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.

Where we are at...

I am putting off thinking about what my access tool will be until the ALA Mid-Winter Meeting, which is here in Philadelphia, and will allow for me to be totally overwhelmed by the vendor exhibits. My director and I have talked briefly, however, and I am on track to acquire my software sometime between April and June.

In the meantime, I get to play with Special Collections. I'm really listening to Dr. Skinner when she said that you need to know your collection before you choose the tool, so I'm revamping the Special Collections website and photographing the collections to learn what we have, meaning both physical objects and their bibliographic control. What diverse, fun stuff!

Here's a couple of highlights:

This is an illuminated bible from the 14th Century.


This is an artist's book of Ho Chi Minh, handprinted on rice paper in a handmade case.


And then there are kitchen matches from the premier of Rambo 3 in France.

This quickly shows the range of materials I will be working with. We have both the written word, preserved carefully in our Bible collection, and then there is the Vietnam War collection, intentionally a collection of artistic expressions including both fine art and ephemeral novelties. My challenge here is to come up a methodology for exposing these materials in a thought-out, cohesive manner. Hopefully by the time I'm ready to choose my software, I'll be ready to tackle the digital needs of the collections.

Stewardship of Digital Assets @ Palinet (Post 2)

Alright -- Onto Day 2 of my notes from the Stewardship of Digital Assets workshop!

Dr. Katherine Skinner from Emory University and the MetaArchive spoke for 3/4 of the day. Her interest in digital preservation has risen from her doctoral research on emergent fields. While digital preservation is a few steps beyond just stumbling in the dark at this point, it is still an emergent field and we should "get used to the discomfort" of what goes along with being on the bleeding edge.

In her definition, Skinner describes digital preservation as the "management and maintenance of digital information over a long period of time." How long, she says, is unknown at this point, but its sure is longer than many of our access systems will be around, which is currently running at about 3 years per system. This is why adopting recognized standards are important -- for interoperability -- between systems and between collaborating institutions.

Skinner's largest project of the last few years has been in developing the MetaArchive, which was in turn developed out of the Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) framework created by Stanford. The idea behind LOCKSS and the MetaArchive is that a minimum of 6 copies of information is stored across a large geographic space (could be even across several continents). Automated checks continually verify the accuracy and completeness of data. If anything happens to a single file in one of the repositories then the other 5 check to make sure their data is complete, and replace the bad or corrupt file in the 6th location. This idea of spreading information across a great geographic area could help restore information in the case of a major disaster. An example that Skinner gave was NPR content that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina was able to be restored from the mirrored content kept at Emory University.

The biggest "AHA!" that came out of the day for me was that if you choose your access tool too early in the digital library design process, then your collection ends up becoming bound by the tool. By examining and fully understanding your collection, you can choose a tool that allows for curation of the materials that complements the care received by the analog materials. Process for selection should be identifying materials, seeing what information is available (ie. cataloging record) and then choose the metadata. Only when this process is complete should the tool be selected. I will have more thoughts on how this will change my approach to developing my repository in a later post.

The presentation was great, and the instructors knowledgable and friendly. They realize fully that as the field is new, no one really truly knows what they are doing for the long haul, and the more that we can help each other out, the more successful the digital preservation program will be.