You Know What We Did This Summer July 15, 2009
Posted by Rich in : Announcements, Broadsides, Trident , add a comment
I’ve been working in academic libraries for fourteen years now, and I still haven’t been able to convince my grandmother that working for a university doesn’t mean you get the summers off. We certainly haven’t been taking the summer off in the Digital Collections Program here at the Duke University Libraries, even though you haven’t seen most of the results of our summer work yet.
We premiered the Duke Digital Collections iPhone app back in June, which has been getting positive and enthusiastic feedback (thanks!), but otherwise most of our work has been behind-the-scenes stuff that will pay off in the future. Among our projects:
- The metadata phase of the Broadsides & Ephemera digital collection has begun in earnest, with a team of eight catalogers and archivists using our new metadata editor to describe these rare and valuable resources.
- Work continues on Trident, our digital collections system. With a new repository, a new metadata editor, and all sorts of other new developments, we’ll be able to create and manage digital collections better, faster, and more seamlessly than ever before, and deliver content in new and exciting ways.
- Our Digital Production Center continues digitizing materials for future collections at a furious rate. As usual, they’re very speedy and the rest of us sometimes feel like we’re trying to play catch-up with them….
- We’ve introduced new ways to keep up with the Digital Collections Program, including a Facebook page (come be our friend!) and more frequent Twitter updates, where we’ve been tweeting highlights from the Duke Digital Collections since the spring. We’ve also been posting with our digital collections colleagues from across the state to the North Carolina Digital Collections Collaboratory blog.
- Last but certainly not least, we’re about to launch a huge, fantastic, exciting, FUN new digital collection — hopefully next week — that we’re going to have to keep secret a bit longer. We hate to tease you … well, maybe we want to tease you a little bit. It’s completely different from anything we’ve done before in several ways that will become clear when it’s published. We’ve been working like fiends on this one, but we think it’s totally going to be worth it, and hope you will, too, when you see it. Stay tuned.
As always, thanks for reading, and for your support and interest. We hope you’re having as good a summer as we are. Don’t forget the sunscreen and the frosty beverage of your choice….
Building the Broadsides Collection: Conservation March 16, 2009
Posted by maa13 in : Broadsides, Trident , add a commentWhat happens when an entire collection goes through the Conservation Department to be processed so that it can be digitized? What do these collections look like through the eyes of a conservator? What level of conservation work should a collection get? How long does it take to process a collection? These are some of the common questions asked of the Conservation Staff. In our second installment of Digital Collections “Behind the Scenes” we will explore these questions and more. Below is an overview of the process which is explained in detail in the embedded video.
Overview:
1. Sort
2. Remove Mylar
3. Assess collection for repair
4. Repair
5. Flag problem items for the Digital Production Center
6. Re-house
7. Repeat
The next stage of the process is digitization — coming soon!
Building the Broadsides Collection: A Large-Scale Digitization Approach February 17, 2009
Posted by Jill Katte in : Broadsides, Trident , 3comments
I’m happy to report that work on the Broadsides and Ephemera Collection has begun! The source content for this project is an artificial collection in Duke’s Special Collections Library, dated 1790-1940. Truly an interdisciplinary collection, it includes materials related to political campaigns, politics, theater, dance, museum exhibitions, advertising, travel, expositions, and military campaigns, and it presents historical perspectives on race relations, gender, and religion. On many items, you can still see holes in the upper corners from the original posting of the signs and flyers.
Aside from past processing decisions that brought this artificial collection together in the first place, we will do no selection before digitization. Our goal is to digitize ALL of the content (roughly 5,000 items) and to use it as an example of an “open-ended” digital collection. If we aquire additional broadsides and posters, they can be digitized and added to this collection on an ongoing basis.
We also consider this project as digitization of a hidden collection: the early broadsides and posters are a significant, but underutilized resource. (more…)
Building the Broadsides collection-Part 1 January 12, 2009
Posted by nh48 in : Announcements, Broadsides, Trident , add a comment
Over the the next few months, we’ll be writing a series of posts that offer a behind-the-scenes look at all of the work and decision-making that goes into building one digital collection, from selection, conservation, and physical processing to scanning, metadata, and publication. We’ve chosen to blog about our work on the Broadsides collection in particular for several reasons:
- It’s a relatively large-scale project that will test our ability to ramp up our digitization efforts (5,500 items from the U.S. and abroad, dated 1790-1940)
- It will serve as a test-case for the development and use of our new metadata tool–codename “Trident.”
- It will be a pilot project to get more library staff involved in generating metadata for digital collections.
So check in periodically to see how the project is moving along!
