Notes From the Library

Week 13: Drupal Class

2008-11-28T13:35:00.000-08:00

The Beginning Drupal class on November 20 went well. We had about 25 attendees, and aside from the fact that the Internet connection was a little problematic in our classroom, there were no major snafus. I'm now moving on to the second class, which is officially on the calender for Dec. 4th. There are a number of people from the first class who have already signed on for the second one. With the first class under my belt, planning the next one should be less work. I'm actually rather enjoying the process, especially the feeling that I'm helping facilitate a community around campus. The interest is out there; all that's needed is a little organization to get things off the ground, and people seem genuinely grateful for the opportunity to get training.

Last week I also made progress on the Portal Community Interface template. After messing around with Drupal all semester, I realized I'd finally gotten to the point that I feel like I know what I'm doing when I use it. I'm hardly an expert, but I don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to do basic things anymore, which is satisfying. I still have more work to do on the CPI template, but I think I should have a good working draft by the end of next week.

Week 12: Event Coordination

2008-11-16T12:27:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I was at the Midwest Archives Conference symposium on digital preservation in Lawrence, KS, which means I once again have two weeks worth of blogging to catch up on. And once again, it was a busy two weeks. Before leaving town on Thursday the 6th, I was scrambling to get ready for our consultant's visit the following week. This involved finding available space on campus to hold two public presentations, one on Tuesday evening and another on Wednesday morning; sending out last minute emails to advertise the events; getting information for a press release; and having a conference call with David (the consultant from CTC).

It was a little crazy, but everything turned out fine. Unfortunately I couldn't attend the Tuesday presentation on building digital communities because I had class, but I heard it was well-attended. On Wednesday morning, we had a two-hour consulting session to talk about the Community Information Portal, which I thought went really well. Then came the second presentation, which was about Drupal modules and drew an even bigger crowd than the previous night's. All in all, I thought the visit was a success.

I couldn't rest on my laurels though, because I still had the Nov. 20 Drupal class to finish coordinating. This took up a good deal of my time last week. Almost 30 people are expected to attend, and I've been fielding emails from them. Cliff and Matt Arant will be leading the class, and we had a meeting on Thursday to plan the course. Since the first class is covering basic Drupal skills, we also decided to follow up with a second, more advanced class on site building in December. This will be taught by Daniel Walls, a student in the Engineering Department. So now I've begun planning that as well, and will simultaneously need to organize the 2-day training workshop we're planning for December or January.

Somewhere in there I also need to work on the Portal Community Interface (not to be confused with the Community Information Portal), but that's a topic for another post. Hopefully I will have some progress to report on that next time.

Week 10: A List

2008-11-02T13:40:00.000-08:00

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy, therefore I'm going to make things easier by briefly listing what I've been up to:

didn't go to DrupalCamp in Chicago (too much other work to do that weekend);
scheduled a pre-training Drupal basics class in the Information Arcade for Nov. 20;
found some potential volunteers (grad students in the Engineering dept.) to teach the class with Cliff;
spoke more with Chicago Technology Cooperative about having them come to Iowa City to conduct the 2-day training in early-mid December (still working on the logistics);
also discussed having one of the CTC people come to the WiderNet office to consult on the CIP project, tentatively scheduled for Nov. 10 or 11 but yet to be finalized;
posted an ad on www.rentacoder.com for someone to develop the CIP site-builder interface, also sent CTC specifications for the interface and got a REALLY high price quote (I'll be talking with Cliff and them about it more next week);
was contacted by someone with an organization similar to CTC called Net2Community, who is working on a somewhat similar project, and scheduled a call with him for next week to discuss potential collaboration;
started a new people directory template in Drupal;
did a fresh Drupal installation so the database can be copied and used for future templates;
worked on installing and using some new modules.

Next week I'll be meeting with Tom Burns and Cliff to hopefully finalize the 2-day training. There is still much to be done before the end of the semester, and I'm getting a little worried about having a CIP prototype ready to show Intel in December or January. I'm at the point in the project right now where I have no idea how everything is going to get pulled together, and I feel like there's only so much I can do by myself. I'm hoping that everything will magically fall into place during the next month and a half, in the meantime I'll just keep plugging away...

Week 8: New Collaborations

2008-10-22T14:39:00.001-07:00

Last week Cliff and I spoke with the Chicago Technology Cooperative, whom I mentioned in my previous post. They said they liked the sounds of our project and are interested in collaborating with us, so we talked about how that might happen. They indicated they would be able to come to Iowa City to conduct a Drupal training, and since they cater to nonprofits their rates are fairly reasonable, so we are pursuing that option. They may also consult with us remotely on development of the CIP portal. I'm glad we happened to stumble upon their website.

I also met with Jim Elmborg this week to discuss Drupal and getting SLIS involved in the training. He offered to help with planning, funding, and recruiting attendees from other departments, which will be a big help and gets us one step closer to getting the training off the ground.

Cliff and I have also been discussing driving to Chicago for Drupal Camp, which is a conference being held Oct. 24-25. I've emailed other staff at Widernet to see if we could get a group together and take a university van. It's a big maybe, but it would be a good way to learn about Drupal and network with the Drupal community (as well as meet the Chicago Tech people, who will be attending).

Week 7: Workshop Planning

2008-10-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late posting about last week's goings-on. During the beginning of the week, I spent a lot of time in Drupal configuring views and user permissions for the sample template. I presented this to Cliff in a meeting on Thursday and got feedback about what changes could be made. Overall I felt like I had made a lot of progress with that part of the project. I also started documenting what I'm learning about Drupal and how I've used it to create the template.

Following that meeting, we had another one with Tom Burns and Mark Hale from ITS. We talked about getting a Drupal training organized and agreed on next steps for accomplishing this. Tom was going to contact Matt Westgate from Lullabot to follow up on a potential training over Thanksgiving break. He also volunteered to send out a survey on the U of I developer's website he runs, to gauge interest. Mark offered to investigate room reservations and funding possibilities.

I felt like we really got the ball rolling on making the Drupal workshop a reality, and it was satisfying that our plans were starting to take shape. The meeting also led to a couple of breakthroughs. First, we stumbled upon a website for the Chicago Technology Cooperative, which conducts Drupal trainings for non-profits. I sent them an email afterward to inquire about the possibility of consulting with them on the project. Second, the meeting gave me the idea that SLIS could be involved with the training. I emailed Jim and Padmini proposing that SLIS students might want to attend, and received enthusiastic responses, including offers of funding to support the event.

The collaborations I've been working to foster for the last month or so are starting to come together, and I think we're gaining momentum. The important thing now will be to keep people interested/excited in the training.

Week 6: Odds 'n Ends

2008-10-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

Just a quick recap of last week: I sent out a few more emails to possible collaborators, but have gotten limited responses. That part of the project seems to have stalled. I'm still trying to set up a meeting with Tom Burns and Cliff to talk about organizing a Drupal training. I worked on project documentation, and spent more time online looking at design templates. I downloaded Elgg, the open-source social networking software, but was unsuccessful in completing the installation. I also worked on finalizing the list of fields to be included in the CIP templates.

My triumph for the week was finally figurung out how Views works in Drupal. This will let us create customized lists of content, so that each time a content provider adds a new entry to a directory, it will automatically be filtered for the list in that category. I still have some tweaking to do, but at least now I understand how it works.

This week, I'll be putting an ad up on the Rentacoder.com site so we can hopefully hire someone to create the user interface. Also will be continuing with the previously mentioned tasks, and whatever else happens to come up.

Week 5: Networking

2008-09-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

This week I focused on trying to locate the Drupal community in Iowa, in the hopes of getting people to help us execute the project. I contacted a "virtual" company, Lullabot, that specializes in training people in Drupal; Cliff and I spoke with them and there is a possibility they may do some training for us in November. I also found an Iowa users group on the Drupal groups website and put up a post asking for help. I was invited to their monthly meeting next week in Ames, but am unable to attend. The responses I got did show interest in the project, so I'm hoping I can figure out a way to work with them.

I also contacted an instructor in the Art department about the possibility of arranging for design students to "donate" templates for the interface. I emailed my Electronic Publishing instructor from last spring to ask his advice, and I also found a person in the ITS department who is a Drupal enthusiast and is involved in the developer community on campus. Cliff and I will be meeting with him, hopefully next week (incidentally, this led me to discover that there will be a "Code Camp" in Des Moines in November, which might be a good place to learn about Drupal and meet collaborators). Finally, I emailed Bharani, the new tech support person for the digital fellows, to see if she might also be a resource on the project.

So I basically have a lot of balls up in the air right now, and it will take some time for them to lead to anything concrete, but I feel like I've made progress. The challenge will be to get people who say they're interested in the project, to actually commit to working on it -- especially if it's on a volunteer basis.

Other things on my plate: looking for sample interfaces -- mostly site builders, which is pretty much the functionality we want. I especially like Google Sites and Weebly; they both have clean, uncluttered design and user-friendly interfaces. I'm also working on making a web page for the CIP project on the Widernet website, as an informational tool for people who may be interested in working on it. Also, I'm narrowing down the possible features and functions that we will want to include in each template.

Week 4: Changing Gears

2008-09-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

This week threw me for a loop. During a meeting on Thursday, I found out that I really didn't need to be spending time figuring out how to make things work in Drupal, or any other CMS for that matter. We will hire "rent-a-coders" to customize the CMS once we have decided what features we want. My involvement is to research what those features should be, and to guide the process of making the whole thing happen. My role is purely project management and not really hands-on as far as implementing the site, which I hadn't been entirely clear on before.

It was decided in the meeting that we will be using Drupal for sure. The interface for users to add their own content should be "dirt easy", meaning users shouldn't have to log in or use the CMS back-end at all, which isn't possible with Drupal as it is (at least, not that I can tell). So the coders we hire will be be in charge of making this possible. My job now is to research the Drupal community in Iowa and elsewhere and find people we can approach about doing this for us, and/or coming in and training people in the office on using Drupal. I will find people to design the interface; Cliff mentioned design students at the U of I as a possibility as they have volunteered their services before. I will also be in touch with Widernet contacts in Africa who will help us decide on what features should be included, as well as adding local content to the demo version that will be shown to Intel in December or January.

So far, I've put in an inquiry with a Drupal consulting and development business that has an associate in Ames, to see if they can help us out. With the Intel grant, we can afford to pay outside people, although I need to find out for sure what our budget is for that. I also found a group of Drupal enthusiasts in Iowa, and I plan to post a message to their group site next week. Next week I will work further on getting in contact with other people who we can use on the project.

Week 3: Not Quite Sure What I'm Doing Yet...

2008-09-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

This week saw less progress than usual due to an illness, which left me missing two days of work. I also had three meetings over the course of the week, so I wasn't left with a lot of time to do project work. I basically continued with what I had been working on last week - experimenting with Drupal and Site@School. On Friday we had Drupal "expert" Matt Arant come in and walk the whole staff through the basics of Drupal, since the Widernet website is being migrated. Matt and I are going to meet next week so he can talk with me about how Drupal can be used to create a user-customized template.

I have a general idea of how this can be done, but the specifics are still sort of eluding me. For example, will each user of the eGranary have to create an account in the CMS in order to change the template, or just use the administrator account? How might the fact that it will be housed on a local server make using it different? I also added the Drupal module that let's the administrator create customized fields for users to populate, but it seems pretty complicated and I'm not having a lot of success figuring it out on my own. I'm hoping Matt can show me how to do it.

I also spent some time investigating other CMS's that we could use. One possibility I found was called EZPublish, which has a very intuitive-looking user interface. I don't have it installed yet but will probably give it a test run next week. Since I'm also familiar with Joomla (I used it for a group project in Electronic Publishing last spring), I'm thinking I should see how it would compare to Drupal as far as meeting the needs of the project.

Next week I'll work on these things and hopefully get more done!

Week 2: Lots of Time in the Server Room

2008-09-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

The week started off with a meeting between myself and Brent to talk more about the project. The need is for one or more templates that can be used by various community groups, e.g. schools, health clinics, etc., to create their own web pages or sites. My job during the first couple of weeks is to research various content management systems and try to determine which one/s would work best, as well as looking at existing websites of this type to see what information is commonly included.

I checked out some elementary school web sites, and found their basic content to be fairly uniform (contact info, academic calendars, faculty lists, and lunch menus are typical). I also looked at an open-source CMS specifically geared toward primary schools, called Site@School. It provides templates for schools to create and maintain their own sites for free. I installed it on the WiderNet server so I can try it out. At first glance, it looks like a good option.

The rest of the week I spent tackling Drupal. After getting it installed on the server (which was a bit tricky, but helped me brush up on my rusty command line and SQL skills), I played around and tried to figure out how it can meet our needs. There are a ton of modules to download, and I added a few that seem useful. I also did more reading and watched some online tutorials. My feeling is that Drupal can be used to do just about anything, but that very fact gives it a steep learning curve. I have a feeling I won't fully understand how it works until I have a concrete draft of the template to plug in. But it will help that WiderNet is going to start using Drupal for its website, and will be bringing in an "expert" this week to teach staff the basics.

In the coming week, I will begin working with Site at School and look around for other CMS's we might be able to use. I also need to get started on another ongoing task, which is to create documentation for the project.

Summer Recap and Semester Preview

2008-08-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

I didn't blog this summer, though I did continue to do project work in DLS. I was officially still on the EAD "task force", which in my case involved attending the occasional meeting to keep up on the project's progress. There wasn't as much for Joanna and I to do during this time, as the main tasks fell to John (working with the Archon database) and Raj (creating the web interface). There's a day trip planned to the University of Illinois in the next couple of weeks to meet with the Archon developers, but since my involvement at this point is minimal I likely won't go. I do plan to continue going to task force meetings this semester, just to stay informed and help with anything that might be needed.

My focus this summer was on migrating the Virtual Writing University audio files into the Iowa Digital Library. I migrated two sub-collections within the VWU digital collection, which were recordings from the 2005 NonfictioNow Conference and interviews by Prof. Peter Nazareth with members of the International Writing Program (around 100 files in all). The project involved reformatting the files from wav to mp3, uploading them to contentDM, making a metadata template, creating the records, and coming up with a preliminary interface design. As a former comparative literature major, it was really interesting for me to listen to the recordings and research the writers involved in order to catalog the entries. There are more subcollections to be added and the interface to be fleshed out, which will be continued this semester by a new set of fellows.

This semester, my last, I will be working on the eGranary Digital Library at Widernet. While I'll miss DLS, it will be good to get some experience in a different setting. This week I met with Cliff Missen and Brent Palmer, my new mentors, to discuss project possibilities. We decided I will start out working to develop the template for a "community information platform", which will allow users of the eGranary to add their own content (for creating local directories, etc.). Widernet is partnering with Intel, which donated a large sum of many for the project, so it looks to be an interesting opportunity. In fact, the day after our meeting Cliff and Brent left for California to meet with the Intel folks.

I spent the rest of the week familiarizing myself with the eGranary and researching Drupal, the content management system we will use to create the template. While I haven't used Drupal before, the fact that I learned Joomla! in Electronic Publishing last semester will give me a big leg up. Next week, I'll meet with Brent to learn more about the project and discuss next steps.

Week 10-11: Troubleshooting Archon

2008-04-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit remiss about keeping up on the weekly postings. This is partly because school has gotten incredibly busy, and partly because progress on the EAD project is rather slow going so I don't have a lot of regular updates to make.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we ran into trouble importing our XML files into Archon -- basically, it seems it can't be done. We were hoping this would be easily fixed, but it has turned into a significant issue (or at least, a time-consuming one). John Osborn has been diligently trying to figure out a way to work around the problem, which so far involves converting the EAD into delimited files, importing those into Archon, then exporting them as EAD (I hope I've got that right -- it's a little confusing). It's a roundabout method to accomplish what should be a straightforward task, which Archon is supposed to be able to handle. There's obviously some glitch happening, but we don't know for sure what it is.

In searching online, I haven't found as much documentation as I'd hoped about how others have implemented Archon. I did read a blog post written by a librarian who had the same problem with importing XML files, although I haven't found any information indicating the cause or solution. The main task for the remainder of the semester may well be trying to figure this out.

We've been having meetings with Jen, John, Sue, Linda, and a new apps person, Raj, to discuss the import issue and the search interface design. The meetings are great experience because they give Joanna and I an inside view of how project management and workflow actually happen on the job. I feel less like a student worker than a professional and team member, which is a good feeling.

In addition, we've also been continuing to encode finding aids for the sample set using our template. After much debate about how to handle the intellectual hierarchy of the container lists, which can be hard to discern from the finding aids, we decided to simplify it as much as possible. This means not specifying levels like series, subseries or folder, and just using numbered container tags to indicate different levels. This makes things easier for now, and the levels can always be added later.

With the semester coming to a close, we've had to revise our goals somewhat. We hope to have a small sample set completed and imported into Archon (somehow), along with a front-end search interface for delivery. But it will likely be more bare-bones than originally planned, given the Archon issues we're having. However, there is talk of Joanna and possibly myself continuing work on the project this summer, so there will be more time to do some fine-tuning.

Week 9: Making a Template

2008-04-14T10:37:00.001-07:00

The past couple of weeks, we've been having regular work sessions with Jen. We're each working on encoding separate finding aids, and then comparing our work to catch errors and inconsistencies and answer each other's questions. This is very helpful because when Joanna and I first started doing markup we felt kind of lost and didn't know if we were doing it right. Since Jen has more experience, having her do the coding along with us seems to be speeding up the learning process. I feel much more comfortable now, due to her help as well as the amount of practice I've had since the beginning of the semester.

Joanna and I also finally got a draft done of that template we've been planning for so long. I'm sure it will end up being revised, but it's nice to know we have some form of completed document. Our work in the coming week will likely focus on tweaking the template.

Since my last post, we also had a meeting with DLS folk to go over the search/browse interface for delivering the finding aids on Archon. Sue, Linda, and Bryan will be in charge of making our design a reality. The meeting was surprisingly short; I expected there would be the need for some negotiation of our design, but Sue and Linda didn't see any problem with implementing our original idea. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Speaking of Archon, we also tried to import one of our completed EAD XML files into the program. Unfortunately, Archon didn't like that and wouldn't take the file. This is problematic, as the whole point of creating a template is so the resulting customized files can be uploaded directly to Archon. Sue and John Osborn are working on resolving the issue, so we're keeping our fingers crossed. We have a meeting scheduled for next week with John to discuss the problem.

Week 7: Fun With Photoshop

2008-03-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

Joanna and I got really burned out on encoding. I worked on my Louis Noun finding aid on and off for weeks, and am still only halfway through it because the container lists take FOREVER to mark up by hand. Therefore, we took a break from that last week to work on other neglected tasks.

Specifically, we're focusing on designing the interface that will allow users to search and browse the finding aids. This will include simple keyword and advanced searching, as well as browsing by topic, subject, creator, collection title, collection date, and form/genre. We came up with a list of topical categories for browsing, and worked on mapping EAD elements to MARC record codes for controlled access elements.

We also created a screen shot in Photoshop. It was fun to do something purely creative for a change, but we seemed to be barking up the wrong tree (we were sure Jen would be blown away by our idea to use expandable boxes rather than drop-down menus, but she politely nixed that), so we'll be going back and overhauling the whole thing. That's ok though, because it's an iterative process, as we learned in seminar last semester.

Our next goal is to complete a sample set of finding aids from the three collections (ignoring the container lists for now), and bring those along with our search page ideas to a meeting with Sue and Bryan at the end of the week. They will be responsible for the actual programming, so we'd like to give them something to work with ASAP.

Week 6: Markup Madness

2008-03-08T16:55:00.000-08:00

This post will be relatively short because I already wrote it once, after which it was immediately lost to the Internet ether when Blogger went down briefly (and didn't auto save my draft! Bad Blogger!). Here's a quick recap.

My main task this week was to continue encoding a sample finding aid in EAD using the oXygen text editor. Joanna and I each chose f.a.'s from the Iowa Women's Archive to mark up separately, after which we will compare notes and try to come up with an EAD template that can be used for all future finding aids. The next step after that will be to figure out how to plug the template into Archon.

The encoding has been a slow process, because we're using EAD samples we've found online to guide us and they're all a little different. Thus, there is a lot of revision and backtracking as we go. We've learned that EAD is pretty flexible and provides a lot of room for customization. At the same time, this can make it seem somewhat ambiguous and confusing. But I feel I'm making definite progress, and am learning a lot by getting my hands dirty with the actual encoding.

Weeks 4 & 5: Field Trip

2008-03-01T09:11:00.000-08:00

Oops. I forgot to post last week because all of us DLS fellows were immersed in the TEI at UIUC. The two-day workshop was intensive and kind of exhausting, but it was relevant to my project and helpful for understanding the text encoding process better. We learned how to use the Oxygen text editor, which will carry over to my work with EAD. And having experience with XML-based markup languages will be useful in general, so it was worth the trip.

To backtrack a bit, the week previous to the workshop Joanna and I had meetings with Wendy Robertson and John Osborn. Wendy discussed strategies for batch migration of legacy finding aids, and we spent most of the rest of the week playing around with that. The process we're testing involves creating tab-delimited text files of the finding aids, plugging them into an Excel spreadsheet, and figuring out how to make the various headings match up. This is easy if the finding aids have a consistent format, but not so easy otherwise. It's very time consuming to get the formatting right, so I'm not sure this method will work for all of the finding aids. We definitely have more work to do to figure it out.

We also talked with John Osborn from ITS about streamlining the process using some form of programming script. He's working on a template script for migrating the finding aids into Archon. Honestly, I'm not clear on this method yet, but hopefully will understand it better as we work on it more.

This week, Joanna and I continued working on the Excel spreadsheets and also practiced marking up finding aids in Oxygen. I'm not sure what else may be in store for next week, but will find out when we have a check-in meeting with Jen on Monday.

Week 3: Meetings

2008-02-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

This week consisted of many meetings. On Monday, Joanna, Jen and I met with Sue Julich to learn about Archon, an open-source program for delivering finding aids online in EAD. Sue showed us the basics of the program, and Joanna and I later spent time exploring it ourselves. We plugged in some legacy (i.e. old) finding aids to see how it worked. The nice thing about the software is that you don't have to actually write any EAD code yourself, but can copy and paste text into boxes with the appropriate headers and an EAD document is automatically created. The downside to this might be a lack of control, and that's something we'll have to evaluate as we assess the program further.

We also had meetings with David McCartney from University Archives and Janet Weaver from the Iowa Women's Archives. Like our meeting with Greg Prickman, our purpose was to learn about the current state of finding aids and the typical workflow in those units. The upshot is that all of them have their finding aids available online as static HTML pages. The format and means of processing them differ somewhat from unit to unit, but there don't seem to be any major differences beyond that.

Finally, I spent more time researching EAD to get a firmer grasp on how it is structured and what the different tags mean. I still have a ways to go on that front, as the tag library is quite large. I also took notes from the book "Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts" by Kathleen Roe, to get a clearer understanding of terminology used in the archives world (fonds, series, manuscript vs. record group, etc.) that may be useful for learning EAD.

Next week, there's a data migration meeting planned with Wendy Robertson on Monday. Aside from that I plan to continue doing research, working with Archon, and playing around with EAD tags. Over the weekend, I'll be attending a TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) workshop at the University of Illinois. TEI is a markup language similar to EAD. Hopefully, learning it will prove to be very helpful for this project.

Week 2: The Fog is Lifting

2008-02-09T08:03:00.000-08:00

While the first round of articles I read last week were definitely a bit over my head, I feel I am starting to understand better the whole concept of EAD and how it works. I generally need to try something out in order to really grasp it, so the time I spent yesterday actually working with an EAD document was pretty helpful. Jen had Joanna and I copy an EAD template online from a finding aid for a collection at the UC Irvine libraries, and replace the content with elements from Iowa Women's Archives finding aids. It was good practice, and helped me see how an EAD document is structured and how it relates to an HTML finding aid. I could only get so far with the document because the UC and UI finding aids were structured differently enough that they appeared to be only partially translatable. I also didn't understand what all the tags meant. There's still a steep learning curve to overcome, but it has gotten a little less intimidating.

On Thursday, Joanna, Jen and I had a meeting with Greg Prickman from Special Collections. The purpose was to assess the scope and format of finding aids currently being used in that department, to give us a clearer idea of what we'll be dealing with in planning the EAD migration. Joanna and I prepared a set of questions about the collections and how they are described. We learned that there are approximately 2,000 finding aids, and that they are all in HTML created from a standard template. This is good news, as it should make the creation of EAD records easier.

We will also schedule meetings with representatives from University Archives and the Iowa Women's Archive to learn about their collections. Next week, we will revisit the EAD templates we started; meet with Sue Julich to get an introduction to Archon, an archival information system; and continue doing research.

Week 1 (2.0): New Semester, New Project

2008-02-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

After finishing up the recipe pamphlet digital collection over winter break, and taking a much-needed breather from school, I'm gearing up to start a brand new project this semester. And I have a partner! Joanna Lee and I are going to be working together on the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) pilot collection. I will again be working in Digital Library Services, with Jen Wolfe and Sue Julich as project mentors.

For any non-library types in the audience, EAD is an XML markup language that enables encoding of archival finding aids into records that are platform-independent, machine-readable, and fully searchable. In other words, it will allow users to search across various online indexes of archival collections, which are currently not standardized.

This project should prove to be fairly different from the previous one, as it will involve figuring out how to implement a new process that isn't yet in place. This will require researching how other institutions have used EAD and determining the best way to begin using it at the U of I Libraries. As I understand it, the end goal is to produce a prototype EAD collection on which to base future migration of HTML finding aids.

Our first assignment from Jen has been to research EAD and find case studies discussing its integration into other institutions' collections. We are looking at online resources and reading articles from LIS journals. On Monday, we'll be meeting with her to discuss what we've learned. The next step will be to start analyzing other EAD sites on the Web.

Week 15: Wrapping Up

2007-12-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

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...