Technology Choices Matching Desired Product with Process

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Technology Choices Matching (Desired) Product
with Process

• Roy Tennant
• California Digital Library

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Confessions

• Im a recovering librarian
• I exercised my right as a speaker to change my
  presentation right up to when I give it, so see
  http//escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/presentati
  ons/2003owol/
• I lost 20 in five minutes last night

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Outline

• What are your access goals?
• Access systems
• Repurposeable Digital Repositories
• Metadata

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What are Your Access Goals?

• Searching/Browsing
• On-screen viewing
• Thumbnail preview
• Screen-size
• Detail study (and how much?)
• Printing
• Artifact v. Content

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Searching/Browsing

• To support effective searching and browsing, you
  will need metadata
• To figure out what metadata you need, you must
  first figure out what activities you wish to
  support (your access goals)
• Think about interoperating with others as well as
  your internal needs

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Printing

• On-screen resolutions are typically inadequate
  for printing
• If you want to support printing, you will need to
  offer a high-resolution (typically at least
  300dpi) version for printing

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The Artifact v. Content

• The artifact
• Must preserve the appearance of the actual object
  
• Can provide an enhanced sense of experiencing the
  real object
• But in some cases, preserving the look and feel
  of the artifact obstructs the content
• The content
• Optimized to provide the best presentation of the
  content itself, not the artifact
• The sense of interacting with the actual object
  may be diminished or destroyed
• In some cases, use of both strategies may be
  indicated

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What are Your Constraints?

• Hardware
• RAM
• CPU speed
• Disk space
• Storage
• Staff
• Time
• Skill and experience
• Will you ever want to go back and do it again?

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What Opportunities Do You Have?

• Grants may be available to finance your project
• Local donors
• Existing software infrastructure
• Open source software
• Existing staff knowledge

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A Few Words About Image Capture for Access Only

• Monitor resolutions are improving
• 640 x 480 --gt 800 x 600 --gt 1280 x 768
• What is a good resolution for onscreen viewing
  today, may not be tomorrow
• How many times do you want to scan your material?
• Scan at the best quality you can justify given
  your goals, constraints, and opportunities

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Recommendations for Capture for Access Only

• Photos, illustrations, maps, etc.
• 300-600dpi
• 24-36 bit color
• B/W Text document
• 300dpi
• 8 bit grayscale
• Negatives and Slides
• 2200-3300 pixels in longest dimension
• 24-36 bit color or 8 bit grayscale

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Image Capture Hardware

• Buy off-the-shelf hardware
• Fast computer w/plenty of RAM
• Internal or external (w/ fast bus, e.g.,
  Firewire) very large hard drive
• Good consumer-grade scanner
• Sheet feeder (optional)
• And software
• Adobe Photoshop or Paintshop Pro
• OCR (Abbyy FineReader)

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Access Systems

• Exhibit or other educational depictions
• Browse
• Search

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Access Systems Exhibit

• Goals
• Inviting
• Easy to navigate
• Highlight selected parts of a collection
• Teach
• Requirements
• Great graphic design
• Informative and succinct commentary
• Interesting subject matter
• Interactive activities wherever possible

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Access Systems Browse

• Goals
• Provide intriguing and interesting paths into and
  throughout a collection
• Give a broad sense of a collection, but not show
  everything necessarily
• Requirements
• Logical browse paths
• May have multiple paths to the same items (e.g.,
  time, geography, subject)

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Access Systems Search

• Goals
• To provide post-coordinate access to all items in
  a collection relevant to a particular query
• To provide good methods to create a search as
  well as refine or alter the display as required
• Requirements
• Good search software (database or indexing
  software)
• Good metadata (minimum is probably a title or
  caption for each item)
• Good interface (options for navigation, search
  refinement, etc.)

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Repurposeable Digital Repositories

• What Mark Said
• One way that one institution is doing thisthe
  California Digital Librarys content management
  system
• First, what we can do with it, then how we do it

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ark.cdlib.org www.loc.gov/standards/mets/
Information about the constituent files
ARK/METS Digital ObjectRepository
RecordCreationProgram
Descriptive metadata
Image capture metadata
Library Catalog
OtherMetadata
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ark.cdlib.org www.loc.gov/standards/mets/
Search Index
FieldExtractionProgram
IndexingSoftware
Search Index
Information about the constituent files
ARK/METS Digital ObjectRepository
RecordCreationProgram
Project Profile
Project Profile
Descriptive metadata
Image capture metadata
Library Catalog
OtherMetadata
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Search Index
Search Index
Actual digital objects
ARK/METS Digital ObjectRepository
Resultsin XML
XSLT
Object description in XML
XSLT
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Metadata Types

• Cataloging by those paid better than librarians
• Structured description of an object or collection
  of objects
• Basic types
• descriptive - e.g., title, creator, subject -
  used for discovery
• administrative - e.g., resolution, bit depth -
  used for managing the collection
• structural - e.g., table of contents page, page
  34, etc. - used for navigation
• preservation - e.g., file types

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Metadata Appropriate Level

• Collection-level access
• Discovery metadata describes the collection
• Example Archival finding aid encoded in SGML
  see http//www.oac.cdlib.org/
• Item-level access
• Discovery metadata describes the item
• Example individual metadata records for each
  item see http//jarda.cdlib.org/cgi-bin/imagesear
  ch.pl

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Collection Level Access
Images
Individual Finding Aid
Search Interface
Individual Finding Aid
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http//jarda.cdlib.org
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Item Level Access
Finding Aids
Images
Search Interface
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http//californiadigitallibrary.org
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Metadata Granularity

• ltnamegtWilliam Randolph Hearstlt/namegt
• ltnamegt ltfirstgtWilliamlt/firstgt ltmiddlegtRandolphlt/
  middlegt ltlastgtHearstlt/lastgtlt/namegt
• Consider all uses for the metadata
• Design for the most granular use
• Store it in a machine-parseable format

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Metadata Qualification

• ltname rolecreatorgtWilliam Randolph
  Hearstlt/namegt
• ltsubject schemeLCSHgtBuilder -- Castles --
  Southern Californialt/subjectgt

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Metadata Machine Parseability

• The ability to pull apart and reconstruct
  metadata via software
• For example, this
• Can easily become this

ltnamegt ltfirstgtWilliamlt/firstgt ltmiddlegtRandolphlt/
middlegt ltlastgtHearstlt/lastgtlt/namegt
ltDC.creatorgtHearst, William Randolphlt/DC.creatorgt
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Metadata Standards

• Decide to which industry standards you wish to
  comply
• Use an internal metadata infrastructure that
  complies with those standards as well as your
  specific requirements
• Consider the issues of item v. collection level,
  granularity, qualification, and machine
  parseability
• Understand that your internal infrastructure will
  be more complex than what is required for
  standards compliance

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Recap

• Determine what you want your users to be able to
  do (your access goals)
• Consider your constraints, opportunities, and
  long-term goals
• Capture images at the best quality you can stand
• Collect metadata in an amount and form that
  supports your access goals as well as
  interoperability with relevant standards
• Build repurposeable digital repositories, which
  will enable uses you cant even imagine yet