from geekandpoke

I’m just in the midst of reading this ITHAKA S+R report on the sustainability of digital “projects.” It’s one of those reports where the basic ideas are so simple, but you didn’t realize that you knew them until you read it. Among the things that they suggest are vital to sustainability of projects:

• Dedicated and entrepreneurial leadership (this could also be ongoing leadership: how many digitization projects do you know of that fell apart or became static after the project manager left)?
• A clear value proposition (as in clear evidence of the value of the project)
• Minimizing direct costs (hello appropriate outsourcing!)
• Developing diverse revenue sources (of course that’s a dirty word in some parts of the academy)
• Clear accountability and metrics for success

The question I am increasingly coming to grips with is: In an era of “Do More with Less” what priority does digitization take in the grand scheme of library work? Especially since a lot of us are still out there at the grass roots level trying to raise support. We know that there is a future for this material, but in some cases our faculty don’t yet fully realize what they can do with it (Digital Humanists aside). They may be pleased to be able to replicate as much of their traditional research paradigm online as they can, but it’s hard to argue that we need twice as many resources so we can provide redundant online and in-house services. The small but growing field of Digital Humanities can be effective partners, but they are just one group. Even our own fellow librarians may not be able to grasp how it is more than “putting pictures online”.

In the face of possibly taking another 10% budget cut here that will reduce the staff even further, is digitization the priority? If we do have to cut back, what do we deem the essential activities:

• Digitization, but less robust metadata
• Digitization and metadata but little to no preservation activity
• Very limited further development of repository tools (this includes both public and administrative tools)

Obviously, a lot of work done by the digital curation communities (DigCCurr, DCC, and ICPSR being among the most prominent) can be a guide, but studies of sustainability seem to reinforce the idea that we can’t cut back, that the only way to ensure that these materials meet their potential is to continue to invest resources into maintaining them, and even to increase those resources into the future. So instead of cutting back as above, should I as project manager begin looking into more diverse and creative ways to find funding outside of my organization’s budget? Is it time to create the “digital swear jar” that Ann and I used to joke about (in which we would put an online donation link in the repository and ask people to donate a dollar every time they swore)?

Image courtesy of Flickr user marttj

Image courtesy of Flickr user law_kevin

Question: Will the way volumes are digitized today change the way that work is done in the future: less close reading more broad reading/more data mining and deduction across corpora. Are the traditional monograph-driven disciplines a strong enough force against the tides of Google-ization (i.e. the “close enough” answer is the good enough answer)?
These questions are being explored by author David Weinberger in an upcoming book he’s working on called Too Big To Know and he gives some insight into his writing process and the arguments he is pulling together for his book on his Joho the Blog. It’s interesting both from the perspective of getting an inside look at an author’s process and for the sake of the arguments themselves. Check it out.

This report describes blight in Hamlet, NC.

This is the collection I hinted at way back in March (and yes, I’m as enthusiastic about these reports today as I was then).  I haven’t come up with any secrets regarding how to quickly and efficiently draw people to what’s inside; most of my ideas involve a lot of loving description, as I speculated months back. For now, I’m relying on a relatively straightforward web site and word of mouth.

We’re still in the process of scanning and uploading materials, but there’s plenty for people to explore at this point. We won’t get through scanning all of the printed reports as a part of this grant project, but should end up with at least 200-250 in the collection.

I’ve listed some complementary North Carolina collections and resources on the “More Resources” page, but if you know of and can recommend any others send them my way and I’ll make sure they get on the site.  As always, we’d love any feedback you might have.

We are exploring lots of options for digital asset management systems – right now, we are experimenting with a home-grown system, and while the backend seems ok so far, the interface needs major work. It’s clunky. The system also lacks capabilities for global find-and-replace, implementing controlled vocabularies, and easy data import/export. Also, folks with levels of expertise ranging from super-duper advanced to novice will be working on our projects, so we want to ensure some ease of use.

We’ve also been playing around with ContentDM, Omeka, and Fedora. There are aspects of all three that I really like and things that cause me some concern. (We’re excluding DSpace from the mix simply because it seems much more suitable for IRs and the like, but please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about that and you love using DSpace for image-based collections.)

So I come to you, my digital library pals – I’m sure you have strong opinions on these products. Do you have songs of praise to sing about any of them? Any huge warnings about what NOT to go with? We want to make sure we get as many perspectives as we can so we choose the right system for our needs.

Here’s where we need your help (and I was able to work in reference to the term “crowdsourcing”).

We need a name that makes it clear that we aren’t NC ECHO, the Digital Heritage Center, or NC State (all of which either are in some way related to the State Library or State Archives or have the words “North Carolina” and “State”  in their name). The name should (a) make reference to the Archives & Library or (b) be completely neutral (and I think that we prefer a “neutral”  name as it allows our partnerships to grow, potentially).  We’ll be providing access to the historic and contemporary records and publications of state government (as we do now), and the name needs to reflect that (probably).  These materials can be as diverse as the Library’s 2003 document about prosecuting computer crimes from the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety to the Archives’s Black Mountain College publications and promotional photographs from the Department of Tourism. And, we’re both divisions within the Department of Cultural Resources, so there is some question as to whether we need to work a reference to that in?

Now, I realize that a name containing all of this information would be ridiculous, but I’m providing this information to give you some background.

OK. Let the crowdsourcing begin…

On the one hand, this is good. We’ve completed a number of larger projects this year and our student workers can really focus on projects involving similar formats and workflows, increasing efficiency. However, now the tide has turned and several members of the Special Collections department are asking to have the pdfs “attached” to the finding aid (which, to us means, deposit it in the repository, create metadata, store for the long-term with the best methods possible…because the whole point is to organize all this digital ephemera not just have it “attached” to the finding aid).

So now I have the proverbial Angel on one shoulder and Devil on the other:

Angel: Access to something is better than nothing!
Devil: But pdfs of photographs and manuscripts? Ew.
A: They are perfectly readable online, i.e. access ready
D: But we don’t have a built in pdf viewer…yet…
A: We have asked, and gotten, identifiers, titles, and descriptions which is all we ask for to begin a digitization request anyway
D: But should we spend so much time on improving the metadata (which we will eventually do, if we follow the current workflow) of pdfs?
A: They are already just sitting around on servers, why not use them?
D: But if we deposit them, think of all the overhead involved? Would we be committing to digital preservation?
A: Aren’t you just being a snob?
D: No, I’m being a good steward of resources!

So I leave it to you, collaborators, what would you do?

a) The vast majority of graduate-level library school students begin my class equating digitization with digital preservation. While digitization can be a component of digital preservation (e.g., film-to-video transfer), I think the vast majority of us would agree that this is not the case. I think many of us in the “digital field” assume that our colleagues in other areas of the library profession understand this, but I assert that this may not be the case. If the new crop of librarians coming through our programs don’t (and students at San Jose are as smart and savvy as students in on-site programs), it is fair to think that at least a few of our colleagues who have been working in reference, circulation, administrative, or other “non-digital” library roles for a few years may need a refresher.

Even WordPress knows it is wrong.

b) Many (OK, maybe it is only several, but it feels like many) of my students begin the course using the term “digitalization.” I suggest that if they are Canadian or British that I can understand why they might use it, but that they should stop. Immediately. Because those of us working in the field will (1) quit reading their resumes when we come to that word in their cover letter assuming that they don’t really know what they are talking about, or (2) snicker behind their backs when we hear them say it, and don’t take what they have to say seriously. Now, I realize that isn’t very nice to tell a newcomer to the field, but I look at it as tough love. If I’m honest with them now, I am sparing them the pain (and cost!) of rejection later.

c) They are amazed at how challenging digital preservation really is. Can’t I just save my files to a DVD/jump drive/hard drive/pick your media, and forget about it? Nope. I equate it to caring for a toddler. You *think* you can leave them alone for a few minutes while you wash the dishes and fold some laundry, but when you locate them again, they are typically covered in Playdoh(tm), finger paints, mud, soapy water, or all of the above. It’s the same with digital files. You think you can burn them to a CD or save them to your hard drive, graduate from school, get a new job, get married, and those files will be happily living on that media. And then. Disaster strikes. Files on the CD don’t open; your computer’s hard drive dies. Just like kids, you’ve got an ongoing responsibility and a lot of work ahead of you to ensure that they don’t just survive, but that they live long, safe, and “happy” lives.

While I may not be providing any dramatic or new insight into these issues, it is a good reminder to us all to remember how we talk about these issues and how patrons and librarians who are not as active in this aspect of our field think about them. It isn’t just about ensuring the longevity of our digital “stuff,” but it is also about making sure that people understand the hard work you do to make sure that their “stuff” is safe.

My two cents on this hot June day in North Carolina.

The grant allowed WFU and FCPL to purchase equipment for five digitization centers at library locations throughout Forsyth County (Z. Smith Reynolds Library and four FCPL locations: Central Library, Walkertown Branch Library, Lewisville Branch Library, and the Malloy/Jordan East Winston Heritage Center). In addition, it provided funding for guest speakers to do preservation and digitization instruction in a day-long workshop format. The first of the five workshops was a pilot, followed by another session reserved for members of local community organizations (postcard announcements were sent to everyone from the Afro-American Genealogical and Historical Society to the local railroad history appreciation society). Subsequent sessions were open to the general public.

One thing we recognized after the sessions became open to the public was a strong interest in preservation and digitization. Community members brought in yearbooks, photo albums, family bibles, and other items as well as lots of questions about how to use the flatbed scanner, VHS to digital converter, audio cassette to digital converter, and slide scanner. Barry Davis, Digital Production Coordinator at ZSR, helped create online guides to using the equipment and will be posting online videos demonstrating both physical preservation and how to use the equipment. Local families, history societies, and organizations hold small but valuable records of our community’s past — and they want to preserve them.

After demonstrating the use of the digitization equipment, the public was informed that they could participate in Digital Forsyth by sharing their digital and digitized photos through the Digital Forsyth Flickr group (also available through the Digital Forsyth community page). The group’s page notes that images may be harvested for use in Digital Forsyth. We ask participants to post other formats to YouTube, Internet Archive, and Scribd, since we do not provide storage space for these materials. These local digital collections, ideally, can be shared in multiple ways. Training for how to use the equipment will continue through the Forsyth County Computer Training Bridge at various locations around the county.

With the grant wrapping up at the end of this month, I have had time to reflect on how I think the project could have been improved. While organizations and the general public were thrilled with free seminars about hands-on preservation, organization, and digitization, we did not spend much time talking about what would be done with materials post-digitization. Concepts like metadata and digital storage are only briefly touched upon and could be emphasized in the future. In addition, there is still potential for the community to participate in a larger version of Digital Forsyth that collocates multiple digital formats to preserve the many layers of this area’s history and culture. In sum, it has been a joy to experience firsthand the effort to include personal collections and community-based archives in the discussion about digitization.

Since starting my position as a project archivist at Wake Forest University just over a month ago, I have begun formulating the concept of a digital collections program and team. Many of our digital projects have been exhibit- and project-based, making workflow irregular and interface design somewhat incongruent. A consultation from Lyrasis (and its supporting report) a few months before my arrival echoes these concerns: “[a] goal is to move forward from embarking on disparate digitization projects, which may have little or no relation to each other in how they are planned or conducted, to a policy-based, strategically-planned digitization program.” My initial reaction: how?

The phrase “policy-based, strategically-planned digitization program” became my mantra. After talking with the many library faculty involved with digitization projects in the past, I came to the conclusion that we all wanted the same thing: direction and a process. Before I arrived, a tech librarian developed selection criteria, a workflow, and a “digital projects process” proposal that included a digital projects advisory group. His ideas were excellent, but it appears that library faculty were not yet on board with the concepts he described. Today, the need for a formal digitization workflow (from selection to completed metadata and beyond) as well as a digital collection development policy and team is clear.

First, I am wrangling in the digital projects that were created before we converted to dSpace (the former were created using Encompass and there are metadata conversion issues). Our tech team is working incredibly hard to write scripts and convert corrupted XML files into usable metadata for use with already digitized special collections resources. My role is to make sure that the metadata is clear and complete, as well as to shake out any existing issues with file naming or digital arrangement. There are a few digital collections that were artificially created (grouped by format, for example) that do not identify the originating record group or fond, so this is a small fix that can help researchers access the appropriate collection or fond when they want to know the provenance of a digital object from our collections.

Second, I am working to bring together folks from special collections and technology and preservation and copyright to form a “task force” with discrete goals in mind: to create a digital collection development policy and to create a digital collection proposal process. We might have to work on the naming, but the goals will be clear. For me, a digital collections program is not complete without criteria for selecting the next big or little digital project (and even some guidelines for scan-on-demand). Once these policies are developed, the group will shrink to a smaller advisory group (as proposed by my colleague) that makes decisions collaboratively about appraisal, selection, and nomination of digital projects/collections.

Sort of simultaneously, I will wear my other hat as processing archivist to create a basic inventory of unprocessed and underprocessed collections/fonds so that we can have a better idea of what we have physically/intellectually. If you don’t know what you have, how can you prioritize what should be digitized next? Of course, being an archivist, I want to consider ways to connect finding aids to digital objects…but that’s another post or two.

So where does that leave us? In the meantime of forming the task force, I am doing research to see what other institutions have developed. I’ve got the NC ECHO digitization guidelines in hand, as well as resources/policies from Berkeley’s Digital Publishing Group, Digital Collections at ECU, U Pitt’s Digital Research Library, the NINCH Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials, and the NISO Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. Because I went to library school at UCLA, I also have experience working with the California Digital Library and its tools. I know there is a lot of reading and learning to be done to ensure that our process is successful. We are planning a visit to ECU later this spring to see how they formulated their practices, but I am also interested in what other institutions are doing. Do you have any guidelines or tools that you have found particularly useful in developing your own policies and digital collections?

Recently, I’ve been mulling over a collection we’re in the process of digitizing through our ASGII grant. It’s a group of 1960s urban development reports from our state publications collection. Partially funded through a federal urban planning grant under the Housing Act of 1954, these reports were the product of efforts by the Division of Community Planning under the North Carolina Department of Conservation (now the Department of Environment and Natural Resources). These reports deal with local areas – counties, towns, and even lakes or neighborhoods. They have titles like “Land use plan, Goldsboro, North Carolina” and “Population and economy of Forest City, N.C.”

Have your eyes glazed over yet? Here’s the issue – these reports are great! Urban planners went out and scrutinized a community, reporting back with demographics, maps, photographs, personal interviews, and projections for the future that included jaunty stick figures walking down updated main streets. The reports talk about areas of urban blight, have high level surveys of historic buildings, and even include soil and traffic maps. If you want to see what downtown Graham was like in 1967 (someone does, right?) and what they predicted for that area at that point in time, these reports are a valuable resource. The materials inside could really be of interest to genealogists, archaeologists, historians, local leaders – all user groups whose eyes will probably slide right over the words “land use plan.”

So what have I been mulling over? How do we draw people into a collection like this? More specifically: with mass digitization, or even moderately-large-scale digitization, how do we leverage information inside of digital objects when the usual amount of metadata won’t cut it? In some ways, this is the traditional archival processing conundrum of item-level vs. folder-level vs. collection-level description. But I’m not trying to justify item-level description here, I’m trying to bend my brain to think of ways we can draw the inside information out.

My first thoughts centered on doing some TLD (tender loving description) on the maps, which represent a pretty significant and useful subset of pages within these reports. But that sort of care isn’t something I believe should be part of our priorities here. Then I thought “What I really need is more progressive OCR and presentation of digitized statistics.” This sort of technology development is pretty well beyond my current capabilities and resources. Finally, I pondered the current go-to idea for digital librarians: tagging and other social phenomena that shift some of the description burden to the users. While interesting in many respects, it wouldn’t get me the high quality, across-the-board coverage I’m after (assuming our users would even help us out).

As you can see, my first reaction is to throw more words at this challenge. I think we sometimes try to tack on as much metadata as we can, as quickly as we can, all in the hopes of vying for fickle user attention. I’m not sure throwing words at the items or the users is truly the most effective way to make inroads into our digital collections, but I certainly haven’t figured out what the most effective way is. I’m still negotiating the line between a level of curatorial care that I don’t believe we can or should maintain, and the library equivalent of those web pages that simply load their white space with words to catch the search engines. I’m sure these urban development reports won’t be the last things I see that make me think “There’s great stuff in here!” I’m sure some librarian standing in front of a stack of scrolls thought the same thing. What I’m not sure about, but am still working on, is how to get that inside information out.