Sean Quimby
Senior Director, Special Collections Research Center
Syracuse University

Jeremy Morgan
Information Technology Analyst
Syracuse University

As Syracuse University Library reported at the spring 2011 Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) meeting, it planned to develop a custom PHP/MySQL database driven application as part of its National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Marcel Breuer Digital Archive project. The application generates METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) encoded objects and EAC (Encoded Archival Context) authority records that are, in turn, indexed by the open source eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) platform developed by the California Digital Library.

In spring 2012, Syracuse University Library launched the Breuer web portal, which unites more than 35,000 digital objects from nine institutions located in three different countries relating to the influential Bauhaus-trained modernist architect. The project was a model of institutional collaboration, particularly in the realm of copyright policy. Now, Syracuse is extending both the copyright policy and the technological infrastructure developed for the Breuer project to all of its digital collections, migrating them from CONTENTdm to the new custom application. In the process, it will make much of its “dark” archive (content digitized at the request of individual patrons) publicly available for the first time.

This presentation will include an overview of the University’s custom database application, a demonstration of the completed Breuer portal, and a detailed description of the process for migrating the library’s digital objects and metadata from a proprietary system to an open source repository that allows faceted browsing and, eventually, dynamic interoperability with encoded archival description (EAD)-encoded archival finding aids.

http://breuer.syr.edu/
http://plastics.syr.edu

Handout
Presentation

The SCARLET project is pioneering augmented reality (AR) using mobile devices to enhance students’ use of special collections (SC) in libraries; bringing SCs into the age of the app. AR enables students to simultaneously experience the magic of primary materials while enhancing the learning experience by “surrounding” the object with digitized content. Learning and teaching is embedded at the heart of this innovative project, ensuring the focus remains on the student experience and not the technology. The session will describe current work to evaluate AR’s effectiveness in different student groups and suggest other subject areas where this methodology may benefit learning.

Presentation (PowerPoint)

Stephen Paul Davis
Director, Libraries Digital Program
Columbia University

NLM Video Search: A New Open-source Software Tool to Enhance Free Public Access to Historical Medical and Public Health Films (Luczak, Marill)

National Library of Medicine (NLM) Video Search is a new, unique software tool that offers rapid retrieval of Section 508-compliant historical medical and public health films created by the US government and in the public domain. NLM Video Search solves the challenging task of accurately searching digital videos with transcripts.  In addition to offering a full-text search of a film’s transcript, the tool graphically displays where a search word or phrase occurs within the timeline of a film. Clicking the timeline results takes the user immediately to the appropriate portion of the film where the result appears. Digitized and coded using the H.264 standard to produce quality video in a small file, the video files are delivered progressively over HTTP, allowing rapid browsing within the film without latency. The initial group of historical films made accessible via NLM Video Search reveal how the potential of the film medium was studied and harnessed at critical times in American history. NLM Video Search software was recently named one of six winners by US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in Round 3 of the latest HHSinnovates contest.

http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/videoplayer.html
http://goo.gl/OKod3

Presentation

Leveraging the CONTENTdm API to Build a Dynamic Digital Collections Interface
(Joseph, Sprout)

The University of British Columbia Library has developed a PHP and JavaScript-based interface for presenting simple and compound digital objects managed in OCLC’s CONTENTdm to users in a new and dynamic manner. The interface was developed in response to a donor-funded project to digitize and provide access to 24 historical newspapers. The project coincided with the development of a new Digital Initiatives unit in the Library; colleagues from Digital Initiatives and Library Systems and Information Technology took the opportunity to work together to look at new ways of presenting CONTENTdm collections. The resulting discovery and presentation layer provides an interface to several collections of digitized historical newspapers, including metadata, image files, and optical character recognition text. This presentation layer extends the work of Simon Fraser University Library’s dmWebServices for CONTENTdm, and leverages native CONTENTdm image manipulation capabilities. The user interface provides full-text and date search, browsing by calendar, and a jQuery-based dynamic image viewer featuring paging, zooming, panning, search term highlighting, and a full-screen mode.

http://historicalnewspapers.library.ubc.ca/

Ricky Erway
Senior Program Officer
OCLC Research

This presentation extracts the essence of several related efforts done under the auspices of OCLC Research to help libraries increase access to their special collections, particularly focusing on uniquely held, unpublished materials.

• “Shifting Gears” (2007) argued for scaling up the digitization of special collections by encouraging behavior that would lead to more radically accessible collections, with a particular focus on adopting a “do it” attitude towards digitization.
• Digitization of special collections is frequently inhibited by concerns about Internet Protocol (IP) or privacy rights. The 2010 “Well-Intentioned Practices” (WIP) document establishes a community of practice for digitization of unpublished materials based in risk analysis and, where appropriate, the adoption of fair use.
• The 2007 “Good Terms” report offers guidance for ensuring broad access to collections in cases where third party, private sector partners have helped to facilitate digitization that the institution could not otherwise afford, and this guidance has since been echoed in a set of 2010 guidelines from ARL.
• “Rapid Capture” looks at the moment of actual digitization of non-book formats and highlights approaches that attempt to digitize collections at scale.
• There are other ways to make collections more accessible. “Capture and Release” (2010) argues for allowing, if not encouraging, cameras in reading rooms. “Scan and Deliver” investigates policy issues related to patron-initiated digitization of materials in special collections.

In an era of increased institutional and user interest in special collections, coupled with flatlined or decreasing budgets, finding ways to shift expectations and streamline processes is the best way to do more with less.

http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2007/2007-02.pdf
http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2010/2010-11.pdf
http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/rights/practice.pdf
http://www.trln.org/IPRights.pdf
http://dlib.org/dlib/november07/kaufman/11kaufman.html
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/principles_large_scale_digitization.pdf
http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2010/2010-05.pdf

Presentation

Lillian Manzor
Associate Professor of Modern Languages
University of Miami

The Cuban Theater Digital Archive (CTDA) is a unique digital collection of Cuban theater resources that was established by Associate Professor of Modern Languages Lillian Manzor and the University of Miami Libraries in 2004. The University of Miami received a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in early 2009 to determine the importance of the CTDA to the academic community of theater scholars and students and to outline a sustainability plan for the CTDA’s future. The planning grant determined that no other publicly available Web site in the world focuses on the documentation of Cuban theater in Cuba and the Cuban Diaspora to the depth and breadth of the CTDA. In addition, the grant helped confirm that cultural affairs officials in Cuba are willing and often eager to support and contribute robustly to the CTDA, and that the US and Cuban academic communities see considerable value in the CTDA as a teaching and learning platform, especially because it includes space for student contributions. In October 2010, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the University of Miami to rebuild the technical and organizational infrastructure of the CTDA in order to establish the CTDA as the most significant freely available primary source on contemporary Cuban theater in the world. This presentation will provide an overview of the CTDA and an update on its progress.

http://scholar.library.miami.edu/archivoteatral/

Handout (MS Word)

Jackie Dooley
Program Officer
OCLC Research

The report “Taking Our Pulse: The OCLC Research Survey of Special Collections and Archives” reveals a variety of problems in the technology realm across the target population. The report summarizes the findings from OCLC’s survey of 275 academic and research libraries across the U.S. and Canada. Executed as a follow up to a similar 1998 Association of Research Libraries survey that proved catalytic, this work has determined norms across the community, and the data will support decision-making and priority setting across the community. Findings include:

• management of born-digital archival records is in its infancy across this population
• digitization is a major challenge, both due to the need for better technology skills in special collections and because the demand for content is insatiable
• software solutions for archival work are inadequate
• far too many rare and unique materials remain undiscoverable, possibly due to insufficient adoption of sustainable methodologies for cataloging and archival processing.

http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/hiddencollections/default.htm
http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2010/2010-11.pdf

Handout (MS Word)

Presentation (PowerPoint)

Tad Shull
Editor, Jazz Studies Online
Columbia University

The history of jazz resonates in its recordings: they capture the act of musical creation in real time. A huge body of reference works on jazz recordings, the product of seventy years’ labor by jazz discographers, in turn documents this legacy of improvised performance. The discographies now present the field of jazz studies with an untapped source of knowledge about jazz history.

The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has begun to design and test a Web-based database application that can preserve, enhance, and provide public access to this store of data on jazz recordings. The application, J-DISC, will become available on Jazz Studies Online, an open access Web site managed by the Center, by May 2012. J-DISC will enable researchers, educators, and students to mine a wealth of existing and new data for insights on improvisation, artists’ careers, changes in jazz styles, the recording industry, and many other topics. The database application will also be collaborative, to an extent never possible in print or offline jazz discographies. It will allow discographic experts to edit and comment on the data and its sources, share new information as it becomes available, and exchange ideas about related research issues. Leading representatives from the field are now collaborating with the Center on the design of the editorial functions of J-DISC.

This project briefing will include a discussion of the challenges in documenting this fluid, evanescent art form with the accuracy it deserves, and the potential for collaborative editorship and supporting technology to achieve the required precision and scholarly credibility.

http://jazzstudiesonline.org/
http://www.jazz.columbia.edu/

Handout (MS Word)

David Kirsch
Associate Professor
University of Maryland

Since 2008, the Sherwood Archive Project has investigated the potential for collecting and preserving the records of failed businesses. This investigation is based on the collaboration with Sherwood Partners, Inc., a consulting firm based in Mountain View, CA, that offers a “private workout” service to failing companies as an alternative to formal public bankruptcy. During this service all assets of a failing company are assigned over to Sherwood, including all paper and digital records.

In the beginning phases of the project, collaborators from the University of Maryland worked with Sherwood to learn about how they were collecting and managing these records, and then, based on those findings, developed new strategies to embed long-term preservation mechanisms into Sherwood’s existing business processes. In the next phases of the project, the goal is to establish a partnership between Sherwood and an external repository that will take ownership of, preserve, and provide access to these records into the future. This project briefing will report on outputs of the project to date and next steps, including the development and implementation of a workflow for the ongoing transfer of paper and digital records between Sherwood and an external repository.

Handout (MS word)