Title: ASC Annual Meeting
1Flora and Fauna of the Great Lakes Region
- A Multimedia Digital Collection
2Collaborators
- University Library -
- Major investment in digital library content,
infrastructure and architecture - Museum of Zoology and Herbarium
- Strong collections increasing pressure to serve
a wider audience especially via the Web - Exhibits Museum of Natural History
3Project Goals
- To develop increased access to the Great Lakes
region portions of the Museums collections - To develop an extensible infrastructure for
putting natural history collections online - To explore, prototype and test tools for using
the online resources for a variety of scholarly
and educational purposes
4Museum Goals
- Additional support for digitizing collections
- Opening their collections to new audiences
- Opportunity to explore partnership with the
Library - Support for maintenance and long-term access to
their data
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7Library Goals
- Extend digital library support from the
humanities to the natural sciences - Test the ability of the existing architecture to
support new subjects and methods of inquiry - Extend digital library architecture to include
cross-class searching - text, image, collection
database records
8Digital Library Holdings at the University of
Michigan
- Holdings as of March 2001
- Full electronic text 31,558
- Pages/images 6,684,342
- Bibliographic Records 57,081,109
- Words 2,536,312,477
- Bytes 190,629,303,672
9Digital Library Architecture at the University
of Michigan
- Image class
- Federation of diverse collection databases
- Support for image retrieval
- Text class
- Other classes such as bibliographic data and
archival finding aids - Retrieval software available for licensing
- Middleware is Open Source (DLXS)
10New Challenge - Cross-Class Searching
- To facilitate searching across text, image, and
collection database records - To return results to users in ways that will be
useful to them, rather than simply reflecting the
characteristics of the underlying systems
11New Content
- Supplementing the museum collection databases
with - Field notes
- Surrogate records and page images
- Images
- New photography and digitization of existing
slides and negatives - Major monographs
- Full text searching
12New Audiences
- Non-specialist users
- Lifelong learners
- Undergraduate students
- K-12 users
- Specialist users working in areas such as
biodiversity research - working outside the
confines of a single discipline
13Metadata Challenges
- Federate data from multiple existing databases
- Augment data to serve new audience and uses
- Create metadata for new materials
- Provide basis for coherent shared displays of
search results
14Collections DatabasesFederation
Fish Catalog
Mammals Databases
Fungus Catalog
Field Notes (New Content)
Image Metadata
Digital Library Metadata
15Mammals Example
UMMZ Zoology Database Fields
Table 2
Table 1
Location ID LOCAcronym LOCDATE Latitude
D Latitude M Latitude S Longitude D Longitude
M Longitude S Latitude NS Longitude EW Map
Data Map Code LocField OceanCont Country State
County Gear Collectors LocTime Drainage Temp. Dep
th Locality LocRemarks (incl. Orig Field )
Primary ID LastMod Catalog Alcohol Skeleton Clear
Stain Genus Species Subspecies Field Determiner
Cataloger Type Status Size Remarks
Rodents database fields
Museum no. Sex Skin Skull Skeleton Fluid Baculum
Glans Karyotype Field no. Day Month Year Country
Locality Collector LN Initials 2nd
collector Initials Order Family Genus
Species Subspecies Batch no. Comments
individuals State County
16Augmenting Existing Content
- Common Names
- Geospatial Referencing
- Dates
17Collections DatabasesFederation
Fish Catalog
Mammals Databases
Fungus Catalog
Field Notes (New Content)
Image Metadata
Digital Library Metadata
Species Name Lookups
Geospatial Lookups
ISO Date Lookups
18Collections DatabasesAugmentation
Fish Catalog
Mammals Databases
Fungus Catalog
Digital Library Metadata
Species Name Lookups
Geospatial Lookups
ISO Date Lookups
19New Databases
- Field Notes
- Image Metadata
20Field Notes StructureCollection Event
Collection Event
Species Account
Field Catalog (projected)
Join File
Page Image Table
Species Table
Volume Data
Collector Data
Location Data
21Field Notes StructureSpecies Account
Collection Event
Species Account
Field Catalog (projected)
Join File
Page Image Table
Species Table
Volume Data
Collector Data
Location Data
22New Processes
- Matching field content to authoritative forms for
lookup construction (A miracle happens here) - Lookup export to originating databases (if time
and funds permit)
23Mapping Image Collections into the Image Services
Metadata Structure
- (what do art and fungi have in common?)
24Dual Model of Image Representation
- VRA Representation Model
- Workphysical entity that exists, has existed at
some time in the past, or that could exist in the
future (fish, field notes page, painting, etc) - Imagea visual representation of a work
25Work/Image Relationships
- One work may have multiple image representations
(picture of whole frog, frog parts, x-rays, etc.) - Images may have sequential derivations (photo is
digitized, digital file has thumbnail, etc.)
26Separating Work Data from Image Data
Collector Collection Date
Data is inherited
Photographer Photograph Date
FrogWork
FrogWork
Photo of FrogImage
Digitizer Digitization Date
Digitized Photo of Frog (derived image)
27Why?
- Work only needs to be described once
- Image history is documented
- Each image is associated with data (like creation
dates) that are specific to its existence
28Storing data in the Digital Library
- Image database relates work and image metadata
- Metadata exported as records with 11
correspondence with image file names - Digital Library stores metadata and image files
using standard image class model core categories - User search calls up metadata and linked images
29Desired result
- Users can search across classes and collections
using core fields (species, common name,
location, date) or keywords - Users can search within collections using fields
chosen from originating database - Displays can be customized to show common or
custom field labels.