1. Discovering digital collections at USD
Postcards and more!
Discovering digital collections at USD
Welcome to our session on Content Pro.
Innovative’s new digital collection management tool.
Content Pro encourages the discovery of digital collections and simplifies the digitization process itself.

2. Introductions Diane Maher Rice Majors University of San Diego
University Archivist/Special Collections Librarian
University of San Diego
Rice Majors
Product Manager
Innovative Interfaces, Inc.
I will be talking about how to create digital collections using Content Pro
Rice will show you how the Content Pro user experiences these collections.

3. Realizing it’s not just for libraries! Creating Digital Archives Group
The Journey
Answering a need
Realizing it’s not just for libraries!
Creating Digital Archives Group
A little background on how USD became involved in the development of Content Pro.
It all began with changes were experiencing in answering Archives reference questions.
we found ourselves sending scans rather than photocopies or allowing borrowing.
As a result, we began to create informal digital collections of requested archival items.
Around 2005 – the library was approached by the Art Dept.
They wanted slide collection digitized and administered by Copley.
So, we started looking into options.
In response to this request, a Library Committee on Image & Sound Collections was formed.
In the course of discovering a solution for the Art Dept.—a subscription to ARTstor—we also concluded that we needed to find a way to present our homegrown library collections digitally.
We also discovered that there were other departments at USD that had collections (such as the Anthropology Dept.’s David May Collection) that also had similar aims and interests.
Then we looked at some possible solution.
ContentDM, at that time, lacked a connection to the catalog. Also there were cost issues.
It was hoped that Innovative’s Media Management software might address our digitization needs.
But, we decided that it wasn’t intuitive enough for other non-cataloging departments and didn’t create a collection outside of the catalog.
Also, it didn’t use metadata schemes for describing digital objects
Finally, in 2008, we became a development partner with III for ContentPro.
This product seemed poised to answer most of our needs—
it created a separate digital collection that integrated with the online catalog, used metadata to describe these digital objects (Qualified Dublin Core) and promised a simple interface.
At this time we formed USD’s Digital Archives Group (with representation from IT, Law Library, Archives, and University Library).
We began talks with IT on Storage possibilities.
Identified test collections –Archives, Copley, LRC and non-library Department.
We were also successful in gaining a commitment to subscribe to Content Pro (Copley, LRC & IT split subscription three ways).
Most importantly, we committed ourselves to involving other departments on campus in creating unique digital collections.

4. Our Goals Discover and expose hidden collections
Digitize, preserve and store all formats
Provide simple searching and cataloging interface
Integrate with on-line catalog
Our goals:
To find collections on campus that are not known outside their departments or within library (book plates, postcards, finding aids)
Continue finding hidden collections: Technology Fairs (Theatre department audios – sample dialects)
To digitize, preserve and store all formats
Audio, video, still images, documents
To insist upon simple searching across multiple distinct collections and an easy to use cataloging interface.
For example, we were able create both individual items and use batch loads from third-party systems to create collections in Content Pro (Anthropology system – Questor Argus)
And finally, to have the best of both worlds—digital collections findable within the onlince catalog and as a separate searchable database.

5. Selecting Initial Collections
University Archives
Copley Library
Legal Research Center
Anthropology Department
For our initial project, we chose four unique collections from these areas. I’ll show you an example of each.

6. San Diego College for Women Postcard Collection
Postcard collection from the University Archives

7. Copley Library Exhibits
Photographs documenting library exhibits from Copley Library

8. Legal Research Center Photos
Photographs of the University of San Diego Law School faculty and buildings from late 1950s to early 1960s from the Legal Research Center

9. David W. May American Indian Collection
Collection of artifacts held by the Anthropology Dept. comprised of about two thousand items relating to indigenous American people of the southwestern United States. These artifacts include pottery, woodcarvings, musical instruments, fiber arts, and jewelry.

10. Off and Running Scan This!
For the Archives, I chose our postcard collection—because it was
virtually unknown
visually interesting
And of historical importance to the history of the university (many of the postcards were sent by students to their instructors during the 1950s).

11. Scanning Equipment Quality Preservation vs. web-accessible objects
Microtek Scanmaker i800 (
Quality
Postcards scanned between 240 and 300 dpi
Preservation vs. web-accessible objects
Tiff vs. jpg
Since the collection had not been digitized—we began a small scanning project to give us something to work with.
I chose this scanner based on recommendations on the Archives listserv.
We found that scanning images between 240 & 300 dpi was an optimal view for these images.
We quickly determined that since our scans were being used for access purposes—we chose jpg over tiff format.
Before we begin the larger project, we plan to also include tiffs for preservation purposes—after of course, we solve our storage issues.

12. Learning Curve Meta-what?
Never having had any formal training in metadata schema, I decided that I needed training ASAP.

13. Metadata Qualified Dublin Core
Coursework: Metadata for Digital Collections Online Course offered by the Professional Development Institute at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.
Sharing experiences with colleagues
My goal was to become proficient in the use of Qualified Dublin Core (Content Pro’s metadata scheme)
It was a mind-set change from MARC cataloging standards which are more prescriptive in nature.
Coursework: Metadata for Digital Collections Online Course offered by the Professional Development Institute at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.
Online workshop, with lectures and student participation, and homework!
We covered Simple Dublin Core, Qualified Dublin Core, MODS, VRA and created a Dublin Core data dictionary all in 5 weeks.
I also had the opportunity to share experiences with colleagues:
In class
Partner calls—development of Content Pro
Looking at other collections

14. Metadata for My First Postcard
Postcards from the college of women
For the sample project, I chose a particular subset of the larger postcard collection—
Linen postcards because they were colorful
and represented the time period covering the founding years of the university.
San Diego postcards for their connection to local history.

15. California Tower, Balboa Park, San Diego, California
This sample postcard shows off the architecture of Balboa Park—a legacy of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition that celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal.

16. California Tower, Balboa Park, San Diego, California (cont.)
This particular postcard was written to May Clarke who later became USD’s first librarian.
Sent in 1951, it shows the reaction to the college which was being built at that time (it opened in 1952) and a glimpse of local pride.

17. Templates
In order to create metadata to accompany the scanned images—a collection specific template was made.
For efficiency—I batched postcards into same material, printer and publisher to pre-populate the greatest number of fields
I was anxious to put my new found knowledge to work so I may have gone overboard.
Here is the beginning of the template….

18. Templates (cont.)
And, here’s the rest of the template.

19. Pre-populating Templates
Here’s a closer look at a portion of the template that shows how I used fields the postcards had in common to simplify workflow.
This shows how fluid Dublin Core fields are.
Notice that the Dublin Core field for “Publisher” is further defined to include the printer and the digital publisher.

20. Controlled Vocabulary
Locally controlled vocabulary is created from entry of terms in Subject field only.
This helps you to be consistent with the terms you have already used.
It works like auto-complete. Once you begin typing a word list appears.

21. Add a Field
To add another field and click on the Plus sign (+)—

22. Add a Field (cont.) Here we are choosing to add another subject field.
After clicking on the plus sign, you have a new blank subject field to fill in.

23. Insert a Dublin Core Field
To insert a new type of Dublin Core field
Open the drop-down menu located after the last field in your template
highlight field to insert (EXAMPLE: RIGHTS ACCESS)
and click on Plus sign (+)

24. Record Suppression
If your record isn’t ready for prime time you can suppress it by clicking this checkbox.
When your record is ready, click again to undo the suppression.
So now that you know how to create a record in Content Pro, Rice will talk about user’s experience.

25. Searching and browsing

26. You already have the photos & materials – let’s bring these to your patrons, reaching out to patrons.
Photos & more–any file format
Share your local history
Engage staff & community
Elegant Presentation

27. Easy to browse by collection by just clicking on a collection
Can search by collection

28. Clicking on one of the thumbnails takes me to a record view, where I can see attached files and the metadata for them.

29. RightResult™ keyword search
Thumbnail images & clue icons guide patrons

30. Streaming audio and video formats
Content Pro can also stream audio and video formats, like this poetry reading in Binghamton or an historical presidential address,

31. The imbedded player easily lets the patron watch and listen to media formats right in Content Pro.

32. Put local resources in the flow of users
OAI-PMH compliance allows records to be harvested by aggregators and by Encore
RSS feeds for each collection let you showcase particular sets of resources anywhere
imbedded on a webpage
users can subscribe to feeds
Content Pro is an Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting compliant data provider. That’s quite a mouthful, but what that really means is that we are able to present the metadata for your local resources in an expected format to aggregators like OAI-ster and to discovery environments like Encore. This is an important standard in terms of increasing exposure of your collections, broadening your user base, and allowing aggregators to bring together distributed collections for single-point searching.
Content Pro also has RSS feeds to let you showcase resources wherever your users may be. Because the feeds are available by collection, a user with a particular interest can add the RSS feed(s) that are of interest to their feed reader – or you can imbed a feed on the library webpage or on the webpage of a partner organization or academic department. Our first set of feeds are for newly-added content, by collection, and the feed includes basic information about the resource as well as the thumbnail!

33. Let your users do the tagging
Library of Congress & Flickr Commons success(es):
Public is eager to share specialized knowledge
Informally-expressed knowledge enriches findability
Tagging projects build public engagement with the library
Community tagging is a vast, untapped methodology for describing local collections.
Using Encore, users can add tags to harvested resources just as they can catalog resources. The Library of Congress has demonstrated with their Flickr Commons project that the public can be eager to share their specialized knowledge and that this informally-expressed knowledge can greatly enrich both the findability of the resources (complementing formal metadata that is the library’s “culture of description”) and the level of public engagement among the user base   tags added so far to LC resources on Flickr
Over a dozen other libraries and museums, including the Smithsonian, have joined the Flickr Commons project following LC’s success.

34. Represent these records in Encore – for discovery and tagging
Community tagging in Encore can let you engage your patrons, too!
I’ve zoomed in on an Encore results page here so you can see how great historical materials can be discovered through a regular search in Encore. This is at SUNY-Binghamton and they’ve been using Content Pro to digitize their local history postcard collection. I’ve searched for “Binghamton” and clicked once to refine down to just materials in the Images (i.e. Content Pro) collection and just look at this fun stuff! Here’s a local group on an old postcard, but the postcard has no date and no identification of who the people in the picture are. But can you imagine knowing any of these guys - or being one of them! - and not remembering more about them? With community tags, anyone with a patron record can tell you more about these materials than you knew before – increase the discoverability of these resources - and become more connected to the library in the process.

35. Ease of implementation
Quick & easy implementation
Hosted server option
Share a server with Encore
Data migration services available
Images/files
Metadata

36. Questions & discussion
Diane Maher
University Archivist/Special Collections Librarian
University of San Diego
Rice Majors
Product Manager
Innovative Interfaces

37. Additional Content Pro URLs
Binghamton University (SUNY ) (New York)
West Bloomfield Public Library (Michigan)
Westerville Public Library (Ohio)
Scottsdale Public Library (Arizona)