November 6th, 9th & 10th - SUBJECTS.

 

In a few days time I will be going to Scotland with my husband for 17 days for our 5th wedding anniversary. The knowledge of this and the length of time I have been gone has led some urgency to preparations/trying to get as much work done as possible. I may or may not have already mentioned that I've refined my scanning technique such that I can capture up to three articles per scan, and then just use the crop and cover functions in MSPaint to really speed up the process, and I have--I can now get up to four pages of scrapbook done in a 3 hour session, and succeeded at six this past Friday.

Previously, Sheila expressed a desire for she, Maureen, Regina and I to get together and formally go over the current project protocols and maybe get a unified sense of all the components between the four of us, particularly the Subjects field--its necessity and the requirements for completing it, both in terms of time and skills. We weren't able to find a time, but I tried to collect my thoughts and disseminate the information via e-mail before I go:

"I know we can't all meet today, but I have updated the document "SCANNING NOMA NEWSPAPER ARTICLES" and saved it to all three platforms. It is also attached to this e-mail. Clear outlines of procedure for the new spreadsheet fields are included in the metadata section, which is what has changed primarily. Future interns with Excel experience will have clear instructions for what to enter in all fields, and future interns without such experience will have clear instructions for every other aspect of the project.

The 'Subject' field in particular now has instructions indicating that it can either be addressed or skipped depending on the intern's prior experience with subject cataloging and CONTENTdm. If the intern is not comfortable or experienced with cataloging, it can be skipped. But if the intern does have cataloging experience and would like to add subjects, there are clear instructions on what controlled vocabulary sources to consult, and also to look at Regina's Finding Aid for local subjects.

I want to emphasize both how completely optional 'Subject' is, and how awesome a feature it will be if/when the project moves to the Louisiana Digital Library (LDL). I genuinely think allowing future interns the option of filling it in is worthwhile. Subjects are not required and never will be, but if the collection ends up in LDL and a browsing user can click on "Degas, Edgar, 1834-1917" and see all the articles from the scrapbooks that feature him, (which is what entering subjects into the spreadsheet will facilitate) it will be super helpful and cool!"

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like any of us will be able to start tackling the Subjects field before our internship time is up, but hopefully the document revisions are leading to clear instructions for a future intern who can.

 

November 1st & 2nd - Refining scanning techniques further

The first two days of this week were half sick days for me--I managed to drag myself to NOMA to engage in tunnel-vision scanning, and then called in to work. However, the hyper-focus decongestants inspire in me led to some even better efficiency refinements in the scanning process for me; it did not, however, help my descriptions of items.

What I realized is that I could scan up to three articles in one file, depending on how much space they occupied on the page--the MagicWand records about 8 linear inches "across". This way I could do three total scans for two-three articles, instead of the typical six-nine scans. Then using trusty MS Paint, I could choose my best crops for each article out of these three files and use the 'Save As...' function to leave the original file open to cropping for the other articles. The time saved was incredible--I increased my output from two pages of scanning, editing/adjustment, and file backup in two hours to four pages--double the output! Since the biggest hurdle in this digitization project (and any) is getting the files made and standardized in the first place, this is great--the scanning part of project completion time could theoretically be halved, and the actual scrapbooks can be closed and stored all the sooner. My only concern is how to leave clear instructions for future interns, and if these instructions will be enough--I do notice in my day-to-day professional dealing that many people are still resistant to learning computer tasks as simple as MS Paint if they've decided that they're "not computer people". Conversely, it is unlikely that these people will be looking for an internship of archival digitization!

October 27th -- The value of the 'Description' field

As I dive into filling out the 'Description' field on the metadata spreadsheet, I am given to thinking about what a description can provide to a browsing user. While indexed searching will allow a great deal of discoverability to a user with targeted research goals  (and ideally a full-text search, if NOMA is able to implement OCR for the scrapbook collection someday), a casual browser most likely will only see the description, and not necessarily look at the digital article *unless* something of note pops up in that description. As I write my description for these items, I realize that very bland and generalized summaries might not be the best route for description of the items; that, although we are trying to keep these descriptions very short due to our limited time and manpower resources, it is probably ideal to fill the descriptions with as many of the proper nouns present in each article as possible. I have to keep in mind that sans the full text searching that would have been possible with OCR applied to our articles, the 'Description' and 'Subjects' field are the only searchable fields that will represent the contents of the articles. And with 'Subjects' being a future (and tenuous?) offering, it is doubly important that as much be addressed in the descriptions as possible.


As for MS Paint developments...I found out MS Paint has a crop function, too! I haven't played with this modest little program in ages, so I am thrilled to discover it has the two basic functions we'd normally need Photoshop for on a digitization project like this. There is no image correction, but that's not a necessity for our project as long as all the JPEGs are legible.

October 23rd & 26th - Metadata and hacks

I finally had a chance to work on the metadata spreadsheet again for the first time in a few weeks prior to the Art Department meeting. I started filling information in the 'Descriptions' field for the first time since adding it to the spreadsheet(although Maureen has been working on it steadily). This is a somewhat funny activity when dealing with newspaper articles--often the headline is the perfect summary! However the style is not particularly DACS or any other standard-appropriate, so we still need to write the descriptions in. Repeated subjects (such as people and common associations and groups) become important to us that may not have been important enough to the original authors to use in the headlines, so we have a chance to include them in our short descriptions.


While I usually do not note much from the Art Department meetings, today one of the curators who had recently visited the Denver museum noted that their funding, presentation, and collections are nearly on par with places like New York and Chicago! Good to know--if I ever make it out there I'll have to go. Also of note was that Piction was almost ready to go to beta for everyone to test. I hope the library and the scrapbooks can be tested in it during a future phase, in case LDL does not remain an option.


A small development in scanning procedure also occurred. As plagued as I am by the management of the paper we use to cover up unwanted items when scanning, my searching mind finally came up with a potential alternative when faced with a particularly gnarly paste job of articles in the scrapbooks. Basically, I was presented with an irregular article that had a small article pasted directly into one of its cavities. This proved a nightmare (if not justifiably prohibitive) to cover up with paper pieces. Seeing as Photoshop will not be an option for us, I had a 'eureka!' moment with MS Paint: instead of fussing with paper, why not open the JPEG in MS Paint and cover up the unwanted stuff with plain white squares? They're more uniform and easier to control than physical paper. I did just that and it was a dream. I might just eliminate worrying with any paper cover-up at all  in favor of doing this before cropping in MS Office Picture Manager.


My result, no paper fussing involved:

This is MUCH faster than fooling with paper.

October 22nd - MLA!

Today Sheila and I attended the Mississippi Library Association annual conference in Natchez. It was a great opportunity because we were able to see the poster talk on the scrapbook digitization project by Amanda Myers, the previous intern that had worked on the project and who had implemented the metadata spreadsheet and investigated hosting potential with the Louisiana Digital Library (LDL/LOUIS). Her poster session, "Digitizing on a Budget: Increasing Access to Scrapbooks at the New Orleans Museum of Art", was informative in many ways, especially the fact that she determined the scans from the MagicWand met Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) standards, as I've been concerned about the quality of the scans, but had not had a chance to investigate whether they would meet any standards that an organization such as the LDL might require. It looks like the files we are creating meet the standards for 'Documents' in the Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials (http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/guidelines/FADGI_Still_Image_Tech_Guidelines_2015-09-02_v4.pdf) 2010 version on the FADGI site, but that some of the distortions we encounter o uncontrollable page edges may not comply with the 2015 version when it is released. Of course, NOMA does always have the option of displaying the final files and metadata via their Piction asset management system without having to meet LDL or FADGI standards, but still supplying a more than adequate product to users.

The conference was also an excellent chance for me to meet USM classmates in person, as well as my professors past and present--Dr. Griffis and Dr. Welsh. We arrived at the conference in time to catch the last half of Dr. Griffis' presentation on the history of SLIS at USM, "Library Science Education at Southern Miss: A History of Survival and Growth". I was once again impressed with the history of my own education, especially the early adoption of Internet-based distance education. I was also able to meet and speak with Director Welsh, my practicum advisor and the professor that taught me everything I needed to know about scholarly research and publication. I can't begin to express how grateful I am for USM and its faculty for offering me a distance-accessible, affordable, professional, diverse, inter-disciplinary and high-quality LIS education. There are just not enough adjectives for me to write down--it's really that good. It is certainly among the elite programs of its kind in the U.S. and the South.

After poster sessions and lunch, I dropped in on the 3-D Printing session to satisfy my "public library youth services employee" heritage, and then moved over to "Promoting Mississippi Archives: The SMA/MDAH Partnership", a presentation given by Ryan Semmes of the Mississippi State University Libraries and Jennifer Bannock of USM. Since I now work in the City Archives/Louisiana Division of New Orleans Public Library, promoting archives is a central part of my work. They actually covered a now defunct area archival cross-training initiative championed by one of the former Head Archivists in my division; I was depressed to learn the site and program were no longer going. I do feel that maybe as part of a public library, my workplace already has a vested interest in promoting archives through programming, but it is always important to hear about what other archives are thinking about.

October 20th - Thoughts and preparations

I believe the overall quality of my MagicWand scans have gotten better--there is little to no scrunching, and each scan is generally straight and does not warp too much to one side or the other. I believe I am finally going to explore the Internet to find some trips and tricks for optimal scanning with one of these devices.


Scan quality is typically very important in metadata projects, especially when involving archival materials that are intended to be closed to public use once digitized. Admittedly, the MagicWand and its warping do not provide optimal digitizations; however, the materials being digitized from the scrapbooks are available archivally elsewhere, just not in the provenance/arrangement they exist in in relation to NOMA. As long as the structure of the scrapbooks is preserved in whatever digital format they are presented (whether that proves to be CONTENTdm or Piction), the scans we are making will adequately serve, provided we keep them as neat as the technology will allow.


We also talked about the status of the MS Word document Finding Aids. Because interns like myself are transient contributors to the overall project and Regina is a static docent with no plans to leave the library, we decided that she should keep maintaining the traditional finding aids for in-house use. The text format and CTRL+F searchability of these aids will prove most convenient for Sheila and Regina to use throughout the changes in project contributors. There is also never a guarantee that future library interns will have any experience with metadata or Excel, but the finding aid procedure can be easily taught to anyone with word processing ability.


To discuss the general state of the project, Maureen, Sheila, Regina and I plan to meet this Friday at 2pm. That way we can all be on the same page and will be able to organize the information and instructions for future project interns.


In further news, I will be going to the Mississippi Library Association's annual conference this Thursday with Sheila. I'm excited because the woman who initially developed the NOMA Scrapbook project will be presenting on her experiences with it; also, I will finally be able to meet some of my USM professors in person, particularly doctors Welsh & Griffis. Quite exciting!

October 12th & 13th - Quality control and expressions of archival value

This week yet again saw me focusing on scanning, with a little guide editing to add a little variation in the routine. In my communications with Maureen, we have fallen into the habit the last few weeks of me scanning and she entering metadata. The going is slow on both counts, but still brisk enough that I want to make sure she has files to enter metadata for! We are at around page 230 in the spreadsheet, and only have scans up to 241.

I did take a bit of time to go over scans between all the back-up drives. There were some discrepancies...I may or may not have mentioned already that Regina and I had decided to add .jpg to the files, and then realized it made the actual file name incorrect due to Windows' need to hide extensions in the explorer view, so we then decided to go back and take it off...unfortunately I discovered this was only happening on the main user's desktop, so I took the time to copy over the correct files in the correct format to the backup flash drive and the backup user account. This also led to see some really bad scans as I was moving through the files...I added 'RESCAN' to the end of the offenders' file names, and hope to go back and re-scan as a group at some point.

Now the bad scans do have a common culprit. The earlier scrapbooks' pages were still attached to their binding when they were scanned, making it very hard to capture some of the items with the Magic Wand, and they were often pasted as far into the seam as they could possibly go, hindering the scanner's reach and smooth movement. I have been "lucky" with the third scrapbook, as acidification has basically separated every leaf from the binding, allowing for free positioning for scanning--scrapbook 3 is, fortunately or unfortunately, basically much more a large folder thank a book at this point.

My view towards the damage may seem flippant, and perhaps it is. Almost all of the articles featured in these scrapbooks are freely available at the archives I am employed by on microfilm, digitally online(albeit in unattractive digitizations), and in their original format (although we do keep those in storage and only use them if the microfilm or digitization is illegible). The value of this project thus lies in separating out these artifacts into a digital collection relating solely to NOMA and its history. It could be argued that once this collection is finalized and described, it may be nice to preserve the original scrapbooks, but the information they hold is not irreplaceable. Rather it is the new NOMA-centric organization of articles that is perhaps the largest value inherent in this project.