Extracurricular activity

On a related note, I am going to be facilitating an extracurricular activity on Thursday afternoons at YouthBuild Charter School. We really don't know what form this will take -- It will depend on what the students are interested in -- but it's our vision to give them a way to put their year-culminating portfolio projects on the web, help them build simple websites to promote their businesses or passions, and reinforce computer skills. I am going to be creating a wiki as an example, and then linking it to and from this blog, so hopefully that will mean I will create more meaningful posts for this site as well -- Lead by example, right?

New Special Collections website

Well, I am still here! We recently launched a
new Special Collections website. So I may be not writing, but at least I am cranking! We have gotten through our first 60 batch of Owen Wister letters, and are working on creating our Digital Wisteriana / La Salliana concept. We've been spending a lot of time updating Wikipedia with information on the Wisters. Given that the Wisters' estate was on the La Salle campus, we are really poised to be an authority on the family. Many Google searches take you to another website that I am now in charge of -- Belfield and Wakefield: A Link to La Salle's Past. I recently took over this website from Dr. Jim Butler, who had made it with an honors English class in something like 1994. I think its going to be a wonderful opportunity to incorporate digital collections and things like internet based geneologies and such and breathe some life into a website that hasn't been updated in a while. I have changed the style sheet on this website to make it conform to the La Salle "brand" more and started incorporating some images from the Wister Special Collection, so please look for this to develop more over time.

Developments

We are cranking! It's amazing what a new budget year can do to a project. We have set up our digitization lab and are beginning to scan. The first project I have decided to tackle is the Wister family papers -- We are beginning with the letters of Owen Wister, author of the Virginian. I am busy developing my cataloging database, which we will be attempting to use METS and MODS, so my head is all over the LC website today. I will add some pictures soon.

Greenstone integration

When my puppy was just a few months old, we got a silly little card from our vet saying that "everyday is a new adventure." In spite of how corny this sounds, such is the same for a librarian trying to plan their first digital library project.

My project, I feel, has really taken on the shape and direction that I was initially lacking ever since our Director of Academic Computing suggested that whatever I choose should dovetail into Sakai. Whether we use Sakai or not is almost moot, at this point -- the real idea here is that our systems should be wide open and able to "talk" to our other systems. AC is working on that on their end; likewise, we should too.

So... I just learned yesterday about Greenstone's ability to integrate with DSpace. Apparently, you can develop in Greenstone and then transfer your collections and metadata to DSpace rather easily, and vice versa. You can use Greenstone as the frontend for DSpace, or you can scrap it entirely.

We are still looking for our "quick and dirty" UI to mount our collections soon -- This is looking like a highly likely route.

Further reading:

Computer Science Thesis from Virginia Tech, outlining an open XML schema for DSpace

New PACSCL website

I am fortunate to be La Salle's web liasion to the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collection Libraries. They have just launched a new dynamic website for member libraries to announce collections, exhibitions, lectures, etc. It is set up as a content management system, for member libraries to manage their own posts.

Check it out:
www.pacscl.org

And the prize goes to... DSpace!

At long last, I have settled on developing DSpace for La Salle. Everytime that I talk repositories to faculty, they want to start throwing teaching materials into it. I found an interesting paper that talks about the possible integrations of DSpace with Sakai, an alternative to Blackboard which I was asked to find out how my systems may integrate with. Also, I saw a posting yesterday that Fedora and DSpace have recently decided to try to identify some areas to work together. We still don't feel confident that we could develop Fedora here without a programmer, but we feel good about DSpace being within our skillsets. I still have a crush on Fedora, and would welcome the intersection of the two systems to allow me more opportunity to play with that system as well.

I had originally not considered DSpace, as I always thought that it was just for ETDs. People are using it differently than that, and as I started demoing CONTENTdm and asking users about their experiences, I started getting pointed to DSpace more and more, given our desire to manage diverse scholarly materials and didactic resources. The dealsealer was seeing how Australian National University migrated from CONTENTdm into DSpace and came up with something what I would be looking to create for our Special Collections: http://anulib.anu.edu.au/subjects/ap/digilib/.

We're still early enough in our digitization game here that I don't want to end up locking us into a proprietary database without getting a greater sense of the digital directions of the campus. The openness of the code and flexibility of metadata input/output will set us up for optimum interoperability with future systems. Also, DSpace runs on Dublin Core, which is far from intimidating, but also allows input of METS, which I think should allow for a fun challenge.

Now the preservation question... OCLC's digital archive service is still looking pretty good, as they are reasonably priced compared to other services. I also may be looking at using the money that I save on software acquisition to mount an argument for Sun Microsystems' Honeycomb or something along those lines. It is too onorous to throw manual digital preservation administration and data backup on top of a librarian's other duties -- Therefore, all redundancies and reporting will be automated and/or outsourced so that it is done efficiently and effectively.

DAM list

So, I keep using this blog more for the list of quick links at the right to cool digital libraries and less like a "web log." The bad librarian in me doesn't tag these entries anyway. I do think there is a shortage of comprehensive lists of systems, and I will do my best to keep this one up over time.

Hiatus over, summer's coming...

So, I have successfully lasted in my new position for about 9 months now, and can see the end of the school year. At some point around February, my schedule started to get crazier, and I knew that is a sign of my successes. Here's brief summary of our activities for the last 2 months.

DAM software -- Jury is still out, but we're getting close to a decision on how to proceed. After much deliberation, open source is out, as we just don't have the infrastructure to support it. CONTENTdm is still in the running. I am going to be looking at 3 more products -- VTLS's Vital, which runs on FEDORA, ArchivalWare and Olive. Hopefully we will have 1 -2 possible scenarios by next week.

OCLC's Dark Archive is another service that we are looking at, which would run complementary to the asset management system. I am not sure how widely publicized this is, as there are only currently about 30 customers for it. But OCLC will can be used as an outsourcing agent to manage the big wieldy masters, through a combo of tape and hard disk. They keep one copy of everything online on disk, and then keep 3-5 copies rotating through on tape. I feel really good about our possible adoption of this service.

I also successfully implemented our first distance library instruction service -- One of our prof's wanted me to go out to Buck's County to talk about the AV department, so I worked with our Academic Computing department to use recently acquired video conferencing equipment. It was a feel good experience for all, as the class was on new technology in the classroom, and we were able to lead by example. Also AC was excited to have an opportunity to use the equipment in a non-traditional environment, meaning not in one of the smart classrooms. I feel like in time library instruction will have to have this service readily available to accomodate the needs of further distance education iniatives.

I've been busy gallavanting around, too -- Attended the Computers in Libraries conference, Grant Writing at Palinet and a Web 2.0 / Scholarly Communication Symposium at Drexel. Comparable to drinking from a hose, I am fully information saturated. I will be excited to announce our new initiatives as they are fully flushed out in the next couple of weeks, though.

Photomerge in CS3

We have only very small scanners at La Salle. I have a nice new Epson Expression 10000XL on order, but in the meantime I am using circulation's little 8 1/2 x 11 scanner that they use for e-reserves. Its a little cumbersome and far from ideal, but it allows me the opportunity to get to know the Photomerge function in Photoshop CS3 -- which is a certainly handy enough tool to share.

So here were my raw scans of an object that is approx. 20 in X 16 in.

I opened all these up in Photoshop. All I did was go to File -- Automate -- Photomerge, and clicked add all open files, click OK -- And viola! Like a dream, it matches up all the scans perfectly to create a cohesive image, and even comspenates for seam lines, edges, and variations in scan quality and color.
I over cleaned it up a little bit in Photoshop, so this is not an archival quality object, but it gives me a "real" enough object to work with through our demos, and to see how MARC records will relate to it.

Pretty handy, eh? Created a good looking digital object in about 15 min, from scanning to finish.

Academy of Natural Sciences Digital Collections

I suppose this is also also a repository spotlight, but it is also a plug for a friend's institution. A friend of mine works as the cataloger at the Academy of Natural Science's library. She forwarded me the link to their digital collections today, and I really love the design of the site. They don't necessarily have a lot of their digitization work up there, but what they do have up there is colorful, bright and well-layed out. I would love to be able to click on a picture to get the full information, but it does a wonderful job of placing images in context and explaining what they are. Its quality of content over quantity, and I think in my heart that's what I'm feeling with all my introspection on design. I would go back to the site simply because it has beautiful vibrant images, and I can recall what the site made me feel after I leave it.

They, from what I know, don't have an internet access system, such as ContentDM or DigiTool or the other ones that I'm looking at. They rely on just solid design that integrates tightly and seemlessly into the Academy's website. The other sites that have content in an out-of-the-box looking DAM just don't give you the feeling of a) the institution's values; b) the richness of the materials; c) the method and rationale for digitization; d) connection to the rest of the institution.

Thanks, ANS -- I think you got it goin' on.

http://www.ansp.org/museum/digital_collections/

Repository spotlight: Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection

http://digital-libraries.saic.edu/cdm4/index_jfabc.php?CISOROOT=/jfabc

I just got back to the office from ALA's midwinter meeting, and will be sharing my notes about the conference over the course of the next few weeks.

I did want to make a note of the School of the Art Institute's Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection, as design-wise it's one of the first ContentDM sites that I have seen that looks like it has transcended the look and structure that ContentDM gives you right out of the box. I thought this was notable, given my last posting. I like the interface -- Simple, straightforward, unintimidating and unique.

I got the impression that they are using ContentDM because it is available, rather than having chosen that for themselves. They are using simple Dublin Core for their metadata, as that is what the software supports. Their ILS is Voyager and they use OCLC Connexion to push a MARC record into ContentDM. The woman presenting this collection ended with plea: "Ask OCLC to use METS and MODS *please!*"

Starting off the new year...

So, we are pretty much at the same place as we were in the middle of December. I got myself lost in a bunch of Cascading Style Sheets and PhotoShop tutorials and have recently reemerged with nothing really to show for my time. I do feel very confident in my CSS skills, which I believe will be of great help in the long run.

What I have noticed is that I am fixated on design over content right now. I don't know if that is where I really should be, but I do think there is merit to fretting over how something looks. I am a fully aesthetic person, and I feel like I don't go back to a digital library site unless it looks good to me. So many sites I have checked out may have great content, but if the design looks like a DAM system right out of the box, I turn off to it.

Allowing the content only to fuel a site is good for researchers, yes, as (hopefully) they can get on and find what they need in the most efficient manner. La Salle's Connelly Library, it has been noted by my director, is not a research library, nor will it most likely ever be. The Special Collections are strong and relatively comprehensive -- thought my director has also pointed out that he's not sure the research value in our bible collection, nor is our Viet Nam collection a "traditional" collection, as it is based somewhat in popular culture.

What I am getting at here is that I am rather unconvinced that the strength of our content alone would allow for us to slack off on design. I want my DAM to look awesome, so that repeat visitors will be coming back for both the content and the design of the site. Whichever DAM I choose will integrate itself back and forth between our library website and its special collections pages. I want our DAM to look first like La Salle University's digital collections, rather than firstly like just another university digital collections site.