Last week Amber J, Sarah Z, and I attended the American Library Association annual conference in Anaheim, CA.  I knew that since ALA is the main library association it would be packed with librarians, but an official report said over 22,000 people attended.  We attended several sessions, including “Staying Alive: Books Through Print On Demand Technology” and “Library 2.0 and Children’s Services” (and many more I cannot remember now), the ALA/ProQuest Scholarship Bash (at Disneyland!), the Book Cart Drill Team Championship (yep, that’s right, and it was very fun to watch), and a breakfast sponsored by LexisNexis, featuring Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank (who was very, very funny, and I’m looking forward to reading his book Homo Politicus).  At the sessions we attended, I heard a lot of interesting ideas that I hope to remember when I am a real librarian and not just a librarian-in-training.

We also hit the massive exhibit hall several times.  There were so many exhibits and so many people wandering around the exhibits, I was a little overwhelmed at times.  Plus anytime you walk through, you walk out with arms or bags full of free things–books, bags, flyers, etc.  The first time we went was when it opened.  Several booths gave away free books, bags, and other cool items on a limited basis, and I quickly learned that librarians are not shy about getting their free items.  We each came out the first day with a large bag (or bags) full of books (which we ended up shipping home as they would not fit in our luggage), and by our last day, I STILL had my carry-on filled with books because the publishers all sell their books for much lower prices than normal at the end of the conference so they don’t have to ship them back.  (Sad but true: My books are still in the bag because I have no bookshelf space for them, and that doesn’t even include the books we shipped!)

The exhibit hall also had a technology area where we could see the latest digital trends.  (We are, after all, digital fellows.)  We got our picture with and learned about a very cool scanner with a complete content-management package that makes it easier to have multiple people working on a collection.  We also saw a scanner that was automated, not only did it take pictures, but it turned pages as well.

Probably the best part of the exhibits though, (besides getting lots of free and cheap books,) was meeting several authors.  I got books autographed by Jon Sciezka, author of The Stinky Cheese Man and several others I love; Mo Willems, author of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, etc.; and Laura Vaccaro Seeger, author of First the Egg, Dog and Bear, and more.  Unfortunately, there were several more authors we missed, such as John Green and Megan McDonald.  The exhibit hall was constantly crowded, and there were always too many things to do, like wanting to attend three different interesting sessions at once.  It’s tough to work everything in, but I think we did a good job.  It was a GREAT experience, and I have a really, really good time.

Well, I missed blogging for last week, but it turns out classes and multiple group projects took up a lot of my time, so I didn’t get as much work done project-wise as I’d hoped.  Now that classes are winding down, though, I am able to do some catch up work for Dada.  Last Wednesday I had a meeting with Tim S., Wendy R., and Jen W. to go over metadata.  We wanted to get Tim’s opinion of decisions we had made and how everything looked.  Especially since he’ll be heading overseas within a few weeks on a buying trip.

I think the meeting went pretty well.  I left a little discouraged though because I had done a few things incorrectly and would need to fix them.  The creator, publisher, and place of publication fields all need to have authorized headings, but sometimes I had used the incorrect headings that were not authorized.  Jen assured me that had I already taken Cataloging, I would not have made the mistake.  I’ve really been noticing lately how helpful it would be to have taken Cataloging by now (right now I’m scheduled to take it this fall).  During the meaning, Tim, Wendy, and Jen often referred to MARC tags, which I only vaguely know about.  And most of what I know about the fields comes from when I was preparing the metadata.  I would try to check information by looking at the MARC record in InfoHawk, but the records are a little confusing if you’re not sure what the numbers mean.  Luckily my older sister is a librarian (who just graduated yesterday with her MLS from U of IL) and led me to this guide, which was and still is really helpful.

This Wednesday is when we have our fellowship project presentations, but before then I will be fixing up the metadata again, changing some folder names, and re-uploading the books.  Wendy created a great home page for the migrated collection that we will at least use temporarily until we check with Tim on a permanent design.

It seems like there are little things to do now before the final upload is ready.  We’re still holding out for CONTENTdm 4.3, which I think should be ready any day.  We’d like to use pdfs for the images, and 4.3 should be better at displaying them.  I uploaded in 4.2 a comparison test of one book using pdfs and jpgs to see the difference, but that doesn’t necessarily tell us how they will look in 4.3.  Wendy also told me that the books should probably be OCRed, so the text on each page will be searchable.  I tested OCR with one of the books, which was challenging (and slightly confusing) since the images are currently housed on the desktop of one computer but the program used to OCR is on another.  The way the program does OCR will require the images to be in the same folder - which means I should hold off on separating the images into folders, preparing them to be uploaded as monographs.

Wendy and a few other DLSers will be attending a CONTENTdm meeting this week, so hopefully we’ll know more about 4.3 soon.  In the meantime, while waiting for further steps, I’ll be preparing metadata notes for Tim S. so when he adds more books in the future he’ll know what I’ve done and the records can be consistent.  I’ll also be figuring out the best way to divide some of the books into sections to be uploaded as monographs.  Some of them actually have chapters, but a few of the long books don’t necessarily have nice dividers.

The initial batch upload did not go as smoothly as I’d anticipated.  First I had to remember the steps.  I had my notes from when I had met with Wendy and Mark, but I’m the type of learner that learns by experience, so just by playing around with CONTENTdm for awhile I was able to figure it out.  After a few minor problems that I was able to solve, I uploaded about 15 books.  It seemed to go well, but then I realized none of them had actually appeared in the new collection.  Eventually I figured out that I had not indexed the collection though I thought I had.  So long story short, indexing is very important, and you should make sure you do it repeatedly.

Things are back on track now.  There are 27 books online, and Jen W. will check the metadata soon to see what needs to be added or changed.  While I’m waiting for more instructions on that front, I’ll be renaming folders since the massive filenaming is done.  I’m not sure how important folder names are in relation to the importance of good filenames, but I, at least, think they should be consistent, well-organized, and relate to the information within them.  I’ll also be working on dividing some of the more lengthy books into sub-folders or chapters.  This way instead of having 400-odd pages listed on the menu on the side, the pages will be divided and easier to locate.  For example, imagine if this diary (it’s only natural I use an example from my project last semester) were not divided into months, etc.  Dividing the pages into chapters or sections seems much more user-friendly.

I finished round one of manipulating metadata for the Dada books.  I’ll upload them tomorrow morning, and then we’ll have Jen W. take a look.  She’ll most likely find a few things that need changed.  We’re still kind of stalling for version 4.3 of CONTENTdm to be ready.  The new version is good with pdfs, which we’re leaning toward.  Having the images in pdf form will allow users to zoom in more and see better detail than they would be able to otherwise.  Eventually, after Jen is satisfied with the metadata and metadata changes, Wendy and I will meet with Tim S. for feedback.

This was a short entry but things are pretty straight-forward right now.  Hopefully I’ll remember what I learned from Mark A. about batch uploading.  I may have to consult my notes.

This week has been extremely busy with homework: an 8-10 page paper, group presentation, group progress report, and regular assignments all due.  Unfortunately because of these things, I fell behind on work this week, but I hope to catch up next week.  I started working on preparing the metadata for a batch upload.  Mark A. showed Wendy and me how to prepare the metadata and upload to ContentDM, but it was quite a few weeks ago, so I had to go back and read through my notes to remember what the steps are.  I had also met with Jen W. a few weeks ago to figure out how to transfer the data from the exported MARC records to information that makes sense for users on ContentDM.  Jen showed me how the OCLC metadata transfers to Dublin Core and the ContentDM labels.  So in my metadata preparation, I create an Excel spreadsheet of how the metadata from the MARC record will appear in each field in ContentDM.  When all of that is done, I will change it into a tab-delimited text file, which can then be uploaded to ContentDM.  I’m still getting a handle on this process, so I apologize if this sounds extremely confusing.  I know it’s an important process though, and this batch upload will save a lot of time.

This week Trudy Peterson, the former National Archivist is teaching a 3-day course called “Archives Master Course,” which I have signed up to take.  It should be interesting, and I’m looking forward to hearing more about archives.

I have finally finished working on the spreadsheets for converting filenames! In case anyone is keeping track, there are 4435 files for journals and 8922 files for books, which brings a grand total of 13,357 files that needed changed. I did not have to manually change each one (that’s why we use the spreadsheet - the actual changes will be done as a mass conversion), nor did I actually have to retype each filename (there was a lot of “copy and paste” and “click and drag” involved), but just knowing that I essentially dealt with 13,357 files makes me feel better about how much time I spent on it. There may be shortcuts that I am unaware of, but this is a learning process, and now I know how important filenames are and one good process of converting a very large batch of them. Part of the reason filenames are so important to the Dada collection is that this is a collection still-in-progress, so when new books and journals are added, they can follow in the same naming scheme and everything will be consistent. I will be checking in with Wendy tomorrow, but I believe the next step is to do a batch upload of documents and begin adding metadata.

In other news, I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately - some digital related. Here’s one I’ve found interesting: http://ist677.blogspot.com/
It’s a blog for a graduate class at Syracuse University. Each entry details a different digital library. Last week I was pleasantly surprised to see one from the University of Iowa: Mujeres Latinas Digital Collection. It’s not an overwhelmingly glowing review, and I’m not too familiar with the collection myself since I’ve never worked with anything in the Iowa Women’s Archive, but it’s nice to see the collection is getting noticed.

Not much to report.  I’m finishing up the file-naming conversion spreadsheet.  The books are done; I just have journals left.  Unfortunately I hit I tiny snag with the journals.  The file-naming structure I established for the books didn’t quite work as well for the journals.  I explained the structure in my previous post, so check back there if you need a reminder.  The problem I have now is that the journals have different issues, which I think should be accounted for in the file name.  The easiest way to solve this that I came up with is to add another two-digit code for the journal’s issue.  Unfortunately, now I’m not sure exactly what to do about an issue called 10-11.  These may seem like minor issues, and maybe they are, but I can see now all of the many decisions involved in migrating a collection and why being consistent is really important to the continuation of the collection.

Next week I should be getting into batch uploading, which means a lot of books will be uploaded into ContentDM.  Since I didn’t have too much to report, I’ll leave you with some links to interesting digital-related things I’ve discovered lately:

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/dpm/
The is a Digital Preservation Tutorial.  It was released to coincide with a workshop put on by Cornell University Library.  It won the Society of American Archivists’ Preservation Publication Award.  The tutorial has a lot of information, but it will take you some time to get through the whole thing.

http://www.slideshare.net/verzosaf/digital-initiatives-in-archival-preservation
SlideShare is a website where you can upload your slideshows for public viewing.  This slideshow is about Digitial Initiatives in Archival Preservation, and I think it gives a nice overview of the issues and possible solutions for digital preservation.  It was presented at the International Conference on Challenges in Preservation and Managing Cultural Heritage Resources in 2005.

Last weekend the 10 fellows and 1 metadata librarian from U of IA went to a TEI workshop at U of IL.  The workshop was exhausting but very informative.  We learned about TEI encoding, XML, CSS, and XSLT, all of which are important tools for digital librarianship.  Using TEI markup on a digitized novel, for example, you could have the option of only displaying certain aspects, such as when one character spoke or the timeline of the novel.  TEI markup is also useful in searching and normalization.  The Civil War Diaries Digital Collection at Western Michigan University that I have mentioned in previous posts used TEI markup in their digitizing process to make the collection more meaningful to researchers.  Here’s an example of one diary transcription page.  With the encoding, researchers can move the cursor over one of the underlined phrases and see to what the diarist was referring.  I’d love to go back to the Civil War Diaries Digital Collection I was working on last semester and do a similar thing, but that’s an idea that I need to flesh out more.

Last week I have been working on establishing new file names for the Dada collection.  There are many items that have already been scanned and that currently exist online, but in the migration process, the file names need to be recreated so they are consistent.   I established the filnaming scheme that the collection will use and have been working on a spreadsheet to indicate what the new file names will be.  The scheme consists of a 3 letters for the title, 2 numbers to indicate whether those 3 letters are used elsewhere, 3 numbers to indicate the order of the file images within one particular item, an underscore, description (Page 1, Front cover, etc.), and file extention (.pdf).  For example, the image of the front cover of the book Schalaben, schalabai, schalamezomai will have the new file name of sch01000_Front cover.pdf and the image of the front cover of the book Schutzhaft will have the new file name of sch02000_Front cover.pdf.  This scheme will help the collection remain consistent, particularly when new items are added.

This past week I met with Wendy and Jen W. to learn what type of metadata the Dada collection will be getting.  Three items currently have metadata added as a test, and once a few things are cleaned up, we will check with Tim, the curator of the Dada collection, and get his opinion.  In the meantime, I will be finishing up the spreadsheet of file naming and continuing to catch up from the weekend spent learning about TEI.

This week Wendy showed me how to capture MARC (machine-readable cataloging) records from OCLC so they can be used as metadata in CONTENTdm.  OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) allows librarians to view or edit a database containing records for books and serials.  Because many of the items in the Dada collection have already been cataloged, we want to keep that information and use it as metadata to describe the items when they are uploaded to CONTENTdm.  To use the database, I connected through Wendy’s account, found each of the books and serials that the University of Iowa currently has cataloged, and exported the information into XML files.  There are similar records for many of the items, so I had to be sure to identify the correct version - typically this was indicated by noting that the record said “Held”, which meant that the item is owned by the UI Libraries.  Most of the items also said “IR”, noting that book or serial had our institutional record.  Ideally this is what we want for all of the records because they include local notes.  After the records are all gathered, the next step is to have the programmers convert the XML files to tab-deliminated text files.  This week I will be reading more about tab-deliminated text files, what they do, and how to work with them.

This week I also started working on a spreadsheet for renaming files.  I’ll go into more detail on this next time since this is largely what I’ll be doing next week.  Next weekend eight of the other fellows and I will be attending a TEI workshop at the University of Illinois.  More on that next time as well.