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. 

October 3rd, 5th & 6th - Readings 'Round the Big Easy and CROPPING

This weekend I attended Readings 'Round the Big Easy (RRBE), a literary day-fest of sorts that Sheila helps organize and NOMA hosts. The lead-up to this was more of an education in professional logistics, especially in regards to NOMA working with my employer, NOPL.

Other literary institutions are typically invited to 'table' at the event, including NOPL. Also it is always prudent in the information services world to cross-advertise. I was able to make sure NOPL had a table at the event, but advertising the event in NOPL locations was difficult because while the event was technically free, you had to pay admission to enter the museum to attend it. Unfortunately, NOPL can only advertise events that are completely free and open to the public, in keeping with the spirit of free public libraries. Luckily, there was a small loophole for a certain demographic. NOMA offers, thanks to a grant, free admission to New Orleans area high school students with school IDs through the end of this year. We worked it out so that the teen programming librarians at NOPL branches could print and display these passes in teen areas, and then put the RRBE flyers next to them!

At the event, I was able to hear Dr. Nancy Dixon deliver an excellent speech on Creole literature, and help both Sheila and my NOPL coworkers do some institutional cross-promotion. For me it was an excellent opportunity my advisor gave me to polish outreach skills, which are under-rated in the information professions, especially archives!

Readings 'Round the Big Easy

Dr. Nancy Dixon

The first two days of the week proper were fairly in the rhythm--it is always the digitization of the items that is the most difficult and time-consuming in digital archival projects, so I plugged away at making scans and continuing to crop earlier ones, which was proving time-consuming on a computer outfitted with only Microsoft Picture Manager for cropping. While it has mostly been easy to copy the files and enter the metadata in the spreadsheet, necessary digital manipulation brought on by a project like this has been hard, owing to the actual computer's sluggishness when cropping files of the size we are dealing with. It often takes up to a minute to crop each file. Unfortunately, there is really no solution to this besides NOMA purchasing the library a new computer or seriously updating the existing one; however, the digitization project is literally the only activity performed on the computer that requires the extra horsepower, so it is hard to make the case for a new machine or better software, such as Photoshop.

On an aside, in the Art Department meeting Monday, I learned that the institution was working on applying for an IMLS grant by Nov. 30th. It would require them to have 10,000 images digitally available to users at least on the grounds of the library. There was a possibility it could be done in time without violating copyright (which is often determined by the size of the image digitally displayed--they would need to be quite tiny unless rights were obtained from the owner/artist), but they were not sure.

October 2nd - Speaking with IT about NOMA's digital asset management capabilities

Today there were a few little hiccups to iron out. I went back and cropped all of SB3 after looking at old spreadsheet entries and realizing the "Extent" field varied greatly in dimensions in the past; when I and Maureen arrived here, however, the most recent entries had been un-cropped, with the default Extent being 5120xXXXX. I reviewed the guiding document set up by previous interns and realized that we and someone preceding us had not been cropping the files at all, but it had been outlined to do so in the document. Sometime words are hard ;)!

I talked to Seth today about the NOMA collection asset management and Web display, as Sheila was concerned that implementing Subject headings in the spreadsheet might interfere with the museum's art collection's digital access goals in the future. Seth explained to me that NOMA is working on implementing Piction for internal asset management and public Website collections, and the library was welcome to hop on in NOMA's second wave of implementation in a year or so to add a collection for the scrapbooks. The nice thing about Piction is that specific file groups, such as, say, the scrapbooks, can customize their own metadata spreadsheets however they like! So if LDL and CONTENTdm do not prove to be the content management system where the scrapbooks are ultimately made accessible, Piction can easily be adapted to the spreadsheet we are creating, and vice-versa. It proved a wonderful back-up plan if LDL can't start offering free hosting in the future, which is one of the necessities for the NOMA scrapbook project.

I then tackled the creation of a mini style guide for our collection. I added it into the existing Scrapbook project guide, which now looks something like this under the fields/elements explanation:

Field Explanations:

1.      Relation [formerly Related Item type=host; required field for LDL] : What is this file from? Scrapbook #, page #

2.      Extent : Pixel size of file. Can be accessed by viewing properties on image file.

3.      Object File Name : File name must match the image file name, with .jpg added on in the spreadsheet field.

4.      Title [required by LDL] : Title and subtitles of articles. Space on either side of “:” if used. If no title is given, create title that summarizes article.

5.      Creator (Author) : The author of the article; leave blank if unknown.

6.      Description : A 1-3 sentence summary of the article.

7.      Publisher : Newspaper publisher (New Orleans States, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans Item-Tribune…) If unknown, leave blank.

8.      Date Issued : year-month-day (1930-01-12). You should be able to gauge the year if nothing else, so just that is fine.

9.      Subjects : This field can be left blank if you do not have experience with subject cataloging. Any proper noun—a unique person, place, or thing—or other LCSH/Authority Files, TGM, TGN or AAT subject mentioned in the article. Regina is currently pulling terms of interest and placing them in the Word document Finding Aids, so you can always check those for potential subject terms to search these sources for, or to add to our unique controlled vocabulary spreadsheet (more on that below). If you have experience with subject cataloging, here are further directions:

a.       The four main standardized subject sources you should consult and choose from are as follows:

                                                              i.      LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings) and Name Authority Files  http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html

                                                           ii.      AAT (Getty’s Art & Architecture Thesaurus) http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/

                                                         iii.      TGN (Getty’s Thesaurus of Geographic Names) http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/tgn/

                                                         iv.      TGM (Thesaurus for Graphic Materials) http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/tgm/

b.      If a subject heading is not available in any of the four standardized sources (LCSH/Authority Files, TGM, TGN or AAT), good catalogs to search for the person/place/thing include Tulane Howard-Tilton Memorial Library’s website (http://library.tulane.edu/); LSU Hill Memorial Library’s website (https://lsu.louislibraries.org/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=HEAreU91ud/MIDL-MAIN/143570099/60/70/X); or New Orleans Public Library’s website (http://catalog.neworleanspubliclibrary.org/polaris/). You may copy and paste from their subject lists directly into the field.

c.      Some people, artworks, associations, and other proper nouns will not be findable in any of the sources mentioned, but should still be made into subjects for our purposes. If this is the case, please create a new subject according to AACR2 formatting and add it to the Excel spreadsheet “NOMA Scrapbook Controlled Vocabulary”, located in the NOMA SCRAPBOOKS -> Images folder.

d.      Separate each subject you enter into this field with a semicolon and a space, e.g.:            Degas, Edgar, 1834-1917; oil paint (paint); Impressionism (Art)

e.       Make sure the format for each subject is EXACTLY THE SAME for every item you add it to, or they will not link to one another when the project is finally uploaded to LDL or Piction.

f.         ALWAYS check the “NOMA Scrapbook Controlled Vocabulary” spreadsheet AFTER the other sources, but BEFORE you attempt to create your own subjects, and always save new subjects to the spreadsheet.

10.  conditionNotes : Make any notes about deteriorations in the article that have made text unreadable, such as “page torn” or “ink rubbed off”

11.  Internet Media Type : What is this item? Probably “Text”, “Still Image” or “Text, Still Image”

12.  Format : JPEG

13.  Identifier (required by LDL) : Always type: See "reference url" on the navigation bar.

14.  Source (required by LDL) : Always type: Felix J. Dreyfous Library (https://noma.org/learn/felix-j-dreyfous-library/) (unless the URL for the library’s page on the NOMA website has changed; if so, please update).

15.  Language : This is probably “en” for English. Sometimes “fr” for French. Optional.

16.  physicalLocation: Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art

17.  Coverage-Spatial : New Orleans (La.)

18.  Rights : Always type: Physical rights are retained by The Felix J. Dreyfous Library. Copyright is retained in accordance with U.S. Copyright laws

19.  Contact Info (required by LDL) : SCork@NOMA.org

20.  Image Resolution : “600 dpi”

21.  Color Mode : Color

22.  Hardware : What did you use to scan the articles? Most likely the VuPoint Magic Wand.

23.  Digitized by : Who scanned the item? If unknown, leave blank.

24.  Digitized date : Fill in date of scan, if known. Some of this information may be available in Regina’s finding aids.

It's huge, eh? At least it'll be more up to snuff, if it can be completed!

I realize now that my favored subject for my capstone paper for the Certificate in Archives and Special Collections will most likely concern digital archives, with focuses on images, metadata, and management and display systems. It could possibly have much to do with what I've learned at both practicums, in terms of management, workflow, and choices.

September 27th & 28th - On the necessity of finding aids versus spreadsheets

This week I took a look at the Word finding aid that Sheila and Regina have been maintaining. So far, it covers 27 pages of the first scrapbook. However, if the ultimate intention is to upload a metadata spreadsheet and the digital images to LOUIS (LDL) , I personally feel that a finding aid is redundant and labor intensive in a non-traditional archives setting such as the NOMA art library; if nothing else, I am not sure it is the best use of metadata-experienced interns' time working on the project if CONTENTdm and Internet accessibility is the ultimate goal. I asked Sheila about the motivations behind doing both the spreadsheet and the scrapbook. The finding aids were to facilitate finding ability in the scrapbook contents within the library for researchers, the librarian, and non-LIS oriented volunteers. But now the ultimate goal was to digitize the books and get them on LOUIS/LDL, and then archivally seal the books.

I made the case that with the addition of a few more fields (Description, Author, Subject and Subject Names (should the two be combined?); perhaps others) to our metadata spreadsheets, we would eliminate the need to maintain a finding aid in Word, saving a great deal of time, and really implementing the wonderful facet browsing  capabilities of CONTENTdm through the 'Subjects' field--I personally believe this is one of the strongest aspects of CONTENTdm itself, and it would be integral to finding, say, every article by local critic Ethel Hutson, or every article that mentions the Southern Art League. Sheila gave me the okay to go ahead and add such fields to the sheet, but reminded me that not every intern will have the experience necessary to maintain and understand metadata and fields such as Subject, which will required advanced knowledge of controlled vocabularies (additionally, I plan to create a local controlled vocabulary spreadsheet for very local Subjects that don't exist in major sources like LCSH or AAT). They also may just not be able to comprehend the presentation of information on a metadata spreadsheet as easily as they could the traditionally organized finding aids.

This discussion led us to some related tangents. Searchability of the LOUIS collection through the NOMA website is also important per Sheila. I may need to talk to Seth, NOMA's IT go-to man, about how access to the eventual digital collection will be granted through the NOMA website. I do know that APIs can be formulated to crawl both websites and CONTENTdm collections linked to them, but am not that familiar with how. He might know, so I will try to talk to him about it one day while I am here.

A lagniappe e-mail to Maureen sums up my general ideas about fields to add to the spreadsheet:

"I'm adding a few fields to the SB3 spreadsheet that should minimize the need to develop full finding aids for the scrapbooks. I think collecting all the relevant information in one place for future upload into LOUIS is ideal.

I'm adding the fields "Author", "Subjects", and "Description". I'll develop a document describing what we should do for each field (particularly "Subjects") this Friday and e-mail you, as well as save it in my folder on the desktop. Off the cuff, though, I am thinking "Author" will be the author of the article if known; "Description" will be a short summary of the article, 1-3 sentences; and "Subjects" tentatively will include named persons and art movements mentioned in the articles, if available. I think for the moment all you would want to do on Thursday are the "Author" and "Description" fields. "Subjects" will require us to develop something local for a lot of the persons mentioned, and also to pick a proper vocabulary for other possible subjects such as art movements, mediums, etc.

It will add time to the data entry, but should make it a more interesting task, and will serve our goals for the project well while eliminating a duplication of work within the confines of the project."

September 21st, 22nd - Scanning refinement and ILLs

Over the course of this project, another intern named Maureen from Loyola University libraries will also be working on the project, albeit on different days from me. I'm keeping in touch with her via e-mail about progress, stopping points for scanning and metadata, and also any tweaks or changes we might want to make to the project overall. On Monday I primarily worked on filling in metadata. It can be slow going--on a good day, I feel like I can complete about 20-25 entries during my 3 hours.

I made Tuesday a scanning day to work on technique. A good day of scanning will allow me to complete 2 pages of a scrapbook, from scanning to editing and renaming.With the time I am allotted off work for this practicum, I've found it ideal to work on either scanning OR data entry on a given day, not both. This session, I began to develop a bit of a 'zen' sense for moving the scanner. I count the seconds as I move the scanner down an article and try to match the distance covered to the rhythm of my counting--a very intuitive system of measurement. But the resulting scans are proving to be some of my best. I still have the occasional phenomenon in the scans that I call "scrunching"--it looks like every two-five inches, I get a line of text that is distorted by a severe reduction in height--I don't know if this means I sped up for a nanosecond, or maybe slowed down, or maybe just took too deep a breath. Next time I come in, I'd like to do a few tests on my speeds, maybe doing two scans moving faster and a final moving more slowly, to see if different paces help me avoid the miniscule speed changes I suspect cause the occasional scrunch of text. As long as the text is legible and the scrunching is minimal, I feel the files are satisfactory for LDL (or just the library's) requirements, but getting it close to perfect just feels really, really good.

"Scrunching" and distortion in scans--this example I find egregious, so I would definitely re-scan the article.
 

Another general library task I learned about was ILLs. Especially within the art world, books often are out of print. In this event, Sheila turns to ILLs, which the Louisiana State Library facilitates for NOMA. They reach out to universities and other holding institutions to obtain materials the curators need, but otherwise can't be obtained. Sheila has a few rules of thumb to keep the process smooth, because screwing up ILLs can lead to a bad reputation and no future ILLs! One--Always use the envelope you received the item in to send it back. That way you return the item with exactly the amount of shipping protection its owner felt appropriate. Two--Always make sure the lending institutions identifying forms stay attached to the item, and a copy stays in the library's files--not being able to figure out where to return an item to would be bad! Three--make everything clear to the curators--while loans are similar in every field, they might take for grated that lending libraries find books as important as works of art to their trade!

On a side note, Sheila has invited me to attend the Mississippi Library Association conference with her on Oct. 22nd, where I can meet some of my USM professors and also see Amanda Myers' (the intern that preceded Maureen and I) poster session talk on the NOMA Scrapbook digitization project! And also if I can help Sheila with this year's annual Readings 'Round the Big Easy, a literary event organized by her every year at NOMA featuring local authors and critics. I'll be asking my boss if I can be spared for both.

September 14th & 15 - NO POST / EMERGENCY TRIP

Unfortunately, my husband's grandmother passed away last week. We will be out of town on Monday, and I will be keeping the work to scanning and naming when we return Tuesday.

September 11th - A big data-entry day

The second major aspect of NOMA's Scrapbook digitization project is, of course, the metadata spreadsheets. The information recorded therein will be used to hopefully one day upload the collection to the Louisiana Digital Library CONTENTdm-based collections, making the articles available and searchable to the public, and allowing the originals to be sealed and stored for preservation. The Excel spreadsheet we are currently using was developed by the previous intern, and reflects the requirements set forth by the LDL as well as complements the Word document Finding Aids that Sheila and Regina have been working on. I personally hope at some point to add some elements to our Dublin Core-based scheme that could make the spreadsheet a mirror of the finding aids, thus reducing a huge and time-gobbling duplication of data entry, but I will need to think on it more.

Today I spent more time working with the files and spreadsheet. The file-naming convention dictated by the spreadsheet metadata guidelines differed from the original conventions set forth when the project was developed in 2014. To that end, there are about 2.5 scrapbook's worth of scans that need their file names changed to the more CONTENTdm friendly convention, which is arranged as sb[x]_0[XXX]_[x].jpg, where sb3_0237_a would denote the file is a scan of article 'a' from page 237 of scrapbook 3. I worked pretty steadily today on getting the files from scrapbook 3 renamed, which I will be continuing scanning from for the duration of the practicum. At this point, because I know Windows can be wonky with extensions (i.e. the .xxx after a file denoting what kind of file it is), I'm not sure if I should actually be adding the '.jpg' when I rename the items, but I will look into it later.

The spreadsheet itself currently has the following metadata fields, developed by the previous intern (also a USM student!):

1.      Related Item type=host : What is this file from? Scrapbook #, page #

2.      Extent : Pixel size of file. Can be accessed by viewing properties on image file.

3.      Object File Name : File name must match the image file name, with .jpg added on in the spreadsheet field.

4.      Title [required by LDL] : Title and subtitles of articles. Space on either side of “:” if used. If no title is given, create title that summarizes article.

 5.      Publisher : Newspaper publisher (New Orleans States, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans Item-Tribune…) If unknown, leave blank.

6.      Date Issued : year-month-day (1930-01-12). You should be able to gauge the year if nothing else, so just that is fine.

7.  Internet Media Type : What is this item? Probably “Text”, “Still Image” or “Text, Still Image”

8.  Format : JPEG

9.  Identifier (required by LDL) : Always type: See "reference url" on the navigation bar.

10.  Source (required by LDL) : Always type: Felix J. Dreyfous Library (https://noma.org/learn/felix-j-dreyfous-library/) (unless the URL for the library’s page on the NOMA website has changed; if so, please update).

11.  Language : This is probably “en” for English. Sometimes “fr” for French. Optional.

12.  physicalLocation: Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art

13.  Coverage-Spatial : New Orleans (La.)

14.  Rights : Always type: Physical rights are retained by The Felix J. Dreyfous Library. Copyright is retained in accordance with U.S. Copyright laws

15.  Contact Info (required by LDL) : SCork@NOMA.org

16.  Image Resolution : “600 dpi”

17.  Color Mode : Color

18.  Hardware : What did you use to scan the articles? Most likely the VuPoint Magic Wand.

19.  Digitized by : Who scanned the item? If unknown, leave blank.

20.  Digitized date : Fill in date of scan, if known.

Luckily, a great deal of the data repeats itself and has thus been pre-filled; really the only fields we need to fill are Extent, Object File Name, Title, Published, Date, and occasional modifications to Internet Media Type, which is at least always "text". I would like to add fields that would more accurately represent the archival description elements being entered into the Word finding aids, but we shall see!

The many fields of the spreadsheet