Sarah Zdenek’s Weblog

This week I worked on two things: revisions to the project plan based on mentor input and selection of the postcards.  I have selected 63 postcards to be scanned front and back as well as a souvenir folder specialty postcard that contains text and 18 additional images.  This gives us 144 total images and 64 individual records.  Here is an image of my favorite postcard in the collection:

My Favorite

I am just so glad it was in the public domain.

I had a great meeting with Joe and the IT team concerning the role of CONTENTdm in the project and the Drake University/University of Iowa/State of Iowa Library relationship as it relates to DMPL.  There was talk of Drupal vs. purchasing a CMS, but that conversation has been put on hold while calls are being made.  I was given the name of a sound technician at Triad AV and through our conversation it looks as though the oral histories project will get going in a few weeks with an evaluation of the sound quality by this professional AV company. 

My current (25 page) iteration of the project plan for the postcard collection is being reviewed by Deb and Joe.  We are moving forward on the postcard selection and digitization this week.  I hope to have a small sample collection ready to go within a few weeks.  This includes any necessary research to complete the metadata.    

This week I met with Lorna Truck, retired DMPL Director and all around guru, my mentors, and other great people from the marketing department to discuss the overall plan for the projects. We talked about connecting with the Iowa Heritage Digital Collections as a way to broaden the scope and impact of the project.  What are our goals and how will they align with the IDHC?  In their words the IHDC is “an online repository of Iowa history and culture created by bringing together in digital form documents, images, maps, finding aids, interpretive and educational materials, and other media from collections held by a wide range of organizations throughout Iowa.”  How can we be sure that our collection is appropriate and will enrich the collection?

The State of Iowa Library will soon take over the project and they will be making available multiple CONTENT dm licenses for libraries around the state to use.  Some of the deadlines for this were altered due to the flooding and it is not currently clear exactly when CONTENT dm will be available.  From this meeting, we decided that not only should contact with IDHC move forward, but that I should work on a project plan utilizing the framework Joe prescribed.  Also, I would make contact with IDHC.  Nancy Kraft is the Committee Chair for IDHC and happened to be attending the Consortium of Iowa Archivists meeting that I was also going to on Friday.  I emailed her and we decided to have a chat during the luncheon.  She gave me some pointers for moving forward with the project and recommended using the Colorado Digitization Project’s standards.

This next week I will be working on the project plan keeping all of this in mind.

This semester I will be working with several collections at the Des Moines Public Library’s Central. Here is the tentative workflow plan for the initial planning steps and the first two collections:

Workflow

Revisions as necessary to the DMPL Digitization Guidelines
Schedule for projects

Postcards:

• Develop a project plan following the DMPL Digitization Guidelines
• Determine copyright permissions involved with digitizing and making available portions of the vintage postcard collection*
• Select a theme or other criteria for inclusion in the sample collection
• Scan postcards (front and possibly back) and save as JPEGs utilizing prescribed file naming conventions as developed in the DMPL Digitization Guidelines
• Determine metadata fields
• Update/create an Excel spreadsheet to chart out the metadata
• Populate the metadata fields, research where necessary
• Set up a Drupal site on the server using the CSS (or similar) from the main DMPL site
• Populate the Drupal pages with the following:
o Narrative section on the sample collection and the collection as a whole
o Images with metadata for _#_ postcards
o Links to significant external information (Google maps, current day photos of buildings, Drake Historic Building Project, etc.)
• Site goes live

*Initial research shows that postcards are in the public domain before 1923 as long as you have the original. So the sample will need to be taken from this year or before.  This is subject to confirmation.

Oral Histories Project:

• Develop a project plan following the DMPL Digitization Guidelines
• Determine copyright permissions involved with digitizing and making available portions of the Oral Histories Project
• Select a theme or other criteria for inclusion in the sample collection
• Migrate interviews from tapes to WAV and MP3 files and save utilizing prescribed file naming conventions as developed in the DMPL Digitization Guidelines
• Determine metadata fields
• Update/create an Excel spreadsheet to chart out the metadata
• Populate the metadata fields, research where necessary
• Set up a Drupal site on the server using the CSS (or similar) from the main DMPL site
• Populate the Drupal pages with the following:
o Narrative section on the sample collection and the collection as a whole
o Biographic information about the interviewee
o One full length interview with both PDFs of the transcript and a searchable text file (to be included in the metadata and not viewed by the user if possible-otherwise this is to be added when CONTENTdm becomes available)
o Links to significant external information (Google maps, news items or additional biographic information about the interviewee, etc.)
• Site goes live

On Monday morning I have a meeting with one of the former directors of the library who was the driving force behind the digitization efforts of the past. As I have spent this last week becoming familiar with the collections and meeting with several key players, I am excited for the upcoming meeting as I feel it will start everyone off on strong footing for the future of the project.