Building Sustainable Digital Collections: Challenges & Opportunities A Presentation for the Digital Collection Coordinator position at the University of Oregon by Kate Ball Temporary Digital Projects Librarian, University of Oregon June 8 th, 2007

Sustainability  Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: To give support to To maintain or keep up To bear the weight of To allow or admit as valid To support by adequate proof

Key Concepts in the Sustainability of a Digital Collection Program  Supporting the mission & goals of the institution  Supporting targeted end-users’ needs  Planning for ongoing preservation and management  Interoperability of content and metadata  Resource allocation to ensure lasting accessibility

What comprises a Digital Collection Program?  According to NISO’s A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. Collections Groupings of digital content. Objects Individual images, documents, or other units of digital content. Metadata Descriptive, technical, administrative, and rights-related information about digital collections and objects. Projects Strategic plans with specific goals and timelines.

Collection Level Sustainability  Does the project enhance the aims of the institution and satisfy the greatest needs of end-users? Consultation with Subject Specialists. Collaboration with outside partners and user groups.  Does the institution have the resources in place to develop and maintain the collection? Digitization equipment, storage space, & human resources to produce, catalog, and maintain digital collections.  Is a system in place to document the ongoing functionality of the collection? Automatically generated reports and usage statistics. User-group studies and qualitative analysis.

Object Level Sustainability  Maintaining master preservation copies as well as access/use copies of digital objects. Storage space for archival preservation copies.  Establishing standards for digitization. Selecting specifications and formats that support interoperability, migration, and reusability.  Creating and documenting naming conventions that provide unique identifiers for each digital object. Institution-wide naming conventions. Conventions that follow best practices & standards such as ISO. Drafting specific naming guidelines at the onset of each project and linking them to archival storage of preservation copies for enduring sustainability.

Sustainability of Metadata  Designing robust metadata from the initial stages of a project to accommodate future developments of complex public interfaces. Strong provisional metadata at the time of uploading. Planning of more extensive descriptive fields that can be added over time.  Adhering to metadata schema and standards that promote interoperability & metadata cross-walking. Mapping complex & customized schemas to widely-used standards such as Dublin Core for harvesting aggregates like OAIster. Use of standardized data dictionaries, controlled vocabularies and information standards such as Library of Congress Subject Headings, Thesaurus of Graphical Materials, and ISO date formats.  Balancing detailed description with cost-effectiveness. Maximizing the usefulness to the end user with efficiency in description and maintenance.

Sustainability of Digital Projects  Thorough planning and analysis at the onset of new digital projects. Establishing estimated size and storage requirements prior to embarking on digital projects. Developing and documenting naming conventions and metadata fields. Allocating ongoing resources to support not only development, but also continued maintenance of digital collections.  Establishing specific goals and a timeline of milestones. Entering into projects with a strong vision of the finished project. Setting deadlines and goals for stages of the projects such as initial pilot project stage and timeline for final product.  Transforming projects into programs over time. Documenting workflows and best practices to incorporate into a lasting digital collections program. Establishing partnerships and lines of communication to facilitate the planning of new digital projects within a robust digital collections program.

Meeting the Challenges: Highlights of Sustainability at UO  Cross-training of traditional catalogers to make digital projects a routine part of workflows. Working toward a programmatic approach to development and maintenance of digital collections.  User-driven collection development. UO Office of the President - Scholars’ Bank communities -  Dublin Core mapping for OAIster. Gertrude Bass Warner photo in ContentDM. Gertrude Bass Warner photo in ContentDM OAIster record of same object.  New Sports History Website.Sports History Website A shining example of interoperabilty. Bowerman & Prefontaine in ContentDM Bowerman & Prefontaine in Leadership & Legacy

Future Directions: Opportunities for Increased Sustainability on the Horizon at UO  Solidification of institution-wide naming conventions.  Establishment of a standardized process for initiating new digital collections in collaboration with Systems, Subject Specialists and outside partners.  Development of workflows for incorporating patron scan requests into public ContentDM collections.  Digitization Equipment Task Force analysis of potential resource-sharing centralized scanning facility.

Final Thoughts on Meeting the Challenges and Opportunities of Sustainability  Encourage collaboration and shared investment in digital collections.  Establish strong partnerships across departments and within greater academic community.  Be flexible and creative – plan for the unexpected.

Sustainability References  Besser, Howard. “The Next Stage: Moving from Isolated Digital Collections to Interoperable Digital Libraries.” First Monday.  Council on Library and Information Resources. Building and Sustaining Digital Collections: Models for Libraries and Museums. August  Gill, Tony & Miller, Paul. “Re-inventing the Wheel? Standards, Interoperability and Digital Cultural Content.” D-Lib Magazine. Vol. 8, No. 1 (January 2002)  Library of Congress. Sustainability of Digital Formats -- Planning for the Library of Congress.  National Information Standards Organization. A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections  Smith, Abby. “Issues in Sustainability: Creating Value for Online Users.” First Monday.  Waters, Donald J. “Building on Success, Forging New Ground: The Question of Sustainability.” First Monday.