Metadata for 100,000 digital objects A digitisation project case study

Contents In Place - overview The project’s metadata requirements Metadata workflow Metadata schema Metadata in practice Some clever stuff

New Opportunity Fund (NOF) The British Library received £3.4m Approximately 50 digitisation projects across the whole of the United Kingdom NOF digitise - A total of £50m grants

Project overview The Library’s largest digitisation project 100,000 objects from 20 collections Free access to material to ‘Lifelong Learners’ In Place considered to be at the heart of the Library’s strategic vision The project complete by summer 2004

Criteria for selection Objects linked to a location Three themes –Your Place in the Nation –Britain - in Sight and Sound –Beyond Britain No conservation issues British Library copyright

The challenge To complete on average 250 metadata records every working day until summer 2004

Project Team

NOF metadata requirements Common standards across all NOF digitise projects Dublin Core NOF digitise portal

The collections Maps Early Printed Collections Manuscripts Newspapers Music Oriental and India Office National Sound Archive

Early Printed Collections 3000 I´mages from 19C photographically illustrated books 13,500 pages text and illustrations 3000 x Victorian ephemera

Maps 4500 x Maps and topographical drawings Earliest 1025 Largest 3m x 2m

Manuscripts 7500 manuscripts Ancient & illuminated, topographical drawings Conservation

Newspapers 40,000 pages The Penny Illustrated newspaper

Music 1000 pages of sheet music and illustrations Victorian popular music

Oriental and India Office 12,500 prints and drawings 10,000 photographs

National Sound Archive 300 hours audio British Dialects British wildlife recordings Ethnographic wax cylinders

Audience and accessibity Lifelong learners –General or casual users –Local historians –Learners - in and out of formal education –Academic researchers

Evolution of schema Review object selection with curators - ‘What are the key data elements you must have to describe the objects’ Identify end users Adjust schema to match our requirements

The final schema

Metadata workflow

Content Management System

Practical issues How do you uniquely identify each object in a meaningful way? The issue - Add.74000, f.1Eva.100WD1234,f321xX321(123) Cotton MS Vitellius A.X11 H (16.)Mss.Eur F174/2336 OSD 222H (52)Mss.Eur F174/2336 K.Top K.Top vol 102 (part 3) 2Mss.Eur B360b (65) C45/ E.7H1783.p.(59.)Mss.Eur F1234/9876 (1234B) Add.147

Practical issues Shelfmark: 189E f18 (1)

Practical issues Free text descriptions ‘Man on a cross’ syndrome Ideal description 100 words

Topographical print>Seascape>Sailing ship The entrance to Portreath, Cornwall William Daniell, 1814 Despite it's small size Ayton says of Portreath; 'It is, nevertheless, a place of considerable bustle and business, and has a harbour, which is always crowded with vessels, that bring coals to it from Swansea and Neath, and return with copper and tin ore' 'While we were standing on the pier-head we saw a small brig running for the harbour, and though the weather was moderate, we could not see her, even willfully, advance towards the rocks, without a sense of anxiety and breathlessness'. Etching 278 x 204mm NextBack Object level example

Practical issues Map interface –Coordinates - point verses area Dates –Original creation date –Key date

Practical issues Keywords and classification –Sample of each here

The website OliveSoft Penny Illustrated - 40,000 pages Scan from microfiche - OCR and image Clever user interface Demo

The website How does a user view a large image Largest map dimensions here Zoomify demo

Conclusion Understand your material and your users Exploit technology - CMS Wherever possible use what’s already there Metadata the hardest part of the project