wu2007:Users Meeting Blog

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[edit] Blogging from the site of the Users Meeting

So that we'll have a record/archive of it that we can share with others who couldn't attend and/or for those of us who are in attendance who quickly forgot what transpired

Our volunteers -- The Blogging Lauras!

Laura Robinson
Project Manager - Washington Rural Heritage
Washington State Library

Laura Zeigen

Systems and Web Development Librarian
Oregon Health & Science University Library


Note: Comments are welcome. Please see the discussion tab above for tips on commenting and posting.

[edit] Publicizing collections session

Okay, I'll admit. As someone just starting a new collection, I'm jealous of institutions that have something to promote.

The view of this session came from various institutions:

  • Academic from Occidental College
  • Armed services/Government from Combined Arms Research Library

The contrast between the audience of the two presenters institutions was very interesting. The Combined Arms Research Library sounded like a cross between a government, public, and academic institutions.

Here are some things I took away from this session:

  • Good old fashioned networking (talking to people) seems to still work
  • Let Google and Yahoo do this for you (meta tags)
  • Libraries still have to prove their worth??? ;)\
  • Statistics help give a "picture" to others one use - take the time
  • Blogs
  • OAIster
  • OCLC
  • People love history
  • Theses - less sexy but steady need
  • Every institution will have their own avenues and needs - spend some time to find yours

--LauraR 12:37, 24 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Work Flow and collaboration

These seem to be universal problems that everyone has experience with (perhaps they should have their own wiki pages). I think that the two sessions this morning that dealt with that were some of the best (IMO). Here are some themes I came up with from the talks this mornging:

  • Sometimes despite all our planning we're surprised (our unexpected users, needs for changes, etc) - how can we plan for these "surprises", what should we do to change things, add things, update things?
    • Build tools
    • Build policies
    • Look at surprises as opportunities
  • Distributed environments are often how such collections are built, used, and sustained.
    • Great, now try and wrangle them.
  • Tap other resources in or outside of your organization (people and experience)
  • All workflow models change
  • Collaboration is great but someone needs to take charge


--LauraR 11:53, 24 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] recurring themes and best practices

  • Have a single point person, and possible a secondary/backup point person, for every project. This facilitates communication. Example: The central unit managing CONTENTdm for a consortium. One person (or two) at each member institution has the power to request that a collection be published.

[edit] Eric Luhrs: MetaDB

Eric gave us a demonstration of his (and Alan Johnson's) amazing LAMP application for cataloging technical and descriptive metadata for items. These records will then be imported into CONTENTdm through Acquisition Station.

Good work Eric!!

Eric's Presentation Slides are online

--Jkline 10:58, 24 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Pat Vince: Collaboration: What does it mean?

There will be a one question quiz on this presentation: What is the common thread [that ] runs throughout this presentation?

Pat talked about her experiences with collaboration at the LOUS Digital Library and at the Claremont Colleges Digital Library

  • Opportunity to Build a Comprehensive Collection
    • LOUIS's Jazz collection
      • contains photos, as well as recorded music, designs for floats, and paintings by well known Louisiana artists
    • You need many different fields of knowledge: digitization specialists, metadata specialists, programmers and sys admins, someone who is knowledgeable in copyright
  • Opportunity to Share Expertise
    • Collaborations with faculty e.g Murals of Northern Ireland
      • Digitization specialist worked with Tony and his students to teach them scanning best practices
      • Allegra worked with them for metadata training
    • Josh, the programmer, worked to sort the collection in the order that Tony felt would be the best presentation rather than just alphabetically by title.
      • These murals are full of history as to what was taking place during the Time of Troubles from both the Republican and Loyalist sides.
  • Opportunity to Bridge Distance
    • For example between the Library and the colleges, students, etc
    • Senior Theses Collection. Students graduate from one institution in the Claremont Colleges consortium, so they each needed a way to highlight their students.
  • Opportunity to Share Cost
    • Senator Bird's hypothesis: teach more history in the classroom leads to more educated citizen leads to more voting
    • Bi-Centennially of Louisiana Purchase in 2003
    • Governor Huey Long
    • Contact a teacher to create a lesson plan on these topics, based on the primary source materials
  • Opportunity to Share Ideas
    • CCDL collaborates with Special Collections, Pomona College, and others (i can't take notes fast enough), Grant to do a project for Southern California Native Americans
    • Because the Native American language is disapearing
      • incorporate Native American language into the metadata. English controlled vocab linked to term in the Native American language.
      • Have audio pronunciation as well
      • This collaboration has generated tremendous ideas
  • Opportunity to Experience Diversity
    • Learn how other institutions present and store materials, understand their needs
    • Learn about the materials themselves and how to build user services around those collections

Back to the Quiz question: The answer is that collaboration means Opportunity

--Jkline 10:58, 24 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Q&A

How do you get faculty and departments more involved to contribute their experience and materials

Identify the collections and make an appointment. They are typically receptive. They are focused n what they do and often miss opportunities outside the classroom. They are excited by opportunities to broaden access through the digital collections.

Jill Fluvog: Fund raising? Quantitative statistics are interesting but sleep inducing. The stories wake me (the question asker) up again. She suggests you save those stories from, e.g., people who find, use, and appreciate the collections.

Jill Fluvog: What do you use for your institutional repository?

CONTENTdm for all different collections and material types. Pat does not currently see need for diverse software to manage the entire Digital Library. It would be a nightmare for admins and integration. CONTENTdm is a new product that is developing. It doesn't offer all the features that are needed to present but Pat has found that the CONTENTdm managers show consideration toward the needs of their users, and that CCDL has been able to program the things they don't provide. It requires us to be creative and think outside the box. To hop from software to software would generate operations and integration problems.

[edit] Bart Schmidt

  • Del.icio.us links for this presentation
  • The Iowa Heritage Digital Collections. Still a new initiative. 'Build it and They Will Fund'. Includes Drake University and other institutions. Gather information from hidden rural libraries as well as big giant libraries.
  • Steward Library in Grinnell Iowa. Two small collections. They link to the collection that is hosted by the consortium at Drake university
  • The consortium offers help creating metadata. Ordering or contact information is put on all records.
  • Grinnell was one of the first contributors on Drake's server. There was a training session for the trainers as well. They have an acq station but not access to the server. Snail mail files on disc.
  • File names should be uniform, e.g. dmu015. That was learned after some experience.
  • Each collection has a customized header that links back to the contributing institution
  • They don't always listen to suggested best practices. But it is there materials, so we don't change their files
  • Historic Des Moines. Trying to reach out to the community and show that the Library isn't just for Drake. A local historian wrote an article to accompany the collection. This collection helped to collaborate with faculty and community (who were excited) and now think Bart is "The guy to ask questions about history" (He can look it up...)
    • Made sure that the files themselves has enough information to be useful. Required research. Added value. Helped when Bart was talking to the Historian. E.g. a professor doing a seminar course on Des =Moines architecture. She, that professor, was asked what info would be helpful. E.g.Links to current images of that structure. That type of collaboration with professors continues. The map feature was a killer app.
  • Bart keeps in touch with Professors to make sure he knows what is being taught.
    • One professor created an entire assignment based on primary resources in the digital collection.
    • Trying to sell collections to faculty
    • Ding Darling collection of political cartoons. You can search for cartoons on a particular day in history. Don't ask about the crazy metadata. Ok you can ask - look under About the Collection
      • Another institution in New Jersey or Pennsylvania linked to it from their Web CT course web page.
      • The grandson of the cartoonist was excited to have them published and gave permission.

--Jkline 09:04, 24 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Session 2: All Things Metadata - Allegra Gonzalez, Claremont Colleges Digital Library

Allegra's theme was "consistent metadata from disparate sources". She pointed out the many different kinds of sources (slides, photos, born-digital theses, lecture videos, personal collections, special collections, items from academic and non-academic departments) that may be going into their collections, as well as the variety of people (faculty, students, etc.) who may be entering the metadata. In addition, students can take classes across campus and there are many interdisciplinary programs, so distinct categorizations are sometimes very challenging.

So, how to represent metadata so that people can find stuff later? Allegra emphasized that a controlled vocabulary is essential. She gave the example of applying the LCSH term "college teachers" to apply to all pictures of teachers. They were not referenced as "professors" or "faculty". She also talked about labeling images with women with "woman" in the picture, which would be particularly important for finding women (or other subjects) in representations of art. She emphasized pooling like resources together.

Allegra said they were able to keep up consistent metadata through:

  • controlled vocabulary
  • Standards
  • Best practices documentation
  • Overall consistency in fields

She said many of their best practices and standards came from the Council for Library and Information Resources and also NISO.

Allegra then described where they have had to make exceptions to these standards, pointing out the more generic titles they had to put in for pictures of wall murals from Northern Ireland. OAIster would not accept these non-descriptive titles, but there were political implications for the person, Professor Tony Crowley, who took them if they were posted with certain wording. She quoted from a book by Crowley (War of Words: The Politics of Language in Ireland, 1537-2004), saying "Dictionaries are not neutral." (OAIster was contacted and convinced to harvest the items.)

Allegra also pointed out that we always need to keep in mind where our subject terms are coming from (LCSH, AAT, locally for terms you just cannot find in LCSH). Another challenge was that the way they were able to put in date ranges, the user sees one set of dates and the system sees another, but the system dates are not mapped. Training in metadata input in smaller classes or more 1-1 was more effective in making sure people knew how to enter terms consistently into the system.


--LauraZ 5:20, 23 July 2007 (PDT)

with few minor additions by --Jkline 09:26, 24 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Session 1: Olympic Community Museum Project

Anne Graham from the University of Washington gave an in-depth overview of the Olympic Community Museum Project, which resulted in the formation of the Pacific Northwest Olympic Peninsula Community Museum.

Anne said several times that she hoped the information she was providing here would help the rest of us when formulating similar projects and that, while some of what she was sharing with us was "20/20" in hindsight, that these things were not obvious to their group when they were in the middle of it. Bravo, Anne, for sharing your opportunities and challenges in this process so we can all learn!


One of the primary challenges was the physical distance of most of these fairly isolated communities from Seattle and the University of Washington where the project was being co-coordinated. Anne said having a good communication plan was key to the whole process, as was allowing each community to decide which way they wanted to be represented. While this helped build trust in the various communities (because most often the community liaison was someone from that community who people trusted), it also meant that there was a wide variety of participation and buy-in from the various participants.


Additionally, they found that:

  • the person being the community liaison/organizer could not also be the project manager (too much work for each role).
  • they needed to pay people to scan and digitize the items (not enough volunteers came forward and they needed to make sure all involved were equally informed about how to enter the metadata).
  • their 30+ "community roundtables" (slideshows that were free and open to the public), while not as successful as was hoped in terms of gathering metadata, was very worthwhile in terms of helping getting the word out and generate buzz about the project.
  • it was sometimes challenging to ask family members to whittle down their submissions, since all photos were prized by the contributors.


Other pieces of wisdom Anne conveyed:

  • Know your intended audience and keep reminding those submitting content about the parameters and metadata needed for the content.
  • Put out a notice on the project that says "If you see something you know is subject to copyright, let us know."


--LauraZ 5:10, 23 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Random "Z" notes from today's (7/23/2007) sessions

Before I start on notes from the actual sessions, here are some quotes from the day:

Reed Dean of Faculty: "ContentDM is a perfect fit between what technology can do and what the faculty need." Either he or someone else said "Please be bold about asking your questions because that's where it all starts." Later in the sessions today, one of the presenters said something to the effect of "If you're not going to provide an open API, we're going to figure out hacks around it." (my apologies to whomever set it if I am hashing up what you said exactly).

That was probably Lennon. He, and the rest of us hackers, are tasked by our institutions to do customizations. Sometimes these customizations are small, sometimes they are massive. The biggest missing piece of the CONTENTdm API is the ability to edit existing items. Also missing is the ability to create or approve items. As Lennon said, we will hack around flaws in CONTENTdm and around the missing pieces of the API, if we need to. However, we would rather have a supported interface. A supported interface for editing items would lower the bar for customizations; make those customizations more stable, and more resilient across upgrades to CONTENTdm; and add great value to the product. After all, the stuff stored in CONTENTdm is our data, we should be able to modify it if we want.
--Jkline 09:20, 24 July 2007 (PDT)


--LauraZ 5:00, 23 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Session 1: OHSU/OGI Electronic Theses & Dissertations Collection

Presentation by Friday Valentine, MLS.

Her slides are online

Using Terry Reeses' Dynamic browse and rss feeds.

Browse display Author, Title, Thesis.Major, Dept., Thesis.Date.

Special Characters are a challenge. H2O becomes H[subscript 2]O

--Jkline 10:03, 23 July 2007 (PDT)

RE: OHSU/OGI Electronic Theses & Dissertations Collection
Diacritics has to be a major problem within the sciences and with theses. Also the problem of mapping thesis data to dublin core. There was a good question asked about permissions and students that don't want to share their thesis. Those students that are trying to get a patent or need to with hold their thesis for a variety of reasons. The policy at OHSU was to put up the metadata but restrict the pdf with the permissions feature. Interesting problems.
--LauraR 10:07, 23 July 2007 (PDT)


Additionally, although OGI has been able to require students to have these PDF versions of their theses or dissertations, when we get started with this in other parts of OHSU it is as yet unclear whether we will be able to do so (make these required). In the meantime I think we will be trying to contact most recent graduates so we can start getting the permissions, which appears from the OGI project to have been challenging in terms of getting them from students who have not been at the institution in a while. Definitely something to try to work out if you are contemplating doing this at your institution. The fact that theses and dissertations may not be able to more easily include video and other media (for projects that need this) I think would be very exciting to most students and faculty.
--LauraZ 17:05, 23 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Session 1: Mark Anderson's Scrap Book

Mark Anderson presented the Althea Beatrice Moore Smith scrapbook, 1924-1928

He requested a feature for an image map across a page of a compound object so you can click to see details on a sub item.

--Jkline 09:40, 23 July 2007 (PDT)

RE: Mark Anderson's Scrap Book
Wow, who would have thought scrapbooks were so complicated. Probably me, since I'm really naive when it comes to scrapbooks (and CONTENTdm for that matter). Dealing with the structure of the scrapbooks and how to make the images linkable is a very relevant problem. OCR - they are taking the OCR as it comes without going back to edit (clean). Another example of dealing with the quantity vs. quality trade off... sounds familiar to us all. Good job Mark!
--LauraR 09:47, 23 July 2007 (PDT)
Mark referenced the scrapbooks as "smiling villians" throughout his presentation, trying to point out the great information that can be gained from putting them together, but the challenges in doing so (i.e. having to unfold the original documents, hoping they don't overlap with others, having to scan in and re-paste the digital pieces together after digitization). I was glad to hear that the OCR enhancement in ContentDM has helped with text searching, even though Mark did mention this was still not 100% accurrate. He emphasized how this would allow for more research done on collections previously un-researched.
--LauraZ 17:00, 23 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Uh, where do we check in?

I must have missed this detail somewhere in the packet (which is down in my car - I'm too lazy to retrieve it), on the agenda, or in the wiki. Finally I spotted this piece of info on the top of the wu2007:Sessions page. "Location: Student Union." After rooting around a bit I found the campus map. Looks like I'm heading to the Gray Campus Center - #18. Now, where to park?

--LauraR 23:34, 22 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Scared away by the dorm situation

So I got a dorm reservation and have to admit was scared away by all the "extra" costs for what seem should be normal amenities. One colleague of mine stated "I think they charge you $10 extra per day if you want electricity and another $10 a day if you want a towel. Uh, no, I’ll take the dark room with the dirty sheets for $35."

I canceled my reservation. Was I being too cautious? I feel like I'm a sophomore in college again saying "The dorms? Only freshman live in the dorms."

--LauraR 12:35, 11 July 2007 (PDT)

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