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.
