Week 15: Wrapping Up

This week I wrapped up the web interface design, except for one feature on the home page allowing users to search pamphlets by category. That probably won't be active until all the pamphlets have been added. But other than that, everything is basically done. I got feedback from Sid in Special Collections, and made some adjustments based on his suggestions. I've gotten positive responses from everyone I've shown the design to, and I am very happy with the end product. I was lucky to have a good web designer to work with, as I couldn't have made it look nearly as good on my own. Thanks Linda!

I also began receiving some assistance from Bobby, the DLS library assistant, who has started scanning and cropping pamphlets for me to upload and catalog. This saves a lot of time on my end and will enable me to expand the collection size considerably. The help is greatly appreciated. Bobby will continue where I left off when I finish my stint on the project, so I went over with him my criteria for selecting pamphlets and showed him where they are located in Special Collections. Since I've only had time to look through maybe half the boxes containing pamphlets, I will leave him a list so he knows which ones to focus on after I'm gone.

I didn't get around to working on my presentation for finals week, so I'll start that next week in addition to continuing with production.

Week 14: Lots of Editing

I didn't post last week because of Thanksgiving break. I did, however, go into DLS Monday through Wednesday afternoons and work on production. This week, I focused mainly on editing both web page text and metadata. I re-tooled my essay to include links to pamphlets in the digital collection, to illustrate the main points of the text. I think it helps strengthen the historical analysis and make the essay more relevant and interesting to read.

I also went over the metadata for all the pamphlets I've digitized so far, and made some adjustments. Looking at the metadata I created at the beginning of the project with fresh eyes, hit home for me how subjective the process can be. There's a lot of wiggle room for making judgments about how to catalog things, and it's still somewhat elusive to me. But I've definitely learned a lot from being forced to do it on the fly. I'm looking forward to taking a cataloging class to get a firmer grasp on it.

Linda and I continued to work on the web interface. It's really coming along, and I'm happy with how it looks. I plan to show it to the content providers (Sid and David in Special Collections) next week, and see if there are any changes they'd like to make.

I also heard from Nicki that there is a possibility DLS may be able to provide some extra scanning resources for the project. This would be great, as there are many pamphlets I would love to add but wouldn't have time to scan myself. I am already planning to do production work over winter break to increase the size of the collection, so hopefully this means I will end up with at least 50 pamphlets (I'm currently at 41).

Next week, I plan to wrap up the main aspects of the web interface design, start preparing for the public presentation of fellowship projects on the 19th, and do as much production work as possible.

Week 12: Lots of Writing

My major task this week was composing the webpage text. I started out with a 2-paragraph introduction for the homepage, briefly explaining who Louis Szathmary was, what the recipe pamphlet collection entails, and the scope of the digital collection. This was the easy part. For the "value-added" aspect of the collection, I culled what I considered to be the most relevant information from my research into food history and composed an 8-paragraph essay, which will be on a linked page. It touches on the major factors that influenced the shift in the American diet between 1880 - 1930: advances in agriculture and technology; the emergence of "Food Science" and food purity laws; advertising; and social trends.

There is so much information surrounding this topic, that it's difficult to know where to draw the line. The text needs to give complete and accurate information, while not being so long and detailed that the reader loses interest. Writing the essay is also a challenge because I am by no means an expert on the subject, so I can only hope I'm doing it justice based on the limited amount of research I've had time for. Since I'm doing a fairly broad overview, I think I'll be able to avoid making any obvious errors -- at least, nothing anyone other than a food historian would notice!

Linda gave me a look at the webpage with the first draft of text inserted, and it seemed like it might be a bit too long. I'm working on editing it for brevity and will continue to do revisions in the coming weeks. I will also start drafting a project continuation plan to present to DLS at the end of the semester, outlining steps to be taken to complete the project after I've finished my part. And of course, I will continue with production work.

Week 11: More Of The Same

This week, Linda sent me a link to a preliminary design for the collection homepage. I thought it looked great and was happy to see my ideas manifested on the screen. I won't reveal it until the unveiling of the collection though. I'm sure there will be changes made in the meantime.

One change I'm already considering is to replace the historical timeline with an essay. When I started working on the first draft of the text, it began to seem like an essay would be a better format as it would allow me to better integrate factual information with analysis. I plan to get that to Linda this week so she can incorporate it into the web design. I'm sure I will continue to revise and edit it over the next month, but it will be helpful for this process to be able see how the text fits in with the graphical interface.

Other than that, I did more production work. I think I've uploaded 32 documents now. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll meet my target of 50 after all.

I also spent some time reading about XML and learning how to use the Oxygen editor, since I missed our last seminar and hadn't gotten the in-class tutorial. Knowing basic HTML certainly helps to make sense of XML. I don't claim to have a terribly strong grasp of it yet, but it seems to be a useful tool for data description. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to incorporate it in a future fellowship project, since it is something that I may well need to use someday on the job.

Week 10: Web Design

This week, I split my time between production and web design. As mentioned in my previous post, I had a meeting scheduled with Nicki and the DLS web designer, Linda Roth, for Friday. Up to this point I've only had vague ideas about how I wanted the collection's home page to look, so I browsed other digital libraries to get ideas for finalizing my own design. Some that incorporated especially creative design elements were the New York Public Library, Cornell University, The University of Washington, and The University of California - Berkeley.

Feeling inspired, I sat down to sketch out some possible designs. I made a couple of schematics for pages featuring introductory text, a link to another page with a timeline of food production/marketing from 1880-1930, and "canned" search links for the categories of food, kitchen appliances, and medicines. The main differences are in layout and graphics. One idea I had was to have the collection title display as if it were printed on an actual pamphlet, with an accompanying image from one of the pamphlet covers. Another is to cut an image out of one of the pamphlets to use as the main graphic -- specifically, the Domino Sugar girl. I'm leaning toward the latter. The search links will likely have thumbnail images of pamphlet covers, and each decade on the time line would have an accompanying thumbnail. An alternate idea is to have an image faded-in beneath the text on the time line page.

I was trying to be a little conservative, because while I am a novice at both HTML and Dreamweaver, I don't know much about creating more sophisticated web pages and wasn't sure what sorts of features would actually be feasible for Linda to incorporate. But after showing her my ideas, she said she thought they were all doable. She took my sketches so she could play around with them and come up with some examples before we finalize things. Getting the home page fleshed out feels like a big step in realizing the digital collection, and it's exciting to envision the final product. It's hard to believe I've gotten to this point in just a couple of months.

Next week, I will continue to do production part of the time while working on first drafts for the home page introductory and time line texts. I will also continue to refine my web design ideas in terms of details such as font type, color scheme, and layout.

Week 9: Re-Assessing Expectations

I have a lot of catching up to do. Due to an illness last week, I did not get in a full 20 hours again. I plan to work a few days over Thanksgiving break to make up this time, since we have the entire week off from school.

The good news is that I now have 24 pamphlets digitized. The bad news is that my target number of 50 may be unattainable at this point. Most of the interesting pamphlets are fairly long, in the 20-30 page range, and reformatting them is a fairly slow process. I am trying to find very short pamphlets to increase the total number, but they seem to be in the minority for the time period I am dealing with. I spoke with Nicki about this, and she is fine with scaling back the original goal of 50 and just getting done whatever I can. I would like to include as many as possible though, and am hoping to end up with at least 30-35.

I guess this is what Kelly Smith meant when she talked about project objectives being an "iterative process" during her presentation in seminar the other week. With this project being very time-limited, it is difficult to gauge all the variables that will effect the final outcome (such as missing work). I certainly have a more realistic idea now of what I can reasonably expect to accomplish by the end of the semester, but even that may be revised a month (or a week) from now.

So, now that I have a reasonable number of documents digitized, it is time to re-focus on other tasks. Specifically, I will be meeting with Nicki and the DLS web designer to discuss web interface at the end of the week. I need to put my ideas down on paper and come up with a prototype to show them. Also, this week I plan to return to the research I had been working on previously, which has been on the back burner for a while now, so I can start writing a first draft of the text I want to include with the collection. I contacted a professor at the U of I who has a research interest in food, in case there is a possibility for collaboration there. No word yet, but if that doesn't pan out at least it will help get the word out about the collection to potential users.

Week 7: Slow Week

Unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of work done on my project this week, with the ILA convention preventing me from going to the library for a couple of days. Those days I did work didn't involve anything new to report, since I was doing exactly the same thing I have in previous weeks. I've now uploaded/cataloged a total of 10 pamphlets, with one more nearly ready. Nicki and I agreed that I would continue concentrating on production through the end of this month, and then shift my focus to planning the website. I will be scheduling a preliminary meeting with the web designer in a week or two to discuss my ideas.

In the absence of substantive project-related news, I will be writing about my impressions of the ILA conference as they relate to digital librarianship. Overall, the experience gave me a renewned feeling of confidence that the skills I am gaining through the IMLS fellowship will serve me well when I enter the field. The future of libraries in the Internet age was a big theme of the sessions I attended, and I was left with the feeling that the digital librarian will play a crucial role in shaping this new paradigm.

This idea was reflected in Jim Elmborg's talk about the future of library education, in which he emphasized the profound changes caused by technology and the growing importance of online access. He made a point of mentioning the exciting possibilities created by the marriage between special collections and digital libraries, which made me feel particularly glad that I am gaining experience in this area through my current project.

Another session I attended was entitled "A Crop of Careers in Libraries," in which representatives of various ILA subdivisions were on hand to answer questions about careers in their field of interest. I spoke with representatives of ACRL, SLA, and Information Technology, all of whom expressed optimism about the growing number of career opportunities in digital libraries.

I also heard Stephen Abram of the SirsiDynix Institute give a speech entitled "Baby Busters, Gen X, and Born Digital Babies". Abrams profiled the next generation of library users, who have grown up in a world of "media saturation" and experience the Web as a central component of their lives. His underlying point was that libraries need to embrace the Internet as a means to connect with this group, and obviously, digital libraries are quite applicable to this goal.

Next week, I will make up some of the hours I lost this week and try to get as much production work done as possible. This will probably require me to start choosing shorter pamphlets for digitization, so I can meet my goal of 50 pamphlets by the end of the semester.

Week 6: Cataloging Questions

This week was primarily a continuation of last week's work. I reformatted and uploaded four more pamphlets to the CONTENTdm server, for a current total of eight. I'm getting the hang of the process and am working faster, but it's still fairly slow going. In terms of planning, I'm thinking I'll spend the next couple of weeks plowing through as many pamphlets as possible. Since this seems to be the most unpredictable part of the project timing-wise, it would be a bad idea to leave it for the end of the semester. After getting a substantial number of objects digitized, I'll take a step back and start focusing again on the other tasks at hand, such as designing the website and writing the accompanying contextual information.

I also took a break from digitizing to research metadata. Metadata librarian Jen Wolfe provided a link to a helpful article, "Introduction to Metadata", which I've started reading and will continue looking at this week. So far I've read the first section, which talks about the different definitions and types of metadata, its attributes and characteristics, and the life cycle of digital objects.

I've also been learning a lot simply by going through the process of cataloging the pamphlets. Since I haven't taken a cataloging class yet, I feel unsure as to whether I'm doing a good job. I started to get confused about how much detail I should be going into when adding subject headings. For example, for a pamphlet with recipes for canned salmon, do I simply leave it under the broad term of "cookery", or do I also include terms such as "salmon", "fish", "seafood," etc.? How do I choose which ones to use? I talked with Jen about it, and she basically said there is no clear-cut answer, as cataloging is more of an art than a science. The conclusion we reached is that since the collection uses OCR (optical character recognition, which allows the user to search the text for specific words), it may not be necessary to give them more than broad subject headings. But I'm sure I will continue to edit and refine the metadata as I progress.

Week 5: Nose to the Grindstone

This week has been a turning point in the project: I've progressed from the planning stage to the execution stage. After finalizing my project plan, I continued scanning and reformatting pamphlets and learned how to upload the images to the CONTENTdm server. It's a bit of a learning curve, as there are a lot of details to remember, but the software makes the whole thing pretty easy to do.

I also had my first lessons on metadata. I've only spent a couple of days on that, and I'm still feeling pretty wet behind the ears. I can't say I have a very strong grasp of it yet, so I will need to read up on the rules to get a better understanding of what I'm doing. But I did manage to add descriptions to the four pamphlets that are now available for viewing on the Iowa Digital Library website -- take a look here. There are still some kinks to be worked out, like tinkering with the image sizes so they aren't so huge. The collection won't officially be "unveiled" until the end of the semester, but if you know where to look you can watch it grow as each document is added.

The entire process of scanning the images, organizing the files on the network, cropping and straightening, uploading to CONTENTdm, and adding metadata is pretty time-consuming
(and, frankly, a little mind-numbing after a while...but enjoyable if you have music to listen to). It basically took me all week to complete those four pamphlets. I did lose some time deleting, re-cropping, and re-uploading a couple of pamphlets, because I decided to switch to a "one-up" (one page) display rather than "two-up" (two-page spread). I wasted even more time because I didn't realize I could delete an entire compound object (i.e., a pamphlet) at once rather than one page at a time. I'm sure I will work faster as I go, but it made me realize that trying to complete more than 50 pamphlets might be a bit optimistic given the time frame of the project. I'm going to shoot for that as my target collection size, and if I happen to have time to add more it will be a bonus.

Stay tuned next week, as I continue to reformat, upload, and catalog more pamphlets. I will also need to spend some time figuring out if there are any companies I should be contacting to request copyright permission -- since I have no idea how long that process might take, I'd better get started sooner rather than later.

4: Recipe Pamphlets Are Like Trees

I had a meeting last week with representatives from Digital Library Services, Special Collections, and Preservation to discuss my ideas about the project and finalize a project plan. It was good to get some new perspectives. For example, as my last post shows I had been sort of tied up in knots over the copyrighted materials in the collection, thinking I should just avoid them. However, I came out of the meeting with a somewhat more relaxed view on this issue.

It was agreed that the effort to digitize the pamphlet collection will likely continue after my initial stint is up, with the goal of eventually publishing most, if not all, of it. Therefore, I was encouraged to go ahead and start seeking copyright permission from major companies represented in the collection. It seems unlikely that any would refuse; it will just be an added detail to take care of.

I was also made aware of a gray area in the copyright world: "orphan works", which are copyrighted works whose owners may be impossible to locate or identify. Many of the pamphlets would meet this description, as they were published by companies no longer in existence. While government legislation on how to deal with orphan works is currently being debated, the bottom line is that these particular pieces may well be fair game for inclusion in the online collection. It's sort of like the philosophical question of a tree falling in a forest - if a copyrighted work is published but the owner isn't around to care anymore, does it make a sound? It's a fine line to walk to avoid breaking the law, while also taking calculated risks when the stakes are low. From what I understand, even in the worst case scenario, the university would simply be asked to remove the images from the website.

The consensus reached at the meeting was that it would be best to start with a sampling of the collection, concentrating on the years 1880 - 1940, with the rest to be added over time after I have laid the groundwork. A few of the oldest ones will need to be prepared for reformatting in the Preservation workshop, but most of the pamphlets are in good shape to be scanned. Speaking of which, I scanned and Photoshopped my first two pamphlets (Wrigley's and Air-O-Mix, of course), and will be learning how to import them to CONTENTdm next week. I'm also working on drafting a written project plan to use as a blueprint in moving forward.

Week 3: Changing My Tune

I'm getting to know the physical collection very well, having spent hours browsing and noting materials that look like good candidates for digitization. It will be hard to narrow the list down to no more than 100 pamphlets, as there are many I'd like to include, but I think keeping the online collection small is a good thing. Most pamphlets within a given era are similar in style and theme, so choosing a subset of representative ones will give the viewer a pretty good idea of what the rest are like.

I've also been revising my ideas about organization. As I look through the pamphlets, it becomes increasingly clear that using any sort of chronological structure will only create problems. This is because of the publication date/copyright paradox I mentioned in my other posts. I've learned through my research into copyright law that pre-1923 works are public domain, as are those published without notice between 1923 and 1978. Unfortunately, most companies during the latter period made sure to include a copyright notice in their publications, so there are fewer post-1923 pamphlets I'll able to use. The opposite is true of the pre-1923 pamphlets: fewer of them are dated at all. This leaves me working mainly with undated materials.

It's a little confusing, but the upshot is that I've shifted my focus to a more thematic approach. I'm thinking about dividing it into categories along the lines of "food", "appliances and kitchenware", "medicine", and "miscellaneous". Within those categories, the pamphlets would be grouped loosely by time period, but not specifically as such. Other possible themes are pamphlets that relate to manufacturers' health and nutrition claims, or those that demonstrate women's roles and gender stereotypes. However, these would eliminate a lot of pamphlets that aren't necessarily relevant to a specific theme, and I like the idea of being able to include a broader range of materials.

In my last post, I also mentioned the historical research I've been doing. My sources include the books Revolution at the Table by Harvey Levenstein and The Oxford Companion to Food and Drink in America, as well as various online sources such as The Food Timeline. In the Levenstein book, I read about two women -- a cookbook author and a home economist, who were influential figures in the early 20th-century food world -- immediately after having found documents written by both of them among the pamphlets. That was an interesting coincidence, and hit home for me the historical value of the collection. The pamphlets might seem to some like trivial bits of ephemera, but they really do reflect the evolution of American culture in many ways, which is why I think they will be of interest to a wide audience. If nothing else, it's fun to look at the advertising.

Week 2: The Plot Thickens

As week two draws to a close, it's becoming apparent just how much work I really have to do in one short semester. My main focus so far has been to define the scope of the project, and I have been browsing digital collections online (including the Iowa Heritage Digital Collections, University of Wisconsin Digital Collections, and Documenting Pitt) to get an idea of what would be a realistic size to aim for. After consulting with my project mentor, Nicki Saylor, the consensus seems to be that somewhere between 50 and 100 items would be a reasonable goal. That's something of a relief, because I had envisioned having to deal with a much larger number.

But on the other hand, this creates a new challenge: coming up with a cohesive structure for such a small subset of pamphlets. Should it be either food or appliance pamphlets? Pamphlets from the 1880s through the 1920s? Pamphlets demonstrating the health claims of early product advertisements, or ones that reflect the changing roles of women in the kitchen? Although I am personally more interested in the oldest pamphlets, after much waffling (and again, guidance from Nicki) I'm tentatively planning to feature highlights of the collection in a timeline format, with each decade up through the 1960s or 70s represented. This will allow viewers to get a broad overview of how eating habits and food production have evolved over the course of a century.

Now begins the time consuming task of poring over the thousands of pamphlets, in search of the most interesting and informative ones to include. It feels a little like digging through a treasure chest. My favorite so far is a Wrigley Spearmint gum pamphlet from 1915, which features a "spear-man" reciting nursery rhymes. I'm trying to muster the same enthusiasm for the kitschy ads of the 50s and 60s...they're less unique, and I'm easily distracted by more arcane products like the Air-O-Mix "Whip All" food aerator (which, according to early 20th- century experts, makes food somehow magically more nutritious).

I've also been spending time researching U.S. food history and copyright law - an important issue that could figure into the selection process, as many of the pamphlets are copyrighted. I'll touch on those topics in my next post.

Week 1: A Bouncing Baby Blog

Say hello to the newest addition to the blogosphere. Before any Web surfers out there in Internetland get too excited, it's all about libraries. Specifically, I will be chronicling my project work as an IMLS Digital Libraries Fellow at the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science. But keep reading! I promise it will be fascinating.

This semester I've been assigned to the Chef Louis Szathmary Culinary Arts Collection, housed in the Special Collections division of the U of I libraries (Szathmary was an influential Hungarian-American chef, writer, and culinary instructor, who amassed a large collection of food-related materials). This is a good fit for me, because I'm what you might call a foodie. Within the larger collection, there is a sub-collection of vintage recipe pamphlets and cookbooks which are slated for inclusion in the U of I Digital Library. The pamphlets were published by manufacturers, food growers, and other organizations to promote and educate consumers about various products, such as pre-packaged convenience foods or appliances. (to get an idea of what I'm talking about, here are some examples). My job, among other things, is to figure out the scope of the digitization effort and work on designing the collection's website.

So far, I've spent a couple of days looking through the first few boxes of pamphlets and taking notes (there are 96 boxes in all). There are well over 4000 pamphlets, ranging from the late 1800s to the present day. About half of these aren't dated - the best you can do is make an educated guess about their decade of publication. This could prove to be a thorny issue when trying to decide which materials to use (assuming, as I am now, that only a portion of the collection will be digitized to begin with, and will likely be organized chronologically).

I've been working on other things too, but I'll save that for the next post. Now I'm off to the library to look at pictures of food...