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ISSUU: Interesting Platform for Online Publishing

March 2, 2008

Issuu, with the tag line ‘Read the world. Publish the world.’ and pronounced ‘issue’, gives anyone the ability to upload a PDF document and publish it as an online magazine. I am intrigued by the possibilities of using this service to publish digitized archival records – especially those that would lend themselves to a ‘book’ style presentation (thinking here of a ledger or equivalent).

I am not sure I totally understand the implications of the Issuu Terms of service… especially this part:

By distributing or disseminating Uploader Submissions through the Issuu Service, you hereby grant to Issuu a worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, assignable, fully paid-up, royalty-free, license to host, transfer, display, perform, reproduce, distribute, and otherwise exploit your Uploader Submissions, in any media forms or formats, and through any media channels, now known or hereafter devised, including without limitation, RSS feeds, embeddable functionality, and syndication arrangements in order to distribute, promote or advertise your Uploader Submissions through the Issuu Service.

If I am following that properly, all the rights you are granting to the Issuu Service are only for the purposes of their distribution of your uploaded PDF.

Issuu has a special Copyright FAQ, which in combination with Peter Hirtle‘s page on Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States, should support those trying to figure out if they can upload what they want to upload without getting into copyright related hot water.

So how is it different from a plain old PDF? Take a look at the embedded Issuu viewer below showing a 1908 copy of The Colonial Book of The Towle Manufacturing Company Silversmiths.

I don’t think this would ever be the way you would want to give online access to digitized records in general – but I do think that this could be a great way to highlight a particularly impressive set or volume of documents. If an archives featured one of these a month on their homepage – would people subscribe to their RSS feed just to see the new one? On the actual page on which I found the above document, Issuu makes it easy to subscribe to the RSS feed for the Issuu author ‘silverlibrary’.

I don’t know why Issuu has decided that I must create an account before I may view document author silverlibrary’s user profile. I would hope that there was an elegant way for visitors to see a group of Issuu documents created by the same author without having to create an account first (or ever).

Want to know what others think? Take a look at Finally, a Web-based PDF Viewer That Does Not Suck (Issuu) over on TechCrunch. One interesting tidbit I picked up from that review is that Issuu is based in Denmark. I wonder what impact that has on which copyright rules apply to the documents uploaded into Issuu.

Want to read more about their vision? Of course they have a press release in the form of an Issuu publication and I have embedded it below. I think my favorite line is that Issuu is intended to be ‘YouTube for Publications’.

I would love to see a highlighted section created for ‘cultural heritage materials’ (or something like that anyway). Take a look around Issuu and let me know what you think. Is this a viable tool for an archives or manuscript collection to use to highlight parts of their collection?

LOC + Flickr equals Crowdsourced Tagging

January 17, 2008 7 Comments

It is no surprise that the Library of Congress announcing the publication of images on Flickr is news both in mainstream news outlets and in the blogosphere. From librarian.net‘s short and cheery LoC goes 2.0! post to ArchivesNext‘s pondering Is Flickr “legitimate” for archives now that LOC is there?, I have seen a lot of discussion of LoC and Flickr in my RSS feeds.

What is it all about?

In case you have missed the details, the Library of Congress has published two photo collections on Flickr in a new subsection of the website called The Commons. The two collections are:

1930s-40s in Color: 1615 photos taken by photographers working for the US government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI) and covering “rural areas and farm labor, as well as aspects of World War II mobilization, including factories, railroads, aviation training, and women working between 1939 and 1944.”
News in the 1910s: 1500 photos taken by photographers who worked for the Bain News Service. Topics include “sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, and political activities, with a special emphasis on life in New York City.”

I enjoyed reading Flickr’s own blog post on the subject, Many hands make light work. It gave me a glimpse of their vision. For them, these two collections from the Library of Congress make up a pilot project – this is just the first step.

On their page for The Commons they first talk about their goals for the project:

Back in June of 2007, we began our first collaboration with a civic institution to facilitate giving people a voice in describing the content of a publicly-held photography collection.

The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to show how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.

On the homepage for the Library of Congress Flickr pilot I found this introduction:

The Library of Congress invites you to explore history visually by looking at interesting photos from our collections. Please add tags and comments, too! More words are needed to help more people find and use these pictures.

So, here we have a project between two large and well known organizations, with their goals carefully aligned. Let’s get more people looking at the amazing photos from the Library of Congress. Let’s also harness the curiosity and enthusiasm of those who want to be more involved and want to tag content. I love it!

Considering the Tags

So then I started looking at photos and the tags they have. I wish (being my database geek self) that I could see the groupings in which tags were added (ie, that one person added tags 3 through 10). They don’t seem to be displayed alphabetically – but rather in the order in which they were added to the photo.

I considered this photo from the 1930s-40s in Color collection:

The list below shows all the tags that were assigned to it, in the order in which the tags are displayed beside the photo above on Flickr (listed separated by commas to preserve space). The ‘Library of Congress’ tag has already been assigned to every photo in the collections upon upload, and therefore always appears first:

Library of Congress, Long Beach, california, 1942, october, WW2, USA, aircraft, douglas, Palmer, WWII, women, manufacturing, yellow, stripes, overalls, engine, Douglas Aircraft, engine installation, military aviation, World War II, women at work, historical photographs, slide film, 4×5, large format, LF, transparency, transparencies, world war 2, technology

In a world with no controlled vocabulary, there seems to be a theory at work of covering all your bases. Rather than noticing that someone had tagged this photo ‘WW2’, it was also later tagged with ‘WWII’, ‘World War II’ and ‘world war 2’. On another photo in the collection I know I saw the tag ‘wwii’. As long as there is no ‘offical’ version for this tag, I see the wisdom in tagging it with all of them – just to be sure.

The official description of the photo is: “Women are trained to do precise and vital engine installation detail in Douglas Aircraft Company plants, Long Beach, Calif. (1942 Oct)”. The metadata provided by the Library of Congress also includes information about the format of the film itself.

These are the subject headings assigned by the Library of Congress catalogers:

Douglas Aircraft Company
Airplane industry
Women–Employment
World War, 1939-1945
Assembly-line methods
United States–California–Long Beach

It is interesting to note that the main things that the independent taggers have captured that the professional catalogers haven’t are either non-topical aspects of the image (‘yellow’ and ‘overalls’) as well as broader more general ideas (‘military aviation’ and ‘technology’).

Does the tag ‘women at work’ tell you more than the LOC subject heading ‘Women–Employment’? Maybe, maybe not – but if you view all the images tagged ‘women at work’ across Flickr, now you can see these women from the 1940s at work beside photos such as three vendors and Bozo village life. Now this is something different. This is knitting threads from the ivory tower of libraries and archives into the communal tapestry that is Flickr. Not only might the addition of the ‘women at work’ tag make these images more accessible to the average person looking for Library of Congress photos – but it also puts these photos in the everyday path of many more people. It brings us firmly back to Flickr’s goal stated above of giving more people a “taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection”.

Copyright

Flickr has this to say on The Commons’ home page about copyright:

These beautiful, historic pictures from the Library represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It’s called “no known copyright restrictions.”

Hopefully, this pilot can be used as a model that other cultural institutions would pick up, to share and redistribute the myriad collections held by cultural heritage institutions all over the world.

I am with ArchivesNext in hoping that this move by the Library of Congress will give archivists and librarians on the ground in other institutions a bit more ammunition with which to fight for posting their images on Flickr. Copyright is one of the issues that seems to give so many organizations pause – so it is interesting to see this new category having been created specifically for cultural institutions. I like that they link back to the Library of Congress’s official answer about what it means if the catalog record notes ‘No known restrictions on publication’. Flickr also explicitly mentions that “If the pilot works – or, when it works! – we’ll look to allow other interested cultural institutions the opportunity to extend the application of “no known restrictions” to their catalogues.” So clearly “no known copyright restrictions” has been created with cultural institutions in mind.

Final Thoughts

I am intrigued to see how this progresses. If nothing else is accomplished, more people will certainly see images from the Library of Congress collections than they would have had none of these photos been published on Flickr. Some will even surf back to the Library of Congress website to learn more about their photo collecitons. For the example photo I selected above, there were already subject headings assigned – but for most of the Bain News Service photos all that is available are bits of “unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards”. Every tag that is added improves the chances that an interested party may find the photo they need.

I have posted before about the potential of crowdsourcing. I am in favor of it. Yes, all the tags won’t be perfect. Yes, there will be seven different ways of tagging for World War II. But when all is said and done, more people will find more photos. More eyes will see the treasures that once were only available to those who could get inside temperature and humidity controlled vaults. And more people will have the opportunity to learn a tiny bit more about why cultural institutions like the Library of Congress are great!

MIT’s SIMILE Project: Innovations in Metadata Interaction and Analysis

January 13, 2008 2 Comments

Well-formed Data’s post on Exhibit led me to explore what was available from MIT‘s Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments (SIMILE) project. I took a little time to examine some of the SIMILE project tools with an eye to how they could impact interaction with archival records and metadata, as well as how they might support the work of archivists. All the tools appear to be available via an open source BSD license.

Babel

Babel converts files from one format to another. I did a test to see if it would convert one of the Library of Congress EAD Finding Aids from XML to some other format – but it gave me an error (‘unqualified attribute ‘repositoryencoding’ not allowed’). I love the idea that I could just point this at an EAD finding aid and get something useful out the other side – but apparently that is a bit on the wishful thinking side – at least for the moment.

Exhibit 2.0

Exhibit 2.0 is described on the Exhibit homepage as follows:

Exhibit is a three-tier web application framework written in Javascript, which you can include like you would include Google Maps. If you just want to show a few hundred records of data on maps, timelines, scatter plots, interactive tables, etc., why bother learning SQL, ASP, PHP, CGI, or whatever when you can just use Exhibit? To use Exhibit, you write: a simple data file, and an HTML file in which you specify how the data should be shown. Data + Presentation. That’s all there is to publishing, as it should be.

Sounds fabulous, doesn’t it? I wish I had a week to play with this tool. They have a whole slew of examples, but I think the two I list below do a fine job of showing what you can create (not to mention being fairly thematic for those of you paying attention to the US Presidential Primaries news coverage):

Gadget

Gadget is an XML inspector designed to create useful summaries of vast pools of XML data. I didn’t download and play with this one – but it sounds like something that might be very interesting to pump a big pile of EAD XML format finding aids into to see what could be discovered from an aggregate point of view.

Longwell & RDFizers

Longwell is a faceted browser for RDF formatted data, while RDFizers is actually a directory of tools which convert other data formats into the RDF format. It doesn’t exist now, but if there was an RDFizer that went from EAD to RDF then Longwell would become more interesting to archivists.

That said, they already do have both a MARC/MODS RDFizer and an OAI-PMH RDFizer. I suspect that many archivists could put their hands on archival data in one of these two formats – which makes experimenting with Longwell more plausible in the near term.

Final Thoughts

There are lots other tools that are part of the SIMILE project (screen scrapers and timeplotters and more), but the ones listed above most ignited my imagination. Surely there are geek archivists even now rolling up their sleeves to figuring out how to leverage free open source tools like these, both to improve access to records and increase understanding of what we have and how well it is (or isn’t) documented.

I hope to find time to play with each of these over the next few months – but I would love to know if anyone else out there has already tried any of these tools. Have suggestions for likely datasets? Have knowledge of existing archive related applications using these tools? Please post your comments below or drop me a line via my contact form!

Image Credit: The Simile Project logo displayed above is from MIT’s Simile Project website.

SAA2008 Here I Come! After the Revolution: Unleashing the Power of EAD

January 10, 2008 5 Comments

I got the word just before the holidays – the panel proposal of which I was a part has been accepted for SAA 2008 in San Francisco . The title of the panel is ‘After the Revolution: Unleashing the Power of EAD’ and the working title for my paper/presentation is ‘Visualizing Archival Collections: Leveraging the Power of EAD’.

My co-presenters are Max Evans (currently of the NHPRC, soon to be of the LDS Church Historical Department) and Elizabeth Yakel (of University of Michigan, School of Information). Jodi Allison-Bunnell from Northwest Digital Archives, Orbis Cascade Alliance is our panel Chair.

This is the description of our panel that we submitted with our proposal:

Encoded Archival Description (EAD) was created in 1995 to increase uniformity and interoperability of data about archival collections to facilitate discovery. It has yet to realize that goal: most online finding aids merely recreate paper documents. Speakers will demonstrate how the structured, standardized nature of EAD can form the basis of user-friendly interfaces and finding aids that can accommodate multiple perspectives and utilize graphical and visual interfaces–while faithfully recording and presenting the context, structure, and content of the collection. Panelists will also address the challenges of unleashing the power of EAD, including normalizing XML, the lack of standard values for cross-institutional aggregation of data, and different approaches to subject terms, with a discussion of the technological and practical issues that surround them. The session relates to the SAA strategic priorities of technology and public awareness and engages elemental questions of revolutionary and evolutionary change.

My portion of the panel will focus on my ArchivesZ information visualization project. I will be discussing both the power of this type of graphical interface to archival collections as well as addressing the roadblocks to their practical implementation. My plan is to continue the work I started last Spring over the course of this Spring and Summer – and show off a new version of ArchivesZ in San Francisco (as well as online here of course!).

Here are the descriptions of Max, Elizabeth and Jodi’s planned contributions (cribbed from our proposal submission):

Max Evans will explore the fundamental purposes of finding aids and explore what can be done to leverage EAD’s structure to render graphical, informative, and elegant finding aids online.
Elizabeth Yakel will discuss usability test findings and how these were incorporated into the EAD-based Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections to allow communities to engage with collections in new ways.
Jodi Allison-Bunnell brings a lively interest in user-centered presentations of finding aids that emerge from her work as manager of a five-state EAD consortium.

I am so pleased and excited. So – who is planning on going to San Fransisco in August? I hope to see you there.

Image Credit: Society of American Archivists, ARCHIVES 2008: Archival R/Evolution & Identities web page.

Digital Preservation via Emulation – Dioscuri and the Prevention of Digital Black Holes

December 25, 2007 2 Comments

Available Online posted about the open source emulator project Dioscuri back in late September. In the course of researching Thoughts on Digital Preservation, Validation and Community I learned a bit about the Microsoft Virtual PC software. Virtual PC permits users to run multiple operating systems on the same physical computer and can therefore facilitate access to old software that won’t run on your current operating system. That emulator approach pales in comparison with what the folks over at Dioscuri are planning and building.

On the Digital Preservation page of the Dioscuri website I found this paragraph on their goals:

To prevent a digital black hole, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), National Library of the Netherlands, and the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands started a joint project to research and develop a solution. Both institutions have a large amount of traditional documents and are very familiar with preservation over the long term. However, the amount of digital material (publications, archival records, etc.) is increasing with a rapid pace. To manage them is already a challenge. But as cultural heritage organisations, more has to be done to keep those documents safe for hundreds of years at least.

They are nothing if not ambitious… they go on to state:

Although many people recognise the importance of having a digital preservation strategy based on emulation, it has never been taken into practice. Of course, many emulators already exist and showed the usefulness and advantages it offer. But none of them have been designed to be digital preservation proof. For this reason the National Library and Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands started a joint project on emulation.

The aim of the emulation project is to develop a new preservation strategy based on emulation.

Dioscuri is part of Planets (Preservation and Long-term Access via NETworked Services) – run by the Planets consortium and coordinated by the British Library. The Dioscuri team has created an open source emulator that can be ported to any hardware that can run a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Individual hardware components are implemented via separate modules. These modules should make it possible to mimic many different hardware configurations without creating separate programs for every possible combination.

You can get a taste of the big thinking that is going into this work by reviewing the program overview and slide presentations from the first Emulation Expert Meeting (EEM) on digital preservation that took place on October 20th, 2006.

In the presentation given by Geoffrey Brown from Indiana University titled Virtualizing the CIC Floppy Disk Project: An Experiment in Preservation Using Emulation I found the following simple answer to the question ‘Why not just migrate?’:

Loss of information — e.g. word edits
Loss of fidelity — e.g. WordPerfect to Word isn’t very good
Loss of authenticity — users of migrated document need access to original to verify authenticity
Not always possible — closed proprietary formats
Not always feasible — costs may be too high
Emulation may necessary to enable migration

After reading through Emulation at the German National Library, presented by Tobias Steinke, I found my way to the kopal website. With their great tagline ‘Data into the future’, they state their goal is “…to develop a technological and organizational solution to ensure the long-term availability of electronic publications.” The real gem for me on that site is what they call the kopal demonstrator. This is a well thought out Flash application that explains the kopal project’s ‘procedures for archiving and accessing materials’ within the OAIS Reference Model framework. But it is more than that – if you are looking for a great way to get your (or someone else’s) head around digital archiving, software and related processes – definitely take a look. They even include a full Glossary.

I liked what I saw in Defining a preservation policy for a multimedia and software heritage collection, a pragmatic attempt from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, a presentation by Grégory Miura, but felt like I was missing some of the guts by just looking at the slides. I was pleased to discover what appears to be a related paper on the same topic presented at IFLA 2006 in Seoul titled: Pushing the boundaries of traditional heritage policy: Maintaining long-term access to multimedia content by introducing emulation and contextualization instead of accepting inevitable loss . Hurrah for NOT ‘accepting inevitable loss’.

Vincent Joguin’s presentation, Emulating emulators for long-term digital objects preservation: the need for a universal machine, discussed a virtual machine project named Olonys. If I understood the slides correctly, the idea behind Olonys is to create a “portable and efficient virtual processor”. This would provide an environment in which to run programs such as emulators, but isolate the programs running within it from the disparities between the original hardware and the actual current hardware. Another benefit to this approach is that only the virtual processor need be ported to new platforms rather than each individual program or emulator.

Hilde van Wijngaarden presented an Introduction to Planets at EEM. I also found another introductory level presentation that was given by Jeffrey van der Hoeven at wePreserve in September of 2007 titled Dioscuri: emulation for digital preservation.

The wePreserve site is a gold mine for presentations on these topics. They bill themselves as “the window on the synergistic activities of DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE), Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval (CASPAR), and Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services (PLANETS).” If you have time and curiosity on the subject of digital preservation, take a glance down their home page and click through to view some of the presentations.

On the site of The International Journal of Digital Curation there is a nice ten page paper that explains the most recent results of the Dioscuri project. Emulation for Digital Preservation in Practice: The Results was published in December 2007. I like being able to see slides from presentations (as linked to above), but without the notes or audio to go with them I am often left staring at really nice diagrams wondering what the author’s main point was. The paper is thorough and provides lots of great links to other reading, background and related projects.

There is a lot to dig into here. It is enough to make me wish I had a month (maybe a year?) to spend just following up on this topic alone. I found my struggle to interpret many of the Power Point slide decks that have no notes or audio very ironic. Here I was hunting for information about the preservation of born digital records and I kept finding that the records of the research provided didn’t give me the full picture. With no context beyond the text and images on the slides themselves, I was left to my own interpretation of their intended message. While I know that these presentations are not meant to be the official records of this research, I think that the effort obviously put into collecting and posting them makes it clear that others are as anxious as I to see this information.

The best digital preservation model in the world will only preserve what we choose to save. I know the famous claim on the web is that ‘content is king’ – but I would hazard to suggest that in the cultural heritage community ‘context is king’.

What does this have to do with Dioscuri and emulators? Just that as we solve the technical problems related to preservation and access, I believe that we will circle back around to realize that digital records need the same careful attention to appraisal, selection and preservation of context as ‘traditional’ records. I would like to believe that the huge hurdles we now face on the technical and process side of things will fade over time due to the immense efforts of dedicated and brilliant individuals. The next big hurdle is the same old hurdle – making sure the records we fight to preserve have enough context that they will mean anything to those in the future. We could end up with just as severe a ‘digital black hole’ due to poorly selected or poorly documented records as we could due to records that are trapped in a format we can no longer access. We need both sides of the coin to succeed in digital preservation.

Did I mention the part about ‘Hurray for open source emulator projects with ambitious goals for digital preservation’? Right. I just wanted to be clear about that.

Image Credit: The image included at the top of this post was taken from a screen shot of Dioscuri itself, the original version of which may be seen here.

Will Crashed Hard Drives Ever Equal Unlabeled Cardboard Boxes?

December 6, 2007 7 Comments

How many of us have an old hard drive hanging around? I am talking about the one you were told was unfixable. The one that has 3 bad sectors. The one they replaced and handed to you in one of those distinctive anti-static bags. You know the ones I mean – the steely grey translucent plastic ones that look like they should contain space food.

I have more than one ‘dead’ hard drive. I can’t quite bring myself to throw them out – but I have no immediate plans to try and reclaim their files.

I know that there are services and techniques for pulling data off otherwise inaccessible hard drives. You hear about it in court cases and see it on TV shows. A quick Google search on hard drive rescue turns up businesses like Disk Data Recovery

Do archivists already make it a policy to hunt not just for computers, but for discarded and broken hard drives lurking in filing cabinets and desk drawers? Compare this to a carton of documents that needed special treatment to permit access to the records they contained and yet are appraised as valuable. If the treatment required were within budgetary and time constraints – it would be performed. Mold, bugs, rusty staples, photos that are stuck together… archivists generally know where to get the answers they need to tackle these sorts of problems. I suspect that a hard drive advertised or discovered to be broken would be treated more like an empty box than a moldy box.

For now I would stack this challenge near the bottom of the list below archiving digital records that we can access easily but that run on old hardware or software, but I can imagine a time when standard hard drive rescue techniques will need to be a tool for the average archivist.

Using WWI Draft Registration Cards for Research: NARA Records Provide Crucial Data

November 23, 2007 1 Comment

In the HealthDay article Having Lots of Kids Helps Dads Live to 100, a recent study was described that examined what increased the chances of a man living past 100.

A young, trim farmer with four or more children: According to a new study, that’s the ideal profile for American men hoping to reach 100 years of age. The research, based largely on data from World War I draft cards, suggests that keeping off excess weight in youth, farming and fathering a large number of offspring all help men live past a century.

The article mentions that this research was “spurred by the fact that a treasure trove of information about 20th-century American males has now been put online”. The study was based out of the University of Chicago’s Center on Aging. The paper, New Findings on Human Longevity Predictors, includes the following reference:

Banks, R. (2000). World War I Civilian Draft Registrations. [database on-line]. Provo, UT, Ancestry.com.

With an account on Ancestry.com, you too could examine the online database of World War I Draft Registration Cards. This Ancestry.com page notes the source of the original data as:

United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls

NARA’s page for the World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, M1509 includes similar background information to what can be found on the Ancestry.com page, but of course – no access to the actual records.

It is frustrating to a study based on archival records that is making the news, but that does not make it clear to the reader that archival records were the source for the research. As I discussed at length in my post Epidemiological Research and Archival Records: Source of Records Used for Research Fails to Make the News, I feel that it is very important to take every opportunity to help the general public understand how archival records are supporting research that impacts our understanding of the world around us. I appreciate that partnering with 3rd parties to get government records digitized is often the only option – but I want people to be clear about why those records still exist in the first place.

Photo Credit: US. National Archives, World War I Photographs, 1918. Army photographs. Battle of St. Mihiel-American Engineers returning from the front; tank going over the top; group photo of the 129th Machine gun Battalion, 35th Division before leaving for the front; views of headquarters of the 89th Division next to destroyed bridge; Company E, 314th Engineers, 89th Division, and making rolling barbed wire entanglements. NAIL Control Number: NRE-75-HAS(PHO)-65

The MemoryArchive Affiliate Program: A Wiki Engine for Collecting Memoirs

November 14, 2007 2 Comments

A Beautiful WWW posted A Review of MemoryArchive.org. MemoryArchive, founded by historian Marshall Poe, is a new MediaWiki based website aimed at collecting first person accounts that they term ‘memoirs’. In sharp contrast with the communal authorship approach of most wikis, MemoryArchive locks down edits of each entry after a format review.

What sorts of memoirs are they looking for? In their FAQ they say they want “pretty much anything you remember that someone else might conceivably find interesting, now or in 500 years”.

I spent some time exploring. I read a very moving memorial titled Death by Aids The Goodbye Party, 1992, by Jay Blotcher (ed note: Jay emailed me with the correct title for this memoir). I wandered through some 9/11 memories. Eventually something dawned on me. Maybe it is the fact that I am spending most of my days lately thinking deep thoughts about metadata and classification — or maybe my archives course work is to blame — whatever the reason, I realized that I wanted more information about the storytellers. Right now it appears that each memoir includes Who, What, When and Where data – to whatever degree the contributors choose to furnish such information. Categories are also available and seem to be frequently employed.

But I want to know more about the individuals who are telling the stories. I appreciate that some posts will be made more powerful through anonymity, but for those cases that an individual is willing to share additional biographic information it would be great to have an easy place for that information to be captured.

I think the most interesting aspect of the Memory Archive to the archives community is the Memory Archive Affiliate Program. The theory behind this program is to support the collection and archiving of personal histories online. It is described as being of interest to the following types of organizations:

historical societies (urban, state, or national)
institutions interested in recording their own history (a club, society, or military unit)
educational institutions teaching history (high school or college)
public history projects (oral history gathering, or document collection)

This is a powerful idea. Any time you can accumulate a critical mass of of a single type of information on the web (in this case, memoirs) you have the chance of becoming a destination. There is also the added benefit of enabling smaller organizations to launch an online memoir collection initiatives without needing to worry about the technology, costs and people-power that would usually be required.

There does needs to be an easy way for the Memory Archive Affiliates to download these born digital memoirs for offline use and preservation purposes. This could be accomplished by an ‘export’ or ‘format for printing’ button on each memoir page, or perhaps some form of bulk download for all memoirs collected for a single affiliate’s project. I will say that the default print format isn’t bad. It seems to already do some special reformatting (such as displaying URL links in their entirety). I still also would want more metadata, though perhaps the definition of attributes to be collected could be customized per project.

I am curious to see the overall quality of the memoirs a year from now. I suspect that memoirs collected is association with a topically focused program may be more compelling than the average ‘man-on-the-net’ first person narratives. That isn’t to say that there is no value in the memories of someone who feels compelled to share their story – but a collection created around a theme would have the additional power of that common thread. The affiliate program memoirs would also be more likely to come with some contextual background explaining the source and origin of the solicited accounts. I am a fan the existing thematic memory sites, such as The April 16 Archive and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank. I love that the Omeka software used to create these two example sites is open source and free. Unfortunately, I don’t think the average small historical society or public history project is likely to have the resources to build and support a site like this even with free software. I think that a program like the Memory Archive Affiliate Program (or something like it) could bridge the gap for these smaller organizations and make the creation of online memoir collection projects a reality.

SAA2007: Content Aggregation, Shareable Metadata and Access (Session 607)

November 9, 2007 1 Comment

Focusing on the challenges of sharing metadata to support content aggregation and access, SAA2007 Session 607’s official title was The Dynamics in the Aggregate: Shareable Metadata and Next-Generation Access Systems. Bill Landis, the Head of Arrangement, Description, & Metadata Coordinator at Yale University Library’s Manuscripts and Archives division, began the session by stressing that while it is hard to predict the future it seems obvious that there will be an increase in the aggregation of content. Google is one type of aggregator. Many institutions are using the standards of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) to both publish and to harvest data. This session considered shareable metadata and how it can support or hinder content aggregation and access. A pointer was give to the Best Practices for OAI Data Provider Implementations and Shareable Metadata joint initiative of the Digital Library Federation and the National Science Digital Library.

Introduction to Shareable Metadata and Interoperability

The first speaker, Sarah Shreeves, started the panel off with her presentation titled The Dynamics of Sharing: Introduction to Shareable Metadata and Interoperability (follow the link to view the full set of slides). Sarah is not an archivist, but she has extensive experience with metadata aggregation.

She began with the assumption that “we” (libraries/archives/museums/cultural organizations) cannot afford to think about our collections only in the context of our local community. There is no way to know where your metadata is going to end up – either grouped with other things or pulled out of your collection into single atomized items.

Why share content? It benefits our users, supports one-stop searching, brings together distributed collections and supports mashups . Sharing helps us and increases our exposure. We have to do this – we cannot assume that our users will come in through the front door. Lorcan Dempsey uses the phrase In The Flow to mean how to get your content “out” into the world where users will find it.

Keys to Shareability or Interoperability:

You need the technical side (Z39.50, OAI PMH, RSS …etc)
Organization commitment of resources (people, training, time, priority)
Standards.. lots and lots of standards

There are two main ways to share metadata. The first is known as federated search. In this model a user searches from a single central location. That query is sent to distributed database and the answers are sent back for the central query source to assemble the results. Z39.50 and Search/Retrieval via URL ( SRU) are examples of technology used to perform federated searches.

The second way of sharing metadata is known as the metadata aggregation model. In this scenario, metadata is pulled from many places into a single location. This is what search engines, union catalogs, OAI PMH, RSS and Atom do. It provides an opportunity to massage and normalize the data. Once users find what they are looking for – they are often redirected to the original source of the item.

A major challenge of the metadata aggregation model is “the ability to perform a search over diverse sets of metadata records and obtain meaningful results” Priscilla Caplan (in Metadata Fundamentals for All Librarians). This is hard because we are not used to what metadata looks like outside our local context. Sarah then showed lots of different examples so the audience could see how different the metadata is.

Metadata is not monolithic. It can be a view projected from a single information object. It is possible to create multiple views appropriate for different uses. Each view will affect the granularity of description, choice of vocabularies, and choice of formats.

You can customize the format of your metadata depending on the context of how the metadata will be consumed. This might sound scary, hard and overwhelming – but Sarah is confident that we can do this in smart ways. She believes that we should be able to lobby for the features we need to support different views.

Sarah’s list of attributes of ‘shareable metadata’:

is quality metadata
promotes search interoperability
is human understandable outside of its local context
must be useful outside its local context – an aggregator can actually build services based on the data in the records provided – example was geographic data that can be used to put the items on a map
preferably is machine processable – Subject clustering – machine created – but still needs lots of human intervention to make it work
provides enough contextual information – the Theodore Roosevelt collection didn’t have a Roosevelt subject term because the title of the collection was assumed to be enough. She also mentioned a map that didn’t include the fact that it was a map in it’s metadata
is consistent across a collection – ie, same date field, same controlled vocabulary.. this is within a single collection
is coherent
is true to its content but also its audience – different views for different perspectives
conforms to standards – descriptive, technical, etc

There are some safe assumptions you can make. Users often get to your data through shared records – not through your front door. Users either don’t know about your collection or won’t remember. Shared records can lead users to local environments where the full context is available. Users are often entering through deep links that may bypass the introductory information that provides the larger context for a collection.

Implementing Shareable Metadata Practices

Jenn Riley, of the Inquiring Librarian Blog, gave the 2nd presentation: Implementing Shareable Metadata Practices in a Diverse University Environment. Jenn has a grand vision of what we are trying to achieve with all these efforts to share metadata. We needs lots of different ways to discover the data.. lots of environments.

We need machine-readable descriptive metadata, definitions of properties of shareable metadata in various communities (this is the focus of this session), and protocols and systems that use them for sharing that make it automatic. We also need online delivery of content too, but that is a big challenge and out of scope for this session.

Archives and digital libraries face different challenges in implementing standard practices related to shareable metadata. Archives are unique, making the notion of a single workflow model not possible. They are not a ‘homogeneous body’. Archives need to figure out how to support the expanding view of the mission to meet the needs of online users and make more services available. They need to find resources to provide appropriate description as well as technical implementation – and need time and money and skills in order to do this. On the other hand, digital library practice assumes content is digitized– that there will be ‘stuff’ at the end. Metadata-only workflows are not common. Digital libraries usually assume item-level description, but this is often not the case, and concepts of provenance and original order are largely foreign.

Communities need to agree on key definitions to bridge the gulf between digital libraries and archives. Digital libraries need to understand that Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is not a metadata format, EAD is a markup language.

The good news is that aggregations are not out to replace archives specific discovery systems. We don’t have to give up the local robust environment, we can and need to do both.

Key shareable metadata principles for archives:

Context: need enough context so the user can figure out if the record is useful for them. At the same time – too much repeated info can cause issues too.
Content: what is the appropriate granularity for shared records from archives — this choice needs to be done per usage and per audience.

Possible strategies include the creation of collection-level records only, creation of an aggregator that understands multi-level descriptions, the design of multi-level descriptions carefully for future item/file-level view, linking to digital objects from the lowest level of description in the finding aid and description at the item level.

Jenn then discussed the experiences at Indiana University’s Digital Library Program :

They have a new EAD finding aid website
the new system is more faithful to encoding with less ‘helpful’ fixed presentation
mutual learning process about archival descriptive practices
many decisions made about when encoding should be changed when systems should be changed
results of this process: RE-ENGINEERING! New template, report card, better previewing capability — new template for EAD that supports new data we didn’t have before… report card built on schema-tron and encoder can preview how their encoding is really working and preview what the final product finding aid will look like
some EAD files link to digital objects
soon there will be item-level OAI records (Dublin Core and MODS) for digitized items linked from finding aids
central Digital Library repository that allows EAD as the *master* metadata format
new workflow that permits links from any level of a multi-level description in EAD

The more you put stuff online – the more you attract the sort of attention that gets you more money to put more stuff online. Jenn suggests lobbying of software vendors for a better support of EAD.. don’t settle for Dublin core. We need to discuss with our user communities about the need for an archives-specific aggregators and consider the multi-level description.

Libraries and archives are learning from one another. The item centric view can be too narrow – but it can help with re-engineering. More structure in finding aids can be a good thing. Archives can show libraries why expertise in descriptive practice is still necessary — maybe those who are running out of things to catalog on the library side can spend some time describing over on the archives side?

Archival Frameworks for Shareable Metadata

Kelcy Shepherd, Digital Interfaces Librarian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst , gave the final presentation of the session: “Archival Standards and Tools: A Framework for Shareable Metadata”.

The first framework Kelcy addressed was Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS). What about DACS is applicable to sharing metadata? It is compatible for use with controlled vocabularies. It can make sure that our access points will work well with access points from other metadata communities. Since DACS is output agnostic, you can create the data and then use that data to generate different views or formats. A single set of DACS based data can produce printed finding aids, EAD finding aids, MARC 21 or MODS records.

In order to produce each of these different views from a single original format, you must a crosswalk. A crosswalk maps individual elements from one data format to corresponding elements of another. Unfortunately, crosswalks come with their own challenges:

granularity
missing elements
single element on one side that would need to be split into multiple elements on the other side

You need expertise in both standards addressed by a each crosswalk in order to do this well.

Next Kelcy discussed Encoded Archival Description (EAD). EAD is a data structure standard, machine readable format for encoding archival descriptions. It allows archivists to share the data across institutions. If you want to re-purpose a finding aids metadata, the data needs to be in a machine readable format. EAD gives you this. You can convert an EAD encoded finding aid into a Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) document using an XSLT stylesheet and a crosswalk. The stylesheet may take a lot of work (especially for use across many finding aids), but there is a big payoff. Once the work is done a single stylesheet can be used across many many finding aids.

The Archivists’ Toolkit was cited as an example of a tool that can let you output multiple formats from a single set of data. It can produce EAD, MARC, MODS and Dublin Core records.

Tools can support efforts – but it all comes back to quality archival description. The best tool in the world will never make bad content into good content. If data is inconsistent – you have to manually go back and clean it up. I particularly liked Kelcy’s point about ensuring that your data doesn’t need the screen labels you to make sense. If you don’t consider this, when you export that data into a new format or view the data can loose it’s meaning.

Her concluding point was that if you don’t have the tech skills or support, work on your content.. use DACS… get your data in order and it will pay off later.

Questions and Answers

Question: How does this work when you are trying to share your metadata with communities that use different controlled vocabularies – thinking about the single EAD that generates MODS and MARC .etc etc…

Answer: Aggregators often they don’t use subject headings. This is nearly impossible to do in OAI – people use lots of different controlled vocabularies.. and sometimes no controlled vocabulary at all. There are experiments being done with subject clustering. Algorithms are used to cluster like things together – but it still requires human intervention to make sure the clusters make sense.

On the other hand – if you are using a standard vocabulary, there is work being done to map from one standard to another. An example of this is the OCLC Metadata switch project .

Question : What about social taggging?

Jenn : We are in no position to turn down metadata.

Sarah: DSpace has a concept of community. There is a way to let a community organically build their own controlled vocabulary as they go – new contributions are provided choices of terms that have been used before.

Bill talked about the article about Michaelson where they gave the same finding aids to 40 archivists to use LCSH for picking subject headings. The result was 0 consistency! Every single archivist picked different subject headings.

Jordan: PennTags is an example of an effort to combine social tagging with traditional classification. It shows tagging not as competition but as another way to get user generated descriptive information. It is an example of a way to ‘get into the flow’.

Sarah: Google will now use OAI PMH as a site map for indexing, but it throws away the metadata.

Jenn: Dlib – representing digital collections on wikipedia article.

Bill: PennTags is acting as an aggregation system to pull siloed information together.

Question: In some cases EAD data is flattened down for all items so that each item has all the context data and only one field is different on each? Is this an indication that the mapping have been better?

Answer: It is a problem – can be a problem…ultimately it is all about use and audience.

My Thoughts

I came away from this session with my head whirling with ideas. I was so pleased to hear people talk about concrete examples. We need more examples of challenges and real world benefits to further efforts to aggregate, publish and share archival content and it’s metadata. None of this is easy, but each project will give us new lessons and add to the growing set of best practices.

I truly believe that the sooner we tackle these thorny problems, the sooner we will start seeing the impact in improved access to archival records. The sooner we deal with it, the less we will be adding data that will have to be fixed later.

For anyone who has been following my blog – you will already know about my ArchivesZ project from last spring. One of the big struggles we had was figuring out how to make the subject term metadata ‘useful’ for aggregation and visualization. Another example of the challenges and benefits to shareable metadata is the SAA presentation about Publisher’s Bindings Online .

I had one last sentence in my notes from this session – an idea for a Facebook application that would let you feature your favorite archival image or record. This would be an amazing example of getting archival records ‘in the flow’ and showing up in surprising new places where no-one is ‘looking’ for records. Hey – maybe I should prod the Footnote people with this idea. It might be right up their alley!

As is the case with all my session summaries from SAA2007, please accept my apologies in advance for any cases in which I misquote, overly simplify or miss points altogether in the post above. These sessions move fast and my main goal is to capture the core of the ideas presented and exchanged. Feel free to contact me about corrections to my summary either via comments on this post or via my contact form.

SAA2007: Publishers’ Bindings Online – Digitization, Collaboration, Standardization and Community Building (Session 707)

September 22, 2007 2 Comments

Session 707 of SAA2007 in Chicago discussed many aspects of the project that created Publishers’ Bindings Online (PBO). The full title of this session was The Anatomy of a Collaborative Digital Project and Lessons Learned in the Realms of Access, Outreach, and Creative Success: A Multi-Disciplinary Look at Publishers’ Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books. The presenters have kindly posted the full slide deck from their panel online. In this post I attempt to capture the main points of the presentation and Q&A discussion of PBO.

Who Spoke?

Jessica Lacher-Feldman (session chair) – University of Alabama, PBO project manager

Amy Rudersdorf – now at North Carolina State University, Digital production coordinator, NCSU special Collections, but was at University of Wisconsin, Madison during PBO project

Kristy Dixon – University of Alabama , PBO staff

PBO Project Overview

PBO was made possible by a 3 year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant. Originally awarded in 2003, the grant was extended once (and I think they mentioned additional funding being applied for). The primary grant funded the digitization of 10,000 images from up to 5000 book bindings. Ultimately 10,570 images were added to PBO and made searchable by metadata. The bindings selected included books from 1815-1930, primarily US titles and mostly in English.

Their guiding vision was of “giving something to the world that is both needed and useful” (and really beautiful). And they succeeded! PBO is a lot more than 10,000+ digitized book bindings. The project strived to make the information available in many different ways, including via:

a web-based database
online exhibits & galleries,
vodcasts and podcasts
web-based tutorials
virtual and real exhibits
presentations & class lectures
opportunities to adapt the project to other disciplines – history, book arts, librarianship, literature.. K-12 and more

Technology and Processes

The division of labor for PBO was split between the University of Alabama and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Many extensions to the OCLC SiteSearch based database were made by the UWDCC (UW Digital Collections Center) digital production center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison .

They went through an overview of the participants and staff – who did what.. what skills were needed and what was brought by the two institutions to the collaboration. They acknowledged their fabulous advisory group including Sue Allen – “the expert on publisher’s bindings”. Individuals from outside their teams contribute based on their special interest and knowledge about a specific individual (this contribution is still ongoing).

Working in collaboration forced them to wrestle with many challenges including:

staff in two locations – most of whom had never met
“long distance relationships are hard”
they had to work hard to ensure that all were ‘equally-valued participants’
standards – you need ground rules from the outset

Collaboration & Description

“Every pair of eyes are different”. PBO tapped into the resource of the ‘young fertile minds’ to power the project out of the local MLS programs at both institutions. Even with a detailed description form – there was confusion over subject headings and overlap – especially when those selecting subject headings were grad students who might not know the official terms for things. For example, the list of terms might include Ouroboros – but the students might not know this it is the term for a snake eating it’s own tail.

Ultimately they had to do quality control at a single location. They spent a LOT of time on this.

Their top tips for cultivating continuity for virtual project teams:

write into your grants money for travel (they stressed that your grant includes funds to support people meeting each other)
continuous communication is critical
‘shared working group website’ available online
email, conference calls and instant messaging (IM) for communication
regular reporting to each other
being project manager means that you have to be on top of everything – you need to be the glue
focus on the deliverables – use planning tools and timelines

They discovered that IM was key to developing trust between the two institutions.

Metadata – the core of the project

The key to their metadata approach was to consider a book less as a ‘bibliographic object’ and more as an ‘art object’.

They called books in PBO ‘objects’ but still kept the bibliographic metadata. They used Dublin Core by pulling the MARC data into the Dublin Core structure. As part of this they took all the subjects from the bibliographic info and moved it to the Dublin Core description and labeled it ‘book topic’. Then they used the ‘Subjects’ portion of the Dublin Core record to describe the binding and talk about what the images are OF. This is where the subject terms from the controlled vocabulary were added.

These are the steps of their metadata workflow process:

selection from collections of note – faculty, consultants and library staff did this step
description – used a paper form, described the books on paper and joined that description to what was in the MARC record – done by the grad students and library staff
metadata entry – entry of data through an online form – done by students (overseen by library staff) actually ended up being cheaper to manually enter the MARC data (rather than automated extraction)
quality control – content, grammar, spelling – done by library staff (took a lot more time than anyone expected)
no live update between their working Filemaker Pro database and the final SiteSearch database
record ownership – indicated in the identifier field (with a special code in the identifier) AND in the Submitter field

A lot of description went into this project.

They needed to develop a controlled vocabulary for the project. To do this they first worked with content specialists to develop a list. They used Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) terms where they could, as well as Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus. Then they added some local terms. The controlled vocabulary list evolved with the project and is the foundation of all teaching, search and more.

The speaker showed an example of the controlled vocabulary – the terms really are a window into the past. Users can browse the controlled vocabulary through the front end.

On the description paper form they had a list of ‘binding themes’ for those doing the description to pick from. A lot of work was done to get the huge list of themes onto a single page. Ultimately they had to provide some fill in the blank extension fields. For example, rather than believing they had listed every useful trade or profession, there was a section on the list labeled: Profession/Trade – _______________ with the expectation that those describing a binding might need to fill in the blank.

Digitization and The Database

Generally two scans were taken from each book, but sometimes as many as five. What did they scan? Front cover, spine, back cover and end papers.

There were two different image reformatting standards at the two institutions – 300 DPI vs 600 DPI. Both used a black background when scanning. All books were presented in as in condition – some have front/back covers missing. After the scanning they began with master TIFs and then transformed them to JPGs in three sizes in 72 DPI.

The presentation showed screen shots of:

simple search
brief view record in search results — which includes subjects
full record view – including display of all images associated with the book object record
gallery view – thumbnail, title and indication if there are one or more images related to the title
guided search (advanced search)
clickable subject headings

All the images in PBO are freely available for download.

With an eye to digital preservation, all the original uncompressed TIF images are archived in triplicate to digital archive tape and stored in three different locations. The metadata is stored with images in both text and SGML format (which is what SiteSearch works with). The full process documents are available on the project site.

Future Growth

The PBO team is talking to Louisiana State University (LSU) to figure out how PBO can grow. LSU would need to work and live with the way PBO works and learn their processes. They are talking to other institutions – if you are interested in adding content to PBO, please contact them.

The Richard Minsky Collection has been purchased and is being added to the project. This is a rich collection that was gathered to create a catalog. PBO has the catalog and all of Minsky’s research that goes with the collection. The goal is to feed as much of this rich data into PBO as possible. They are working with individual scholars and collectors to find other avenues for growth.

Value Added Components

One of the focuses of PBO has been to look beyond the digital images themselves to creating value added components for their user community.

A tutorial for users is provided, including information about how to email a record. A comprehensive bibliography has been created and is used by scholars. The page prompts users to submit feedback so the bibliography is a live document.

Over 30 galleries have been created – organizing access to essays and additional info by topic. Types of galleries include:

Galleries on Bindings and Book binding techniques – these are not really related to individual book objects – but give more information, for example Silver & Gold: The Art of Metal Stamping
Galleries on Collections – for example the Wade Hall Collection of Southern History and Culture
Galleries on Artistic Styles and Movements – a narrative approach provides information on the historical roots of the movements and show how the bindings fit into the movements
Galleries on History – they have 11 of these galleries,including major historical events, literature and culture of the time
Galleries on Literature

Links to trusted information outside of PBO’s site are shown whenever possible. For example – links to the full text of books are provided via Project Gutenberg. Throughout the site’s text link to sources such as the Library of Congress, .gov sites, PBS and so forth can be found.

Canned searches are provided to make it easy for users to explore content. An example of this is the Silver & Gold: The Art of Metal Stamping search that will find every binding with either silver or gold stamping. This is in contrast with making users figure out the right syntax to submit the search criteria themselves.

The Teaching Tools portion of the site provides sample lesson plans on all sorts of topics. They worked with some high school history teachers via focus groups and got feedback about what they needed and wanted. The Industrial Revolution lesson plan was created based on that feedback.

The research tools that were created as a result of the PBO project and are made available online are:

glossary – 456 terms defined using ten major authorities
bibliography of print & web resources
controlled vocabulary for subject headings
publishers map – an interactive map that includes 2123 publishers so far
tutorials on various subjects

Signed or Designer bindings is a new resource to which scholars continue to contribute new information.

Through collaboration with teaching faculty they developed the presentation such as Indians, the Frontier, and the West in American Bookbindings. This presentation will eventually be podcast on the PBO site. It talks about how these books inspired people to move west and inspired kids to read.

Another podcast is on the way addressing the representation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It will discuss how the book was it marketed to different groups – Yiddish, German… etc. There already exists a gallery and essay on Uncle Tom’s Cabin .

Conclusions

The team has been very pleased by the tangible scholarly impact of PBO. They have seen extensive collaboration with the university community, new research, and promotion of the use of special collections materials in the classroom using digital resources. They point to PBO as showing a path to preserve these increasingly fragile books by moving out of the general stacks and into special collections – with a result of increased access to the book and decreased handling.

The presenters avowed that PBO could never have been created by their team alone – working with consultants and advisers was the key to their success. They needed input from experts and others to help PBO grow and keep it sustainable. This interaction makes the project strong – it has it’s own legs and won’t cease to exist when the money disappears.

Publicity and outreach got attention on the PBO project from the very beginning. They made documenting their experiences and making recommendations about how to market digital projects part of the original plan in their grant proposals. These documents were part of their deliverables. They even published a white paper about PBO and outreach.

PBO uses Google Analytics so they can see where their users are coming from. Also it makes cool talking points for your reports and fun things to tell the Dean!

I think the best conclusion to my summary of the presentation portion of this session is the list of points on the final slide titled “Beyond the grant: Room to Grow”:

Potential future contribution from other repositories in the US and abroad…
Potential future collaboration with teaching faculty at UA and beyond
With additional collections, the database and the project will only grow stronger
Potential as a web portal, clearing house, or consortium
Additional potential funding opportunities, scholarship, and ways to highlight collections, resources, knowledge, and abilities

Questions and Answers

Keep in mind throughout this section that I am summarizing and paraphrasing the questions and their answers. Please do not take any statements as full and complete quotes. In cases where I missed too much of the question or answer I generally skipped including it in the list below. If you are anxious to know exactly what was said, you would need to buy and listen to the conference recordings for this session.

Question: Who maintains the website and who makes decisions about how things are going to get updated?
Answer: UA maintains the static web pages and UW maintains the database. The project manager has been in charge.. made prototypes of new design and sent it around for feedback. They have standards for colors in their handbooks.

Question: If the grant funding dried up right now would the project be sustainable?
Answer: There is support from the institutions… for example, it is just one project of many at UW.

Question: How did you get such good scans of the book spines?
Answer : At UW they used blocks or boxes to prop up the books and laid black foam core on top on flatbed scanners. At UA – they used black paper covered blocks in combination with overhead scanners.

Question: How did you get the full cover scans?
Answer: They very carefully lay the cover flat – so the pages sticking are sticking up.

Question: Who customized SiteSearch – OCLC or UW?
Answer: UW did the work – they had one and a half dedicated IT staff to do the customizations.

Question : Have you had to negotiate copyright issues for bindings from the late end of the time range of the project
Answer: No.

Question : Are you aware of others doing similar projects? Have you been approached and or are looking for others who want to contribute?
Answer: Yes. Right now they are working with LSU and are not actively seeking out new participants. There are plans to grow the project eventually.

Question: Did you think about the fact that you were creating your own online publication?
Answer: They didn’t realize it ahead of time – they didn’t realize how powerful the database was going to be to fuel their ability to build further on the work.

Question: Can you search for ‘young people’s covers’ – is there metadata for what age groups might enjoy specific books?
Answer: It depends on if it was part of the descriptive information, but you can search on ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ or ‘juvenile’ and gain useful results.

Question: Can you talk about the work behind the MARC to Dublin Core migration?
Answer: In some ways it was easier than they thought it would be – so many of the fields transfer directly from MARC to Dublin Core.. it was the revelation about the book as art object that made them realize the work they needed to do. Building the controlled vocabularies was where the heavy lifting occurred. It involved going through giant spread sheets with subject terms in alphabetical order looking for typos and working toward consistency (ie, use plurals). The spreadsheet didn’t show how many items used each term – it was hard to know how many changes would be needed.

Question: Do you get hits from the standard online catalog into PBO?
Answer: This is not happening now. They would love to build a better connection between the OPAC and PBO in both institutions.

Question: How did you make decisions when there were disagreements?
Answer: “I don’t remember any more.. it was all so beautiful…” <laughter > . There were no big issues about standards. There were more issues about the grant and things like how many images or books they were supposed to scan. In some cases it was easy because they were in charge of very different project areas – each team had “their own little fiefdom”.

Question: Do you think you might sell images to generate revenue?
Answer: They have considered it. The have made a calendar and a poster, but gave them away. They also have used images for making holiday cards. They don’t see selling images as a main goal right now.

Question: Have you considered pursuing online collaborative methods for work with the scholars and collectors?
Answer: No, but they think that would be useful to explore.

My Thoughts

I loved the energy and connection displayed by the presenters. It was fun to see a team of people who clearly were so proud of their work and pleased by its reception. I was personally intrigued by the highlighted challenge of coming up with (and painstakingly validating) their controlled vocabulary for subjects. I firmly believe that the topic of subject terms and their standardization across repositories will only grow in importance. For those interested in some of what is being done on this front – take a look at both the UK based High Level Thesaurus (HILT) and the Simple Knowledge Organisation Systems Core (SKOS) project. I suspect many will be intrigued by the SKOS use case titled An integrated view to medieval illuminated manuscripts.

Even given the mammoth effort required to create a shared controlled vocabulary, it is clear that the benefits they have reaped from this effort are still being discovered. The speakers mentioned on multiple occasions how pleased (and surprised) they were to realize how powerful their database of metadata has proven to be. All the amazing value added features build on this ‘heavy lifting’.

While it will be rare for such item level attention to be given to most archival documents, PBO sets the bar high for what can be done via collaboration across institutions. Their dedication to sharing their lessons learned is a fine example of what all big projects who are forging new frontiers could be doing. Finally – it is the weight of all the value added elements (galleries, tutorials, lesson plans.. and the list goes on) that have raised what could have been just a set of classified images in a database to being an active community with a growing draw for many types of users from around the world.

Category: access