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.
