Rethinking Assumptions with the

1
Rethinking Assumptions with the Our Americas
Archive Partnership (OAAP)
Geneva Henry Rice University 6 April 2009 CNI
Spring 2009 Task Force Meeting, Minneapolis, MN
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Presentation overview

• About the Our Americas Archive Partnership
  project
• Vision and goals
• Approach were taking with the development
• Building the collections
• Assumption regarding growth
• Assumptions regarding metadata
• Challenges

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Background

• Our Americas Archive Partnership (OAAP) awarded
  to Rice by the Institute of Museum and Library
  Services -- IMLS
• National Leadership Grant for digitization
• Digitize selected items in Woodsons Americas
  collection
• Add Web 2.0 technologies to enable use of Rice
  collection and University of Marylands
  complimentary Early Americas Digital Archive
  collection

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The Partnership

• Rice University
• Fondren Library
• Humanities Research Center (HRC)
• Digitization, transcriptions, translations,
  metadata, markup, research modules, scholarly
  introductions
• University of Maryland
• Maryland Institute for Technology in the
  Humanities (MITH)
• Integration of collections, development of web
  2.0 features including social tagging and a
  geospatial interface
• Addition of Instituto Mora, Mexico City
• rich collection of materials relating to the
  socioeconomic and historical conditions of Mexico
• Not part of IMLS grant
• Collaborative relationship with Rices HRC

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Description of Collections

• Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA1492-1820)
• a collection of electronic texts of transcribed
  literary-historical narratives written in or
  about the Americas
• Rice Americas Digital Archive (1597-1920)
• includes approximately 25,000 pages of original
  letters, broadsides, pamphlets, printed materials
  and books documenting the political and cultural
  relationships between the United States, Mexico,
  Central and South America, Cuba, Spain, and
  Portugal
• Instituto Mora Collection
• 7000 pages of additional archival items scanned,
  digitized, marked up, and fully integrated into
  the search tools
• Scanning started June 2008 and will continue
  through summer 2009

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Our Vision

• Focus on Americas from a hemispheric perspective
  rather than the nation state, driven by scholars
  needs
• Span of OAAP captures cultural transformation
  that spans the five hundred year period that saw
  the making of modern and colonial cultures in the
  Americas
• OAAP will impact the study of American literary
  and cultural history by more easily allowing
  scholars to understand cross-cultural influence

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Goals

• Create unique new research and teaching
  opportunities
• Make unique archival collection digitally
  available
• Build common interface between partners
  repositories, enabling additional digital
  archives to be added
• Address issues associated with the complexity of
  multilingual documents

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Ubiquitous discovery opens new horizons

• OAAP supports new scholarly inquiry into
  understanding the development of the Americas
• Unrestricted access to scholarly resources that
  were previously only in nation-specific
  collections at a variety of institutions
• Collaboration that crosses institutions, crosses
  countries, and will grow as scholars need it to
  grow
• Power to the scholars

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Federation Model

• Provide a common interface to multiple
  repositories with different content management
  approaches
• search page allowing for multifaceted browsing
• MySQL database built from harvested content
• Federated digital environment allowing
  institutional partners to share holdings while
  retaining individual identity
• Extensible to allow for folksonomic tagging

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Technical approach

• Technically diverse digital collections
• Digital assets stored in separate repositories
• Technical Approach
• Capture meta data as Dublin Core
• Convert TEI-marked documents in EADA to Dublin
  Core and harvest repositories
• Texts encoded in TEI-Light
• Social tagging by scholars using their vocabulary

Metadata harvesting
Develop common descriptors
Common text display
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DSpace Platform

• DSpace is one of the leading open source software
  platforms for an institutional repository
• Rices Digital Scholarship Archive uses DSpace,
  with some significant customizations
• Provides permanent digital archive for materials
• Fine-grained access controls
• Metadata separate from actual objects allows for
  scalability of digital assets

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Overview of DSpace Architecture

• Web-based user interface
• Runs on Unix-based OS Rices is running on Apple
  Xserves
• Production server for final collections
• Development and Test servers for preparation
• Uses PostGres database for managing content
• Includes Lucene search engine
• Support for full text search
• Supports Dublin Core metadata standard
• Metadata harvested by OAI harvesters
• Storage demands are VERY high
• Using Isilon clustered storage solution to
  facilitate multimedia

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Connexions

• Provide scholarly analysis of the archival
  documents or demonstrate their pedagogical uses
  in an on-line environment
• Connexions is a set of tools for developing and
  freely distributing educational material

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Using archival materials

• Scanned images immediately provide visual cues as
  to the type of document
• a letter versus a governmental document

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Multilingual documents

• Translations expand access to intellectual
  content of texts
• By providing the content in language of the
  reader
• And
• In a format that facilitates visual scanning of
  content and full text searching

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Enhancing Multilingual documents

• Digital Image gt Transcription gt Translation

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Example Item Record

• TEI file
• Digital Image
• Metadata

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Rice Americas Archive Interface
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EADA Browse Interface
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OAAP Beta site interface
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Geospatial view of results
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Outcomes

• Allow scholarly examination of American
  literature from a hemispheric perspective,
• develop a collection of texts, curricular models
  and teaching materials that embody a hemispheric
  approach to the study of the early Americas
• generate professional and intellectual exchanges
  among scholars from various fields
• Support Scholars from outside the US and their
  contributions
• Create digitized version of primary sources not
  previously available to wide range and physically
  dispersed audience
• Support addition of other digital archives with
  minimal barrier to entry

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Growth Assumptions

• Architectural approach assumed new partners would
  host their own digital collections
• Assumed familiarity with digitization practices
• Sustainability of collection assumed to be
  responsibility of each partner
• Assumed at least some level of processing
  (minimal) to be a contributing partner

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Assumptions regarding metadata

• Dublin core was assumed acceptable for partnering
• Following metadata best practices viewed as a
  good thing when project started
• Markup of text documents seen as valuable
  enhancement
• Geospatial information to support geospatial
  visualization of resources thought to be valuable
  to scholars

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Collection Challenges

• Latin American institutions have rich collections
  but limited experience and resources with
  digitization
• Hosting collections presents issues of
  sustainability
• Should hosted collections follow practices of
  collection at hosting institution?

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Metadata challenges

• New scholarly approach to understanding historic
  documents relies on new descriptions
• Cataloging/metadata best practices impose a
  previous organizational bias
• Deciding what geographic information is relevant
  is not so straight-forward
• Scholars interested in shifting borders
  geospatial presentation of little value to them
• Should minimal metadata with full text search be
  the new model for supporting digital scholarship?

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Project Website

• Website http//oaap.rice.edu
• Updates on project developments
• Share team presentations to communities
• Share scripts and code for future participants
• Rice and Mora Americas collection at
  http//scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/9219
• EADA at http//www.mith2.umd.edu/eada/

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Thank You and come visit us on the web

• Contacts
• Geneva Henry, PI (Rice)
• ghenry_at_rice.edu
• Caroline Levander, Co-PI (Rice)
• clevande_at_rice.edu
• Neil Fraistat, Co-PI (MITH)
• nfraistat_at_gmail.com