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.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, October 8, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
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.
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.
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