Bringing Digital Collections Into the Light

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Bringing Digital Collections Into the Light

• Rice Majors

6 Nov 2008, Charleston
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Your Digital Assets

• Where are they?
• Who knows about them?
• Who uses them?
• How do your users find them?
• How much staff expertise does this require?

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Mandate for Digital Resources

• Mandate growing to include digital / digitized
  content
• Mandate to put these resources into the flow of
  users
• Need for simple tools to manage digital content
• Little or no training for users
• Leverage staff of all levels volunteers,
  part-time staff, etc.

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Content Pro Encore Harvester

• Content Pro
• Exposes your digital collections to users on the
  web easily elegantly
• Is an effective way to make digital collections
  discoverable
• Makes it easy to add resources individually or in
  large batches, quickly and efficiently
• Encore Harvester
• Lets patrons easily discover the full range of
  resources in the librarys portfolio

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Who will be doing this?

• Some projects may allow non-expert staff to add
  or even describe content
• Some projects may require professional-level
  description
• Leverage non-experts to add records and perform
  minimal description?
• Focus on what each staff member can contribute to
  the process

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Focus on workflow ease and flexibility

• Choose a tool that supports all of your workflows
• Adding content, then describing
• Authoring metadata, then adding digitized content
• Describing resources incrementally over time
• Choose a tool that makes authoring of metadata
  easy
• Usually demands the most from expert library staff

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Content Pro adding content is easy

• Web-based interface with one-step publishing
• No training required use volunteers students
  to input content
• Different collections with different needs
• Templates prompt user for appropriate expected
  information
• Pre-populate some fields based on
  collection-level data
• Batch metadata and content import

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Editing metadata is easy
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Focus on increasing discovery

• Cannot assume users are starting at your front
  door
• Allow your metadata to be harvested by
  OAI-compliant aggregators
• Increase exposure of resources
• Broaden user base beyond local users
• Allow single-point searching of distributed
  collections
• Non-harvestable databases should be migrated /
  made harvestable

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How harvesting works

• Open Archives Initiative defines how machines
  will share metadata (PMH)
• Harvesting is done in advance of the search
  typically on a scheduled basis
• Not a federated search not in real time
• Known metadata structure(s)
• Allows for better performance
• Possibility for normalization of data,
  de-duplication, and other added value

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Unified search experience

• Promote local use of all collections with a
  discovery services platform like Encore
• Harvest digital resources into Encore
• Harvested records appear interfiled with catalog
  search results

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Users finding resources

• With Encore, user doesnt have to consider
• What kinds of resources they prefer
• What kinds of resources the library may own/have
  access to
• How the library may organize its resources
• Easily manipulate search results with facets to
  focus on preferred resources, etc.
• Encore allows discovery of resources user
  clicks through to data provider to use the
  resources

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Harvesting for Encore

• Any OAI PMH data provider can be harvested
• Content Pro - Fedora
• DSpace - ContentDM
• Symposia
• Harvested metadata including Qualified Dublin
  Core, MODS, VRA, EAD, and TEI

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User searches for map dutch
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User limits to harvested resources
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Detail view of a resource in Encore
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Click through to Content Pro
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User search for ed wynn
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Let your users do the tagging

• Library of Congress Flickr Commons success(es)
• Public is eager to share specialized knowledge
• Informally-expressed knowledge enriches
  findability
• Tagging projects build public engagement with the
  library

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Community tagging with Encore

• Encore lets users tag both bibliographic and
  harvested records
• Encore uses library-assigned subject headings to
  seed tag pool
• Ensures consistent base of tags with controlled
  vocabulary
• Leverages expertise of generations of library
  professionals
• Tagging works even if there is low patron
  participation

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Community Tagging and Users

• Users can add value
• Informal emerging vocabulary
• Community-specific vocabulary
• They know things!
• New possibilities for partially- described
  content
• Traditional model Backlog until time/mandate
  permitted optimal description
• Meanwhile Users can find things on Flickr
• We arent Flickr find the balance
• What happens when machines get better?

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Unprocessed local collections

• Opaque or unknown even to library staff
• Implement any practicable method for making these
  available
• Adding materials with Content Pro
• Searching and participating with Encore
• Satisfy the community while fulfilling
  preservation/access roles

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• Thank you!

Rice Majors rmajors_at_iii.com