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SAA Annual Conference August 15, 2009 Barbara Aikens aikens@si

Going With the Flow Mass- tering Digitization at the Collection Level: Workflow at the Archives of American Art. SAA Annual Conference August 15, 2009 Barbara Aikens aikens@si.edu. Collections Online http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline. Entire collections vs. selected items

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SAA Annual Conference August 15, 2009 Barbara Aikens aikens@si

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  1. Going With the Flow Mass-tering Digitization at the Collection Level: Workflow at the Archives of American Art SAA Annual Conference August 15, 2009 Barbara Aikens aikens@si.edu

  2. Collections Onlinehttp://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline • Entire collections vs. selected items • Built upon fundamental archival approaches • 76 collections; 512 linear ft.; 673,000 digital files

  3. Collections Online: Scaling Up Digitization of Special Collections • No item level access • Contextual display & navigation • Effective and efficient integration of existing archival descriptive practices • Automated workflow • Primarily grayscale, 300 dpi – some color • Easy to operate equipment • Repurpose traditional archival practices and workflows

  4. Archival Processing Workflows Support Digitization???

  5. Re-purpose Traditional Archival Methodologies • Program relies upon existing processing, arrangement, description • Processing activities already supported microfilming operations • Descriptive and contextual metadata can be derived from the structured and tagged data found in EAD finding aids • Integrate digitization workflows into processing workflows

  6. Sample XML Encoding for Collection to be Scanned <c01 level="series"> <did><unitid>Series 1: </unitid><unittitle>Biographical Material, <unitdate>1928-1954, undated </unitdate></unittitle> <physdesc>(Box 1; 8 folders)</physdesc></did> <scopecontent> <p>Biographical Material includes various address lists and business cards kept by Calder, his passport, notes, a catalog with handwritten prices, and other writings. Also found are a French tax document and other ephemera.</p> </scopecontent> <c02><did> <container type="box">1</container> <container type="folder">1</container> <unittitle>Address Lists, <unitdate>undated</unitdate></unittitle> <physdesc></physdesc> </did></c02> <c02><did> <container type="box">1</container> <container type="folder">2</container> <unittitle>Annotated Catalog with Prices, <unitdate>1929</unitdate></unittitle> <physdesc></physdesc> </did></c02>

  7. Technical • MS SQL Server database stores all of the data tables • Adobe ColdFusion programming (with some Java programming) • Structure based on function (i.e. EAD ingestion, PDF creation, image processing, deployment, etc) • EAD XML file is passed through parser, transforming the XML data into an EAD Document Object • Descriptive data from EAD is stored in various tables: Finding Aid table; Series table; Container table • Image converting, resizing, and watermarking is batch automated on a collection-wide level

  8. Archival Appraisal and Approach • Use your processing archivists ‘ skill set • Take advantage of their appraisal skills and archival expertise • Allow them to identify privacy and ethical issues, and non-archival materials while processing • Make scanning decisions while processing the collection

  9. What About MLP? • Does processing for large scale digitization of entire collections support Minimal Level Processing? No. • Does integrating processing workflows and archival approaches into the digitization workflow support Minimal Level Digitization or MLD? Yes.

  10. Gears Keep Turning • Integrate item-level digitization with Collections Online • Integrate audio-visual digitization • Needs web 2.0 enhancements • Explore open-source programming potential and partnerships • Explore with processing at less than full level (i.e. preliminary finding aids or inventories)

  11. Just Let Go and Do It !

  12. For more Information • Karen Weiss Information Resources Manager Archives of American Art, Smithsonian weissk@si.edu • Barbara Aikens Chief, Collections Processing Archives of American Art, Smithsonian aikensb@si.edu

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