Local History and Museum Workshops: Digitizing Collections May 6, 2005

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Local History and Museum WorkshopsDigitizing
CollectionsMay 6, 2005

• Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects
• Vicki Tobias, UW Digital Services Librarian
• University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center

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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Project Workflow

PRE- PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION
POST- PRODUCTION
Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Pre-Production

• Project Management

• Materials Selection

• Inventory Control

• Storage

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Pre-Production Project Management

• Project staff

• Project manager and production staff

• Lead worker and line staff

• Staff management

• Roles and responsibilities

• Training document for production staff

• Periodic evaluation and retraining

• Prepare for staff turnover!

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Pre-Production Project Management

• Timeline and schedule

• Benchmark dates for all project work

• Representative sample (e.g., metadata,
  reformatting, etc.)

• Fixed or flexible deadlines

• Be realistic!

• Periodic project meetings

• Review schedule and timeline

• Progress reports from project staff

• Address project problems

• Document decisions!

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Pre-Production Project Management

• Project documentation

• Record all major project decisions

• Create and document project workflow

• Document all technical details (e.g. scanning
  specs, etc.)

• Review and revise timeline and workflow, as needed

• Project management system

• Database or project management software

• Track project details (e.g. deadlines, workflow,
  inventory, statistics, etc.)

• Centralize key information and update!

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Pre-Production Project Management

• UWDCC Digital Projects Administrative Database

• Project-level informationTitle, key players,
  dates, pertinent details, documentation

• Phase-level informationMaterials, technology,
  metadata and reformatting dates

• InventoryProject/phase-level, items, dates
  in/out, contact person, storage

• Staff and student hoursProject/phase-level,
  administrative, production work

• Reports Project statistics, projects in
  production details

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Pre-Production Project Management

• UWDCC pre-production documentation

• Project QuestionnaireBasic project idea,
  completed by content provider

• Materials AssessmentCompleted by UWDCC staff,
  site visit

• Cost EstimateCompleted by UWDCC staff, based on
  assessment, questionnaire

• Project BriefSummary document for committee
  approval

• Memo of UnderstandingBetween UWDCC and content
  provider, signed pre-production

• Project Schedule and TimelineBased on
  information from cost estimate, MOU

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Pre-Production Materials Selection

• Survey holdings and evaluate collections

• are important to institution, users, community

• have value (historic, physical, monetary)

• are appropriate for digitization (intellectual
  content, physical format)

• Select content that

• meets project goals and deliverables

• can be digitized within available resources

• have rights or permission to create and publish
  a digital version (or can acquire)

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Pre-Production Inventory Control

• Use database or spreadsheet to track

• content provider information

• bibliographic data

• dates in/date out

• storage location

• special handling or storage needs

• transfer information

• other pertinent details

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Pre-Production Storage

• Physical environment

• temperature and humidity

• light

• adequate space

• Security

• controlled access

• sign in/sign out project materials

• locked

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production

• Reformatting

• Metadata

• Web Interface / Infrastructure

• Quality Control / Testing

• Preservation

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Reformatting

• Consider the following

• original media type (e.g., book, photo, 3-D
  object)

• original media condition (e.g., fragile, bound,
  color, B/W)

• end product, user experience

• access or preservation

• grant-based or fixed project requirements

• Reformatting specifications

• resolution/dpi (dots per image)

• bit-depth

• color, B/W, grayscale

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Reformatting

• Follow professional standards for image capture

From Moving Theory into Practice Digital Imaging
Tutorial, Cornell University (http//www.library.c
ornell.edu/preservation/tutorial)
Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Reformatting

• File Naming Standards

• Use file-naming schemes that are compatible
  across platforms and systems

• Use only lower case characters a-z, numerical
  digits, and the following special characters
  period, hyphen, and underscore

• Do not use spaces or any other special characters

• File names in your metadata records must match
  associated image file names

• When developing a file-naming scheme, have a
  good understanding of the whole project
• How many images will be scanned?
• Will they be stored in different directories? 
• Are the files part of larger complex objects?

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Reformatting

• Follow professional standards for image capture

• Library of Congress, American Memory
  Projecthttp//memory.loc.gov/ammem/formats.html

• California Digital Librarywww.cdlib.org/inside/gr
  oups/stas/standards/

• Columbia Digital Librarywww.columbia.edu/acis/dl/
  imagespec.html

• Moving Theory into Practice Digital Imaging
  TutorialCornell Universitywww.library.cornell.ed
  u/preservation/tutorial

• Recommendations for Digitizing for RLG Cultural
  Materialswww.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID220File
  naming

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Metadata

• What is it?

• data about data

• the sum total of what one can say about any
  information object at any level of aggregation

• descriptive, structural, and administrative

• Why should I care about it?

• user access

• context and meaning

• long-term stability and preservation

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Metadata

• Consider the following

• Necessary level of description for user and
  project

• Time and resources available for metadata creation

• Availability of subject specialists for
  descriptive metadata

• Professional standards

• Develop and apply data entry standards

• Follow professional standards

• e.g. Dublin Core metadata

• set of 15 standardized data fields

• DC_Title, DC_Author, DC_LocalID

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Metadata

• Follow professional standards for metadata

• The Library of Congress Core Metadata
  Elementswww.loc.gov/standards/metadata.html

• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
• http//dublincore.org/

• Getty Standards Program, Introduction to
  Metadata Pathways to Digitization
• www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standa
  rds/intrometadata/index.html

• Descriptive Metadata Guidelines for RLG Cultural
  Materialswww.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID214

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Web Interface / Infrastructure

To build in-house?
To buy off the shelf?

• Customize to fit project and user needs

• Less flexible design and interface

• Requires in-house expertise (e.g. IT staff)

• Vendor upgrades and technical support

• Compatibility with peer projects

• Control content and presentation

• Initial and on-going costs

• Initial and on-going costs

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Web Interface / Infrastructure

• Consider the following

• Time and resources necessary for

• initial development and testing

• stakeholder buy in

• long-term maintenance

• End user needs and expectation

• Project contents (e.g. photos, text, etc.)

• Project deliverables

• Accessibility issues

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects
Production Web Interface / Infrastructure
UW Digital Collections Center Home page
http//uwdc.library.wisc.edu/
Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects
Production Web Interface / Infrastructure
UW Digital Collections CenterCollections page
http//uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections.html
Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects
Production Web Interface / Infrastructure
University of Wisconsin Collectionhttp//digital.
library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/UW
Ecology and Natural Resources Collectionhttp//di
gital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/EcoNatRes
Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects
Production Web Interface / Infrastructure
UW Digital Collections Center MULTIMEDIA MODEL

• For images, audio, video, etc.
• SiteSearch application
• Dublin Core metadata.
• Predefined search, keyword search or advanced
  guided search function to search collection.
• Results displayed in Brief, Full, or Gallery
  view.
• Image records presented in three or four image
  sizes thumbnail, reference, large, and extra
  large.

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects
Production Web Interface / Infrastructure
UW Digital Collections Center EFACS
(PAGETURNER) MODEL

• For books, letters, journals and other text-based
  materials.
• Browse resources by title, author, journal title,
  or sub-collection.
• Simple, Boolean, or proximity search options.
• Search results presented in hierarchical or
  nested display.
• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) text provided
  in addition to page image.

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Web Interface / Infrastructure

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Quality Control / Testing

• Follow professional standards and set benchmarks

• Reformatting

• Metadata

• Quality control

• Review images and metadata within test environment

• Build in time for re-work and corrections

• Final staff review of all content

• Content provider review of all content

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Production Preservation

• Digitization is not necessarily preservation

• Digitizing for access or preservation?

• Work with existing technology infrastructure and
  IT staff

• Images

• 2 archive copies of master image (TIF) to CD or
  DVD

• check periodically for image stability

• Metadata

• back up database to tape or server

• check periodically for data stability

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Post-Production

• User Feedback

• Outreach and Marketing

• Sustainability

• Project Post Mortem

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Post-Production User Feedback

• Evaluation methods

• User survey (Web form on Web site)

• Feedback email (on Web site)

• In-house focus group

• Feedback

• Identify target audience

• Ask meaningful questions

• Quantitative and qualitative data

• Review findings to inform future projects

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Post-Production Outreach and Marketing

• Spread the word!

• Notify key participants, e.g. content provider,
  institution staff and administration, funding
  organization, Board members

• Submit collection or resource information to

-- appropriate Web sites, listservs, blogs
-- federated databases (e.g., ARL, Cyndis List,
etc.)
-- Web search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo, etc.)

• News release to local (or beyond!) media

• Launch event

• Include in your institutions Web site, online
  catalog / access system and outreach materials

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Post-Production Sustainability

• On-going collection or resource maintenance

• Allocate resources!

• Data and image migration

• Software versioning or upgrades

• On-going tech support

• digital preservation

• Archival copies

• Project documentation

• Perform incremental quality check on sample of
  archived images and data

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects
Post-Production Project Post Mortem

• Post project evaluation

• Original project deliverables vs. end product

• Resources allocated vs. actual amount spent

• Project timeline vs. actual benchmark dates

• Discuss and document areas for improvement

• What happened?

• Resolution (quick fix) during project?

• Ideal resolution?

• Share successes!

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects

• Additional Resources

• Handbook for Digital Projects A Management Tool
  for Preservation and Accesswww.nedcc.org/digital/
  dighome.htm

• Building Digital Collections A Technical
  OverviewLibrary of Congress American Memory
  Projecthttp//memory.loc.gov/ammem/about/techIn.h
  tml

• A Framework of Guidance for Building Good
  Digital Collections (NISO) http//www.niso.org/fr
  amework/Framework2.html

Vicki Tobias UW Digital Collections
Center 5/6/2005
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Local History and Museum WorkshopsDigitizing
CollectionsMay 6, 2005

• Workflow and Planning for Digital Projects
• Vicki Tobias, UW Digital Services Librarian
• University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center