discussed and an understanding of each institution’s identity and purpose gained. Through quarterly meetings where brainstorming was center stage, the group identified the strengths each partner could bring to the project. Committees were formed and populated with members from each institution to foster communication among participants as well as organize functional responsibilities. While the full group discussed and agreed on overall structure and support, the committees focused on operational tasks such as selection, metadata and cataloging, storyline, marketing, and evaluation and assessment. The scope of the project was defined, collections examined and material chosen for inclusion in what was hoped would become the definitive site on the history of Central Florida.

Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase the book online at Amazon.com.

References

Book 24: Carey Hand Funeral Home records, April 1, 1924 - August 21, 1924. (n.d.). Central Florida Memory. Retrieved August 14, 2005, from http://www.cfmemory.org

Central Florida Memory grant writing committee. (2004). Central Florida Memory. [Institute of Museum and Library Services grant proposal]. Orlando, FL. Retrieved December 1, 2009, from http://www.cfmemory.org/Share/About/Narrative.pdf

Central Florida Memory website. (2003). Retrieved May 11, 2003, from http://centralfloridamemory.lib.ucf.edu.

Central Florida Memory website. (2005). Retrieved September 20, 2005, from http://www.cfmemory.org

Central Florida Memory website. (2009). Retrieved March 13, 2010, from http://www.cfmemory.org

Digitization Spec Kit. (2005). Retrieved March 20, 2010, from http: //www.cfmemory.org/Share/Workshop/DigitizationSpecKit.pdf

Digital Services Tracking Database. (2005). Internal tracking database used at University of Central Florida Libraries. Orlando, Florida.

Dotson, L. (2005). See how it’s done. Central Florida Workshop for Museum & Library Personnel. Retrieved March 5, 2010, from http://www.cfmemory.org/Share/Workshop/Behind%20the%20Scenes%20I.ppt

Dunlop, D. (2005). How it all connects II. Central Florida Workshop for Museum & Library Personnel. Retrieved March 19, 2010, from http://www.cfmemory.org/Share/Workshop/ Metadata%20Part%202.ppt

Florida digital archive. (2010). Retrieved March 8, 2010, from http://www.fcla.edu/digitalArchive/.

Gronlund, G. (2005). Weaving the story. Central Florida Workshop for Museum & Library Personnel. Retrieved March 27, 2010, from http://www.cfmemory.org/Share/Workshop/CENTRAL%20 FLORIDA%20MEMORY%20WEAVING%20THE%20STORY%209%2030%202005%202.ppt

iArchives process. (2010). Retrieved February 20, 2010, from http://www.iarchives.com/process.shtml

IMLS National Leadership grants. (2010). Retrieved February 17, 2010, from http://www.imls.gov/applicants/grants/ NationalLeadership.shtm.

Lavoie, J. (2005). Showing it to the world. Central Florida workshop for museum & library personnel. Retrieved February 23, 2010, from http://www.cfmemory.org/Share/Workshop/ Showing%20it%20to%20the%20World.ppt

Library services and technology act grants. (2008). Retrieved January 14, 2010, from http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/bld/grants/LSTA/ LSTAinfo.pdf

Moving theory into practice digital imaging tutorial. (2010). Retrieved March 15, 2010, from http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial

 Orange County voter registration. (n.d.). Central Florida Memory. Retrieved August 15, 2005, from http://www.cfmemory.org

PALMM documentation. (2010). Retrieved March 11, 2010, from http://fclaweb.fcla.edu/node/572/

Success story: Central Florida Memory. (2009). In A new story based approach to digital collection [OCLC CONTENTdm brochure]. Retrieved March 5, 2010, from http://www.oclc.org/us/en/services/brochures/211595usc_F_CentralFloridaMemory.pdf

 

New Jersey Digital Legal 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 the book online at Amazon.com.

View the collection here.

Author

Wei Fang (Rutgers University)

Abstract

The New Jersey Digital Legal Library (NJDLL) was launched in 2003 and it’s been up and running since then. NJDLL has sixteen collections with about 500 video clips and 20,000 electronic documents. It has served over 300,000 visitors and is popular among legal professionals and researchers. The goal of this project is to create a Web-based digital library where patrons can browse and search for previously unavailable New Jersey legal information. In this article, the author presents the background history of the NJDLL, how it was constructed, workflows, and how problems were solved in depth. Future development suggestions are also discussed.  

Introduction

As part of the Rutgers University School of Law, the Rutgers University Law Library – Newark with its more than half a million volumes of printed books is the largest law library in New Jersey. Its collections include state and federal statutes and court decisions, federal and New Jersey regulations and administrative decisions, federal and New Jersey legislative history materials, the codes of ordinances for many New Jersey municipalities, Anglo-American legal periodicals, the primary materials of international law, extensive historical materials on English law, and a special collection of criminology and criminal justice materials. The library has served the law school and the surrounding legal community for more than a century. Our law librarians wanted to share the unique collections that the law library had with others in the world and the only way to do it was to convert the collections into digital documents and host them online via the Internet.

The NJDLL project focuses on legal materials related to New Jersey. The target audience groups are legal professionals, historians, researchers and the general public.  After more than five years of development, its collections include electronic legal documents as well as New Jersey Supreme Court oral arguments archives. The NJDLL project was first proposed in the fall of 2000 by Paul Axel-Lute, the collection development librarian, and was initialized in spring of 2002 with hardware and software funded by Rutgers University. In April 2003, the digital library was inaugurated with three collections: 1) New Jersey Administrative Reports 2) New Jersey Executive Orders and 3) New Jersey Attorney General Opinions.  In 2005, the law library negotiated with the Supreme Court of New Jersey to be the host of its Oral Argument video clips using Microsoft Windows Media Video technology. We are also hosting the digital collection of the New Jersey Council On Affordable Housing’s decisions. The NJDLL has now grown to become a popular digital library with sixteen collections ranging from year 1779 to present.

  Download the entire chapter for free (PDF). 

References

Adobe Acrobat Professional. (2009). Adobe and PDF. Retrieved from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/adobepdf.html

Any2 DjVu Server. (2002). Welcome to the DjVu Any2Djvu Server. Retrieved from http://any2djvu.djvuzone.org/index.html

Borgman, C. (2000). From Gutenberg to the global information infrastructure: access to information in the networked world. Cambridge, MA, USA. MIT Press.

Drupal. (2009). About Drupal. Retrieved from http://drupal.org/about

EAD. (2002). Encoded archival description version 2002. Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/ead/

Fang, W. (2007). Using Google analytics for improving library website content and design: A case study. In  Library Philosophy and Practice, Annual Vol. 2007 (Special Issue Libraries and Google) Retrieved from http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ ~mbolin/fang.pdf

Fang, W. (2009). Online law school video repository: The flash way. Computers in Libraries, Vol. 29, No. 6.

Google. (2009). About Google Analytics. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/analytics/

Makri, S., Blandford, A., & Cox, A. (2006). Studying law students’ information seeking behaviour to inform the design of digital law libraries. Paper presented at the Alicante, Spain.

METS. (2007). METS schema, & documentation. Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/mets-schemadocs.html

Notepad++. ( 2009). About Notepad++. Retrieved from http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

P5. (2009). TEI: P5 guidelines. Retrieved from http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P5/

Swish-e. (2009). About Swish-e. Retrieved from http://swish-e.org/

Ubuntu. (2009). What is Ubuntu. Retrieved from http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu

WMM. (2004). Windows Movie Maker 2.1 Download. Retrieved from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/ updates/moviemaker2.mspx

 

Building a Virtual Library – A Case Study at The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary

The following chapter excerpt is from the second section of Digitization in the Real World; "A Diverse Digital Landscape: Digital Collections inPublic 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

Naomi M. Steinberger  (The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary)

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to show how a medium-size research library with rich resources in special collections has succeeded in the past decade, in building a digital library. The chapter focuses on building a strategic plan for a digital library and assessing The Library’s collections for digital readiness. Planning the digital library includes making many decisions ranging from software, prioritizing collections to digitizing, metadata schemas, and more. Funding for digitization can be grants, gifts in kind where the funder provides the institution with a digital photographer, to funders who want a specific collection digitized.  There is a discussion of some of the challenges such as hardware capability and staffing. The important lessons learned through experience and plans for the future of the digital program are discussed. 

Introduction & Background

The mission of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the intellectual and religious center of Conservative Judaism, is twofold:  to serve as the pre-eminent center for the academic study of Judaism outside of Israel, as one of the pre-eminent centers world-wide, and as a training center to advance that study; and to educate Jewish professionals and lay leaders in the spirit of Conservative Judaism for the total community through academic and religious programs, both formal and informal.

In accordance with the Seminary’s overall goals, The Library’s mission is to collect, preserve and make available the literary and cultural heritage of the Jewish people.  The collection includes 25,000 rare books, 11,000 manuscripts, 400 archival collections, and many other historically significant items. Among the particular strengths of its collection are its 35,000 fragments from the Cairo Genizah (representing the lives of Jews and others in the eastern Mediterranean from the 11th to the 19th centuries), its collection of ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts)—the largest in the world—and its unparalleled collection of Passover haggadot (the traditional text of the holiday, combining narrative and ritual). The Library is also home to the world's largest collection of Hebrew incunabula (early books printed before 1501).

The Special Collections are open to students and researchers from around the country and the world. Scholars of Jewish history specializing in virtually any period or place rely on the Library’s unique holdings. Scholars of American Jewry are particularly reliant on The Library’s archives. The Library is also the center for scholarly dialogue within The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and the focal point for numerous public events devoted to Jewish culture and books.

Currently, The Library employs 15 librarians, five subject specialists and eight support staff. JTS has 40 faculty and 200 staff serving 500 students.  In fiscal year 2010, after budget reductions, The Library’s operating budget of $1.7 million plus approximately a half-million dollars in designated funds each year.  Budget designated to digital collections is lest than $12,000 per year.

In The Library’s 2005 strategic plan, digitization is emphasized as a method of preservation of the original item, because “more damage is done to rare materials through human handling than by any other means.” “The more readers can gain access to images of rare materials and forego handling the materials themselves,” the document continues, “the better they will be preserved.”  (Strategic Plan, 2005.)

Large external digitization projects such as The Google Book Project (Google Book, 2010) and the licensing of the Otzar Ha-Hochma collection of 19,000 fully-digitized Hebrew Books and HebrewBooks.org are viewed as efforts to take care of the need to digitize modern printed books, allowing the Jewish Theological Seminary library to focus resources on only digitizing materials unique to the library’s collection.

Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.

References

About DSpace. (n.d.). Retrieved March 9, 2010 from  http://www.dspace.org/about-dspace/introducing/

Clareson,Tom and Kim, Richard. (2006). Digital Program Survey Final Report from April 5, 2006 Visit. 

Dublin Core metadata initiative. (2010). Retrieved March 30, 2010, from http://dublincore.org

ExLibris DigiTool. (n.d.) Retrieved March 9, 2010 from http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/DigiToolOverview

Genizah project, executive summary. ( n.d.) Retrieved March 30, 2010, from http://www.genizah.org/about-Executive_Summary.htm.

Google Books. (2010). Retrieved March 13, 2010 from http://books.google.com/

Greenstone digital library software. (n.d.). Retrieved March 9, 2010 from http://www.greenstone.org/

Lacinak, Chris and O’Neill, Kevin. (2008). Sound Recording Consultation Final Report, June 26, 2008

 Metadata object description schema. (2010). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the official web site http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/

Strategic Plan. (2005). The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary. 2005.

The NINCH guide to good practice in the digital representation and management of cultural heritage materials. (2002). Retrieved May 9, 2010 from http://www.nyu.edu/its/humanities/ninchguide/

Digitization on a Dime: How a Small Library and a Big Team of Volunteers Digitized 15,000 Obituaries in Just Over a Year

The following chapter excerpt is 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 online at Amazon.com.   

Access the collections here.

Author

Elisabeth Goldman (Kingston Frontenac Public Library)

Abstract

In 2006 and 2007, Chelsea District Library, a small public library in Chelsea, Michigan, digitized a collection of 15,000 obituaries on a small budget by using a staff of nearly 50 volunteers and open source software. The author describes the research and planning that led up to the project; unique aspects of the staffing and technology for the project; and the resulting database, which contributed to the library being named “Best Small Library in America” for 2008 by Library Journal. The database continues to be updated, expanded, and improved, and the use of volunteers as the primary workforce has had long term rewards for the library. The chapter demonstrates the accessibility of digitization projects to libraries, even those without pre-existing expertise, large staffs, or big budgets. 

Introduction & Background

Especially in small towns, the public library may serve multiple roles as library, museum, archives, and community center. In many cases, libraries accept donations of rare or unique historical material from families in the area with little thought for long-term maintenance. Technological advances in the last few decades have given libraries new options for preserving local history collections and making them more accessible through digitization. While even the smallest libraries have staff educated in reference and circulation procedures, however, relevant training in archival methods and technology is rare, making the prospect of a digitization project overwhelming. At the same time, small public libraries often have little or no funding for such projects.

Chelsea District Library is a single-branch public library serving 14,000 people in southeast Michigan, about 50 miles west of Detroit. The library was established in 1932 by the local Women’s Club and, in 1999, became a district library system serving both the town of Chelsea (population 5,000) and surrounding townships. The earliest settlements in the Chelsea area date back to the 1830s and many local families can trace their roots back to the town’s founders, resulting in a rich history. From its earliest days, the library served as a repository for local historical and genealogical material, housing a local history room on the cramped third floor of the McKune House, its location from 1959-2000. In 2006, after extensive renovations and additions to the McKune House, the library moved from temporary quarters back to its historic home on Main Street in Chelsea, leading to renewed interest in the local history collection.

A collection of about 50,000 index cards known as the Family History Index made up a major component of the local history material. A retired lawyer and amateur genealogist named Harold Jones started the collection as a hobby, clipping obituaries from the local Chelsea Standard newspaper and other sources and pasting them onto 4 x 6 index cards, along with cross references that allow women to be located by maiden name. Upon his death in 1987, Jones’ family donated the collection to the library, where it received extensive use by local and visiting genealogists. Library staff and volunteers completed a project from 2000-2002 to clean up and update the collection, since then volunteers have continued adding new clippings.

As part of a planning process leading up to an election to fund an expansion of the building and the staff, the library identified local history as a priority for Chelsea area taxpayers and the Family History Index as a prime candidate for digitization work. At the time, the professional librarian staff consisted of the director, three department heads (adult services, youth services, technology services), and a part-time librarian, leaving few resources to focus on a project of this scope. In the spring of 2005, the library replaced the departing part-time librarian with a full-time librarian (the author), adding additional duties of managing the library’s website and digitizing the Family History Index.

This paper will describe how a librarian and a team of four dozen volunteers completed the digitization of 15,000 records from the Family History Index in just over a year, resulting in a highly usable database that helped Chelsea District Library earn its distinction of “Best Small Library in America” for 2008 from Library Journal and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The first section will describe preparation for the project, including research in archival standards and digitization techniques, as well as the recruitment and training of the volunteer workforce. Section two will describe the decision-making process that went into the choice of open source software in order to create a user-friendly, free database of the records on a limited budget, as well as the work of developing and testing the database itself. Section three will offer an overview of the workflow for staff and volunteers as they did data entry, scanning, and proofreading of the records. Finally, the paper will describe the resulting database, current upkeep and expansion, and how the project served as a model for additional digitization work.

Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.

References

Chelsea District Library. (2009). Chelsea District Library Family History Index Online. Retrieved on Jun 30, 2010 from http://fh.chelsea.lib.mi.us/

Collaborative Digitization Program. (2008). Western States digital imaging best practices, version 2.0. Retrieved on March 31, 2010 from http://www.bcr.org/dps/cdp/best/wsdibp_v1.pdf

Michigan State University Libraries. (2005). The making of modern Michigan: Digitizing Michigan's hidden past. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from http://mmm.lib.msu.edu/.

Cornell University Library. (2010). Moving theory into practice digital imaging tutorial. Retrieved March 15, 2010, from http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial

National Information Standards Organization. (2007). A framework of guidance for building good digital collections. Retrieved March 15, 2010, http://framework.niso.org/

Collaborative Digitization Goes Local (at Middle Tennessee State University)

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 online at Amazon.com.

View the collections here.

Author

Ken Middleton, Mayo Taylor (Middle Tennessee State University)

Abstract

This chapter describes our efforts to build a digitization program in spite of limited funding. By obtaining small grants and forming partnerships with other campus units and institutions in the Middle Tennessee region, we have developed modest yet engaging collections and planted the seeds for additional partnerships. The article will also highlight the use of graduate students, efforts to streamline the digitization process, and lessons learned. 

Introduction

In an era when many libraries are struggling to stay relevant to today's Facebook generation, digital projects have injected new purpose into Middle Tennessee State University's Walker Library. Staff members are excited about digitizing oral histories of pioneering women on campus, documenting the agricultural history of a neighboring county, or preserving seminal research on local rare plants. The digital collections under development by the Library have required collaboration with other campus entities and external institutions. Few of the digitized objects have come from the Library’s own collections. In this chapter, we will describe the benefits of these partnerships and how they can be nurtured. We will also explore many of the practical issues that new digitization programs face, such as securing staff, streamlining the digitization process, handling diverse file formats, and customizing collections.

Efforts to collaborate with area institutions began as a natural extension of Walker Library’s involvement in Volunteer Voices (http://volunteervoices.org), Tennessee’s statewide collaborative digital project. MTSU librarian Ken Middleton served as the co-principal investigator of a three-year “Building Digital Resources” grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) that coordinated the gathering of historical materials from organizations and institutions statewide. That project, based at University of Tennessee-Knoxville, focused on Tennessee history. Staffs were placed in each area of the state (west, middle and east) with a charge to collect unique photos, documents and other materials from cultural institutions. Selected items featured both major trends and figures in Tennessee history (e.g. early settlement, Ida B. Wells), and significant local items (e.g. Bradley County Courthouse). An important component of the project was to relate the digitized objects to the curriculum followed by schools in Tennessee. Walker Library was a satellite digitization center for the middle Tennessee region (Conner, Middleton, Carter, & Feltner-Reichert, 2009), with several librarians and staff participating.

As the IMLS grant project ended, Walker Library began exploring ways that it could build its own digital skills while continuing to assist area archives, libraries, and museums to digitize unique collections. We would quickly lose skills and momentum if we did not build on our Volunteer Voices experience by securing the institutional support to initiate our own projects. Noting that a key mission of the University is to develop “mutually beneficial partnerships” (Middle Tennessee State University, 2002) we examined appropriate models among more experienced institutions.

In 2002, The University of Pittsburgh’s Digital Research Library began a two-year project to digitize a collection of 7,000 historic Pittsburgh images in partnership with the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the University's Archives Service Center (Galloway, 2005). As evidence of the continued success of this approach, they have added three more partner institutions over the last five years and now have more than 14,000 images in the collection (University of Pittsburgh Digital Research Library, 2010). The Digital Research Library has also collaborated with University of Pittsburgh faculty to create such projects as American Left Ephemera and Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction (Galloway, 2009). This program offers home pages for each of its 70 digital collections; each collection home page offers search and browse options, and a link to the partner institution’s home page.

IUPUI Library’s Program of Digital Scholarship has collaborated with an impressive array of campus and local institutions. The collection websites and promotional material give every indication that the Program of Digital Scholarship treats these institutions as equal partners: the “Partners” page provides background information about each institution; logos of relevant partners appear on each collection home page; and a link for contact information appears in each record. Its list of partners continues to grow. Building on its initial collaboration with Conner Prairie Museum that features textiles from the museum’s collection, the Library recently announced two Conner Prairie collections based on 3-D imaging technology.

After touting the benefits of such collaboration (e.g., cost-effectiveness), Bishoff (2004) offers further guidance for librarians who want to forge lasting partnerships with other cultural heritage institutions: involve all partners from the start; respect each institution’s mission and culture; and ensure that each partner benefits from the end product.

Building on these models we outlined a vision for our own digital project design and received the support of our Dean to purchase a server, large flatbed scanner and a license to CONTENTdm software. We then leveraged that support to secure a $5000 grant from the University Special Projects Committee to fund graduate students for our first project, MTSU Memory. More on that collection will follow.

Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.

References

Bishoff. L. (2004). The collaboration imperative. Library Journal 129 (1), 34-35.

Conner, T.R., Middleton, K., Feltner-Reichert, M., and Carter, A. (2009). Volunteer voices: Tennessee's collaborative digitization program. Collaborative Librarianship, 1 (4), 122-132. Retrieved from http://collaborativelibrarianship.org/index.php/jocl/ article/view/38/26

Galloway, E. (2005). Historic Pittsburgh image collections. D-Lib Magazine, 11 (11). Retrieved from: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/ november05/11featured-collection.html

Galloway, E. (2009). Challenges of creating digital libraries: Digitizing, organizing, storing, accessing content. 2009 CSE Annual Meeting, May 5, 2009. Retrieved from: http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/events/annualmeeting09/presentations/galloway.pdf

IUPUI University Library. (2009). Library grant makes more Indiana history accessible to all. Retrieved from http://www-lib.iupui.edu/node/1306

Middle Tennessee State University. (2002). Academic master plan: Middle Tennessee State University 2001-2012. Murfreesboro, TN: Author.

Tzoc, E. (n.d.). Re-Indexing CONTENTdm metadata. Retrieved from http://staff.lib.muohio.edu/~tzocea/files/CONTENTdm/re-indexing/

University of Pittsburgh Digital Research Library. (2010). Historic Pittsburgh image collections. Retrieved from: http://images.library.pitt.edu/pghphotos

 

Digitization of the Yale Daily News Historical Archive

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 Bauer, Ian Bogus, Karen Kupiec (Yale University Library)
Jennifer Weintraub (UCLA Library)

Abstract

The Yale Daily News is Yale University’s independent student run newspaper. Founded in 1878 it is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper at a United States university.  From the initial print volumes until digital versions started in 2000, the entire run of the printed paper consists of 122 volumes and approximately 100,000 pages. In 2007, Yale University Library was asked to create a pilot project to digitize and make available an initial set of ten years of the newspaper with a $50,000 start-up budget. In this article, we will discuss how the project began, and issues that developed during the process related to copyright, interface design, workflow, quality control, and fundraising. This project helped Yale University Library, a large, strongly hierarchical institution, to develop workflows that allow its staff to develop new skills and work across traditional departmental boundaries. Library staff that have traditionally performed tasks related to our print collections or for smaller digital projects have developed new skills and methods for workflow, metadata creation and quality control for a large-scale digital project. 

Introduction

A newspaper digitization project is one that every library, public or academic, can undertake. It is often not hard to get the rights to a local or small paper and an academic or public library has a built-in audience for this type of project. Local researchers will love having it online and genealogists from further afield will bless you.  And yet, newspaper digitization, while having recently come into its own, has been somewhat difficult for libraries. Newspapers are crucial to research, providing detailed local and international accounts of events; these incredibly important primary source materials are made of poor quality material that will last a relatively short period of time. Newspapers are hard to digitize because they are published daily with hundreds of issues a year, comprised of various individual sections, and then individual articles, oversized, delicate, and contain thousands of words and pictures that require careful quality assurance. In addition they have unusual layouts, and articles often are split across two or more nonconsecutive pages. There can be numerous contributing authors, syndicated cartoons, advertisements, supplements, and even the occasional joke issue.

Fortunately, newspaper digitization is not new. Many organizations have taken on newspaper digitization and the major national and regional newspapers are now available for licensing by libraries. While many projects focus on digitization of newspapers from microfilm, there is also an increasing number of digitization projects that begin with the original paper. One important clearinghouse for information and best practices for newspaper digitization is the National Newspaper Digitization Program (The Library of Congress, 2009). This program, a joint effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities uses the power of grant dollars to enable proper newspaper digitization, research in newspaper digitization and access to the digitized papers through a central resource.

The Yale Daily News, Yale University’s student run newspaper, is 132 years old and is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper at a United States university. In 2007, Yale University Library (YUL) was asked to create a pilot project to digitize the newspaper with an initial $50,000 start-up budget provided by the Yale Daily News’s parent foundation (the Oldest College Daily Foundation) and YUL. In this article, we will discuss how the project began, and issues that developed during the process related to copyright, interface design, workflow, quality control, and fundraising.

This project helped YUL, a large, strongly hierarchical institution, to develop workflows that allow its staff to develop new skills and work across traditional departmental boundaries. Staff across the Library who have traditionally performed tasks related to our print collections or for smaller digital projects have developed new skills and methods for workflow, metadata creation and quality control for a large-scale digital project.         

The Yale Daily News (YDN) is staffed and produced by student volunteers. The paper is not owned by Yale University, and the student reporters and editors are advised by the independent Oldest College Daily Foundation (OCD). OCD is comprised of former YDN staffers and Yale graduates. In 2005 the OCD came to the YUL with an idea for a project to digitize the Yale Daily News archive and provide access on the Internet.  The OCD realized the complexity of the proposal especially considering they did not own a complete run of the newspaper. They asked the YUL to partner with them as OCD owned the rights to the content while YUL had the expertise and the means to make it accessible. To start the pilot project, OCD and YUL contributed $25,000 each to finance a pilot project. YUL decided that for the pilot project we would not digitize anything for which there was an existing digital edition (the YDN has been available online since 2000). Thus, we still had to choose a small amount of material from 120 years of print issues, or a fraction of the 100,000 pages in the entire run, for our initial digitization pilot.

This type of partnership, between an external group owning copyright and the campus library, can be useful for both parties. It is a good way for library staff to gain experience with a complex digitization project and digital collection building, it provides useful material for fundraising for technology projects, it enables the library to provide a useful resource to the campus community, and it enables both the newspaper and the library to create an online product with research value freely for a product that may not have a large sales market.

Several basic principals helped guide the development of the Yale Daily News Historical Archive. Open or commonly used standards for our digital files were important in the event content needed to be migrated to new interface software in the future. We wanted to digitize each newspaper in its entirety, thereby preserving the historical context provided by editorials, cartoons and advertisements. Therefore it was important that we capture the images on each page, not only the text. Another key principle was our requirement that the Yale Daily News be freely available on the Internet. Finally, we wanted the newspaper to be fully searchable, browsable, and to include advanced search features such as byline and title searches. These principals are similar to those elucidated by NDNP and other newspaper digitization projects.

Download the entire chapter for free (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.

References

Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Second Edition, 2002 Revision, 2005 Update. (2005) Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

Fair use (2009). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from U.S. Copyright Office website, http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

MARC standards. (2010). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the Library of Congress – Network Development and MARC Standards Office website http://www.loc.gov/marc/

METS. Metadata encoding and transmission standard (2010). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the official web site http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/

MODS. Metadata object description schema. (2010). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the official web site http://www.loc.gov/ standards/mods/

Orphan works: Statement of best practices (June 2009). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from Society of American Archivists’ website http://www.archivists.org/standards/

RLG/OCLC Working Group on Digital Archive Attributes (2002). Trusted digital repositories: Attributes and responsibilities. RLG, May 2002. Retrieved December 11, 2009 http://www.rlg.org/ en/page.php?Page_ID=583

SAA: Describing archives: A content standard (DACS) (n.d.). Retrieved on May 1, 2010 from http://www.archivists.org/ governance/standards/dacs.asp

Schaffner, Jennifer. (2009). Metadata is the interface. Better description for better discovery of archives and special collections, synthesized from user studies. Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the OCLC website http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/

Session 49: More product, less pixels: Alternate approaches to digitization and metadata. (2008). SAA Annual Meeting, August 26-30, 2008.

Technical guidelines for digitizing archival materials for electronic access: Creation of production master files – raster images. (2004). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the National Archives website http://www.archives.gov/preservation/technical/ guidelines.html 

 

The In-House Digital Laboratory: Possibilities and Responsibilities (at the Center for Jewish 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 (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.

View the collection here.

Author

Andrea Buchner (Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory, Center for Jewish History)

Abstract

The Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory at the Center for Jewish History has been building sustainable digital collections since 2005. It has worked on more than 100 different projects and digitized a wide variety of materials. This chapter highlights projects that include the digitization of books, photographs, and archival collections. It covers digitization from start to finish, touching upon the selection of materials for digitization, digitization practices and workflows, the management of digital assets, online delivery and users’ reactions to digital collections. It concludes with a discussion of the feasibility of an in-house digital laboratory for archives and libraries in general. 

Introduction

The Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory at the Center for Jewish History was established in 2005 with the generous support of the Gruss Lipper Family Foundation. Today, the lab is at the center of a digital program whose mission is to preserve the digital assets of the Center and its five partner organizations and to ensure long-term access to them. Since 2005, the digital lab has been involved in more than 100 digitization projects and has created more than 68,000 high-quality digital images. It has also created 300 hours of high-quality digital audio files by digitizing oral histories and Sephardic music stored on cassette tapes and reel-to-reel tapes.

The digital lab manages all digital assets via ExLibris’ DigiTool, a digital asset management system for libraries and archives (http://www.exlibrisgroup.com). The public interface is CJH Digital Collections (digital.cjh.org). The digital collections are an integral part of the Center’s Online Public Access Catalog (catalog.cjh.org). This catalog provides access to the Center’s and partners’ archival collections and library holdings. If a digital reproduction exists in CJH Digital Collections, the respective catalog record links to them. As of December 2009, 21,000 digital objects were accessible. In 2009 alone, 174,000 users requested digital objects. All materials are accessible to the public free of charge and the collections are constantly growing.

This chapter will examine a variety of projects. They illustrate approaches to the digitization of different types of materials: books, photographs, and archival collections. This chapter will also discuss digital asset management, online delivery, users’ reactions to digital collections, and the feasibility of an in-house digital laboratory.

The Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory

The Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory (digital lab) is a department within the Center for Jewish History.

The Center for Jewish History is the home of five prominent Jewish institutions dedicated to history, culture, and art. They are the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), the American Sephardi Federation (ASF), the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI), the Yeshiva University Museum (YUM), and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO). The combined holdings of the partner organizations bring together the rich variety of Jewish historical experience, ranging from Eastern European Jewry, Sephardic Jewry, German-speaking Jewry, to the American Jewish community.

 The collections include more than 500,000 volumes, 25,500 linear feet of archival documents, and thousands of museum objects. Since its opening in October 2000, over 40,000 researchers have visited the Center and roughly 210,000 patrons have attended various public exhibitions, conferences, and other events that the Center and partners held.

The Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory, a department of the Center, collaborates with all five partner organizations in numerous ways by digitizing their collections, managing the resulting digital assets, and providing digital consultancy services. During the first two years of the lab’s operation it was fully funded through the grant from the Gruss Lipper Family Foundation. When this period ended in 2007, the Center made the digital lab an integral part of its functions and services and continued to offer the lab’s digital collections building services to the partner organizations. In order to defray some of the costs, however, the digital lab charges for its services whenever external funding becomes available to the partners. When this is not the case, the lab provides pro bono digitization services.

A typical digitization project starts with an idea put forth either by Center or partner staff. This is followed by discussions, examinations of materials, and following established procedures (including the completion of forms) to ensure that materials arrive in the lab that have been thoroughly vetted in regard to their value, physical condition, rights, and available metadata. Once the selected materials have been prepared and arrive in the lab, the process of digitization begins. Projects may involve one or multiple partner organizations.

 Download the entire chapter (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.

References

Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Second Edition, 2002 Revision, 2005 Update. (2005) Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

Fair use (2009). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from U.S. Copyright Office website, http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

MARC standards. (2010). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the Library of Congress – Network Development and MARC Standards Office website http://www.loc.gov/marc/

METS. Metadata encoding and transmission standard (2010). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the official web site http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/

MODS. Metadata object description schema. (2010). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the official web site http://www.loc.gov/ standards/mods/

Orphan works: Statement of best practices (June 2009). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from Society of American Archivists’ website http://www.archivists.org/standards/

RLG/OCLC Working Group on Digital Archive Attributes (2002). Trusted digital repositories: Attributes and responsibilities. RLG, May 2002. Retrieved December 11, 2009 http://www.rlg.org/ en/page.php?Page_ID=583

SAA: Describing archives: A content standard (DACS) (n.d.). Retrieved on May 1, 2010 from http://www.archivists.org/ governance/standards/dacs.asp

Schaffner, Jennifer. (2009). Metadata is the interface. Better description for better discovery of archives and special collections, synthesized from user studies. Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the OCLC website http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/

Session 49: More product, less pixels: Alternate approaches to digitization and metadata. (2008). SAA Annual Meeting, August 26-30, 2008.

Technical guidelines for digitizing archival materials for electronic access: Creation of production master files – raster images. (2004). Retrieved December 11, 2009, from the National Archives website http://www.archives.gov/preservation/technical/ guidelines.html 

 

Digitizing Civil Rights: An Omeka-based Pilot Digital Presence for the Queens College Civil Rights Archive

 The following chapter excerpt is 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 (PDF). or purchase online at Amazon.com.

View the collection here.

Authors

Valery Chen, Jing Si Feng, Kevin Schlottmann (Queens College, CUNY)

Abstract

The Queens College Civil Rights Archive of the Department of Special Collections partnered with the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies to create a pilot web presentation using the open-source Omeka platform.  Phase I of the project, conducted during the Spring 2010 semester, outlined a method for institutions of limited means to enter into the world of digitization using existing resources while highlighting the difficulties involved with metadata and IT support, and the advantages of involving graduate students. 

Introduction

In the spring of 2010, the Queens College Civil Rights Archive of the Department of Special Collections partnered with the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies to create a pilot web presentation using the open-source Omeka platform.  The synergy created between the technological skills found in the library school faculty and student body and the desire of the Civil Rights Archive to begin digitization of key holdings allowed the rapid creation of a powerful web presentation platform.  The process also outlined a method for institutions of limited means to enter into the world of digitization. 

Queens College Civil Rights Archive

The Civil Rights Archive of the Queens College Department of Special Collections and Archives collects published and unpublished works relating to civil rights activities such as personal papers, community materials, organizational records, non-print materials, and artifacts. It also conducts oral histories to supplement its collections. The archive is particularly strong in materials documenting civil rights work by Queens College students during the early 1960s.  The Archive seeks to provide evidences of the under-documented Northern involvement in the civil rights movement.

The Archive was founded in late 2008 around an estimable collection of personal papers donated by alumnus Mark Levy.  Since then almost a dozen other personal collections relating to civil rights work in the 1960s have been donated by College alumni, and the Archive continues to actively collect in this area. 

Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies

The Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies prepares library/information service professionals to meet the information and literacy needs of the New York metropolitan region and beyond. It is the only American Library Association accredited program for library and information studies within the City University of New York.  The school prepares graduates to serve a broad segment of the metropolitan area’s multicultural, multiethnic and multi-lingual population in a variety of institutional and informational settings. Through research, publication and other forms of scholarly activity, the school contributes and transmits new knowledge to society and the profession.  The faculty provides opportunities for students to attain the competencies needed to participate in the evolving electronic age by providing a technologically rich teaching/learning environment. 

Project Origin

The Queens College Department of Special Collections, wherein the Civil Rights Archive is located, was acutely aware of the need for its collections to have a digital presence.  It will soon be true that archival materials that are not electronically accessible in some way, whether via an OPAC or on website, will be no better served than in a dark archive.  Given the limited resources of an urban public university, the Department had been unable to secure sufficient financial and technological support for an independent digitization project.  Head of Special Collections Dr. Ben Alexander is also teaching in the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, and he approached Dr. Kwong Bor Ng to discuss a mutually beneficial way to begin the process of building a digital presence.  Drs. Ng and Alexander decided to expand the Special Collections Fellowship program, which provides archival graduate students at Queens College with a broad range of professional archival experience, to include a technology component.  Dr. Ng selected two graduate students with extensive coding skills to do the actual work of creating an Omeka presentation website.  The hope was to create a mutually beneficial arrangement: under Dr. Ng’s supervision, the two graduate students were able to gain real-world experience in building an Omeka platform, while the Civil Rights Archive was able to lay sufficient groundwork to seek grant funding in support of a larger digitization project.

Download the entire chapter (PDF) or purchase online at Amazon.com.

 References

Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. (2010). Omeka: about. Retrieved from http://omeka.org/about/

Ebellempire. (2009). Adding Lightbox to Omeka. Retrieved from http://omeka.org/codex/Adding_LightBox_to_Omeka

Digital Library of Georgia. (2009). Welcome to the Civil Rights Digital Library. Retrieved from http://crdl.usg.edu/?Welcome

Graham, S. R. & Ross, D. D. (2003). Metadata and authority control in the Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive.  Journal of Internet Cataloging 6(10), 33-42.

NC ECHO. (2007).  North Carolina Dublin Core implementation guidelines.  Retrieved from http://www.ncecho.org/dig/ncdc2007.shtml

University of Southern Mississippi Special Collections. (2006). About the Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive.  Retrieved from http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda/about.htm

University of Southern Mississippi Special Collections. (2006). Guidelines for digitization.  Retrieved from http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda/guidelines/index.html