Collaborative%20Digitization:%20Creating%20Cultural%20Heritage%20Collections

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Collaborative Digitization Creating Cultural
Heritage Collections
Amy Rudersdorf, Digital Services
Librarian University of Wisconsin Digital
Collections Center arudersdorf_at_library.wisc.edu /
608.265.8737 Assistance from Vicki
Tobias Digital Services Librarian, UWDCC
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UW Digital Collections Mission

• Promotes scholarly communication and provides
  professional leadership in the creation of
  quality digital resources from libraries and
  archives, for faculty, staff and students,
  citizens of the state, and scholars at large.

Image State of Wisconsin Collection
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University of Wisconsin System Universities
Colleges
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UWDCC From whom do the projects originate?

• Faculty, researchers, teaching staff
• Academic librarians
• Public librarians
• Cultural heritage institutions (museums and
  historical societies)

Image Digital Library for the Decorative Arts
Material Culture
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Publishers Bindings Online The Art of Books
(1815-1930)
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Scope of UW Digital Collections .1.

• Images
• Audio
• Video
• Citations
• Finding Aids
• Text
• Books
• Journals
• Monographic series
• Diaries
• Letters
• In nearly all cases, UWDC digital resources are
  freely available online for use in any research
  or educational setting.

Image Ecology Natural Resources Collection
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Scope of UW Digital Collections .2.

• Images ? 30,000
• Audio.. ? 400 (hours)
• Citations. 216,000
• Finding Aids... 263
• Text.. ?7,000 (issues comprised of 990,000
  page images)

Image Great Lakes Maritime Collection
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Collaboration

• collaborate intr.v. To work together,
  especially in a joint intellectual effort.
• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
  Language, Fourth Edition

Image South East Asian Images Text Collection
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Scope of digital project partners
Image University of Wisconsin Collection
Images School of Human Ecology Centennial
Celebration Collection
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2005 Wisconsin Library Services and Technology
Act Partners

• Appleton Public Library
• Fond du Lac Public Library
• Hedberg (Janesville) Public Library
• Lake Geneva Public Library
• Manitowoc Public Library
• Marathon County Public Library
• Oshkosh Public Library

All LSTA projects will be available online
through the State of Wisconsin Collection(http//
digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/WI)
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State of Wisconsin Collection

• Wisconsin history through
• Letters
• Photographs
• Oral histories
• Maritime history
• Early surveys plat maps
• Local histories
• Diaries
• Ephemera

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Wisconsin Heritage Online Purpose

• To bring together (virtually) the digital content
  of Wisconsin cultural institutions to be easily
  accessible for all users. 
• To facilitate the creation of digital content by
  developing digitization assistance for interested
  institutions, by providing education and training
  opportunities and by creating a central site
  linking relevant resources.

Excerpted from About Wisconsin's Heritage
OnlineWHO. (http//www.wils.wisc.edu/widigital/)
Accessed July 23, 2005.
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Wisconsin Heritage Online Participants

• Oshkosh Public Library
• DPI Division for Libraries, Technology
  Community Learning Central Wisconsin Project
• Wisconsin Historical Society
• UW Madison Lawrence University
• Milwaukee Public Museum
• Milwaukee Public
• Milwaukee Institute of Art Design
• UW Oshkosh
• Wisconsin Interlibrary Loan Service
• Select participant list

Excerpted from WHO Digital Exploratory Committee.
(http//www.wils.wisc.edu/widigital/) Accessed
July 23, 2005.
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Collaboration a never-ending committee meeting?

• To get something done, a committee should consist
  of no more than three men, two of whom are
  absent.
• ---Robert Copeland

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Benefits of Collaboration

1. Resource Sharing
2. Skills and knowledge transfer
3. More people power
4. Reduce wheel reinvention

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1. Resource Sharing

• Equipment
• scanning, audio video reformatting, OCR
  software, etc.
• Assets
• the original resources that comprise the content
  of the digital collection
• Human capital

Books Publishers Bindings Online The Art of
Books (1815-1930)
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Resource Sharing .1. Case Study
Publishers Bindings Online The Art of Books
(1815-1930)
Books Max Kade Institute for German-American
Studies, University of WisconsinMadison.
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Resource Sharing .2. Case Study
Publishers Bindings Online The Art of Books
(1815-1930)
Books W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library,
Wade Hall Collection for Southern History and
Culture. University of Alabama.
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Resource Sharing .3. Case Study
Publishers Bindings Online The Art of Books
(1815-1930)
http//bindings.lib.ua.edu
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2. Skills and Knowledge Transfer

• Collaboration can offer all participants both
  teaching and learning opportunities

Image University of Wisconsin Collection
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Skills and Knowledge Transfer .1.Case Study
2005 Wisconsin LSTA Grant Awards
LSTA Grant Awardees Workshop Schedule
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Skills and Knowledge Transfer .2.Case Study
2005 Wisconsin LSTA Grant Awards
Public Library patrons (they use academic library
collections, too!)

• Users
• Local historians, K-12 students, Genealogists,
  Hobbyists
• Material they need
• Maps, Local Histories, First-person narratives,
  Photographs and images related to their local
  history and culture
• How materials are used
• Personal research, School assignments, Genealogy,
  General interest/hobby

Image State of Wisconsin Collection
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Skills and Knowledge Transfer .3.Case Study
2005 Wisconsin LSTA Grant Awards
Images State of Wisconsin Collection
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Skills and Knowledge Transfer .4.Case Study
2005 Wisconsin LSTA Grant Awards
Serving public library materials online (useful
to academic library patrons, too!)

• Full-text searchable or full-text searchable
  indexes
• Jpeg2000 image format enables
• Zoom
• Rotate
• Comprehensive collection of like materials

Image Wisconsin Electronic Reader
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3. People power

• Working together, ordinary people can perform
  extraordinary feats. They can push things that
  come into their hands a little higher up, a
  little further on towards the heights of
  excellence.
• ---Source unknown

Image Africa Focus Collection
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People Power .1.Case Study The Sojourner
(The Home Front Manitowoc County in WWII)
Images State of Wisconsin Collection
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4. Reducing wheel reinvention increases
interoperability, consistency, and standards

• Digital cultural content should be as widely
  useful, portable and long-lasting as possible.
  These combined goals of wide usefulness (which
  encompasses the grammatically-dubious notion of
  "re-usefulness"), portability (across networks,
  systems and organizations) and longevity
  (portability across time) of digital cultural
  resources are encapsulated by the single concept
  of interoperability.

From Gill, Tony and Paul Miller. Re-inventing
the Wheel? Standards, Interoperability and
Digital Cultural Content. D-Lib Magazine
(January 2002). http//www.dlib.org/dlib/january0
2/gill/01gill.html. Accessed July 24, 2005.
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4. Reducing wheel reinvention increases
interoperability, consistency, and standards

• The key to the interoperability of digital
  cultural content, and in fact any digital
  collection, is consistencydigital collections
  are created, manipulated, stored, searched and
  displayed by computers, and computers are
  inherently algorithmic devices When digital
  collections are highly consistent, they can be
  processed quickly and cheaply, using relatively
  simple algorithms, with a high degree of
  reliability and robustness.

---Tony Gill Paul Miller
Image State of Wisconsin Collection
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4. Reducing wheel reinvention increases
interoperability, consistency, and standards

• The consistency that gives rise to
  interoperability in digital cultural collections
  is achieved through the use of standardscodified
  rules and guidelines for the creation,
  description and management of digital
  resourcesthe critical importance of standards to
  the success of cultural digitization initiatives
  is widely recognized, as evidenced by the
  plethora of project or initiative specific
  standards frameworks already in existence.

---Tony Gill Paul Miller
GILS
ONIX for Books
IEEE LOM
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Reducing wheel reinventionCase study Oaister
(http//oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister)

• Mission
• to create a collection of freely available,
  previously difficult-to-access,
  academically-oriented digital resources that are
  easily searchable by anyone.
• Metadata
• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
• Open Archives Initiative Metadata Harvesting
  Protocol
• Harvests
• Collections from over 500 institutions worldwide
• Developed by
• University of Michigan University of Illinois

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Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - a 30-second
primer
A set of elements created to help describe and
manage content. The elements are often what are
displayed with a digital object in an online
database.

The definitions of these elements are quite
general, which often leads to trouble
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Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - An example
record
Record The Science Collection

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Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - two records
employing the same metadata scheme differently

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Reducing wheel reinventionSelect list of
statewide digital library collaboration programs

• California Digital Library
• Colorado Digitization Program
• Digital Library of Georgia
• Kentuckiana Digital Library
• Mountain West Digital Library
• North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage
  Online
• Ohio Memory
• University of Wisconsin Digital Collections
• Virtually Missouri
• Wisconsin Heritage Online

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Conclusion Successful collaboration means

• Working toward a common and understood goal
• Communicating to the point of discomfort
• Ensuring all involved parties understand project
  deliverables
• Maintaining sense that all are equally-valued
  participants
• Applying standards identically, by any means
  necessary

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Conclusion Successful collaboration

Images University of Wisconsin Collection