Keith Jeffers
Director IT Services
National Library of Australia
Lesley Goodwin
Project Coordinator
JSTOR
Many Hands Make Light Work: Public Collaborative OCR Text Correction & Annotation (Jeffers)
In July 2008 the National Library of Australia released the Australian Newspapers service as a beta version to the public and now has 3.5 million articles available. A national digital program on this scale has a significant impact in the digital space, particularly for genealogists and local historians. Key requirements for these users are not only to be able to access and search the data but also to be able to interact with it and with other users of it in order to generate and create new information and resource in new ways. Newspapers users in particular want to be able to share data, share research, confirm accuracy of data, and make linkages around data particularly in respect of people’s names. The Library is transforming the newspapers from a static historical resource into a living history that can be shared, developed and re-purposed in new and exciting ways by use of Web 2.0 applications and technology. It is essential that the users can mine the data in old and new ways, add value to the data, and mash (share) the data in online communities using latest Web 2.0 technologies. The presentation will include the background on the National Library’s Newspaper Digitisation Project and how users interact with the service through annotation, tagging and commenting as well as lessons learned, user take-up/acceptance and the future of Web 2.0 technologies in other Library services.
Enhancing Digitized Auction Catalogs Using Community Editing Tools (Goodwin)
JSTOR is collaborating with the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a pilot project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to understand how auction catalogs can be best preserved for the long-term and made most easily accessible for scholarly use. This pilot project involves digitizing and preserving a small set of auction catalogs dating from the 18th through the early 20th century, with the goal of examining how a more extensive effort might be undertaken. JSTOR has developed new tools for both digitization (capturing handwritten annotations that document the lots’ buyers and prices) and for community editing (tools that enable users to upload information about particular catalog records, such as indicating or correcting the sale price of the object, and the ability to add an annotation that gives further information about the piece). This update will provide a brief overview of the project and a more detailed discussion of the community editing tools. JSTOR is a service of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.