Technology Choices Matching (Desired) Product with Process

1. Technology ChoicesMatching (Desired) Product with Process Roy Tennant California Digital Library

2. Confessions… • I’m a recovering librarian • I exercised my right as a speaker to change my presentation right up to when I give it, so see http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/presentations/2003owol/ • I lost $20 in five minutes last night

3. Outline • What are your access goals? • Access systems • Repurposeable Digital Repositories • Metadata

4. What are Your Access Goals? • Searching/Browsing • On-screen viewing • Thumbnail preview • Screen-size • Detail study (and how much?) • Printing • Artifact v. Content

5. Searching/Browsing • To support effective searching and browsing, you will need metadata • To figure out what metadata you need, you must first figure out what activities you wish to support (your access goals) • Think about interoperating with others as well as your internal needs

11. Printing • On-screen resolutions are typically inadequate for printing • If you want to support printing, you will need to offer a high-resolution (typically at least 300dpi) version for printing

12. The Artifact v. Content • The artifact • Must preserve the appearance of the actual object • Can provide an enhanced sense of experiencing the real object • But in some cases, preserving the look and feel of the artifact obstructs the content • The content • Optimized to provide the best presentation of the content itself, not the artifact • The sense of interacting with the actual object may be diminished or destroyed • In some cases, use of both strategies may be indicated

14. Access Systems • Exhibit or other educational depictions • Browse • Search

15. Access Systems: Exhibit • Goals: • Inviting • Easy to navigate • Highlight selected parts of a collection • Teach • Requirements: • Great graphic design • Informative and succinct commentary • Interesting subject matter • Interactive activities wherever possible

18. Access Systems: Browse • Goals: • Provide intriguing and interesting paths into and throughout a collection • Give a broad sense of a collection, but not show everything necessarily • Requirements: • Logical browse paths • May have multiple paths to the same items (e.g., time, geography, subject)

22. Access Systems: Search • Goals • To provide post-coordinate access to all items in a collection relevant to a particular query • To provide good methods to create a search as well as refine or alter the display as required • Requirements: • Good search software (database or indexing software) • Good metadata (minimum is probably a title or caption for each item) • Good interface (options for navigation, search refinement, etc.)

24. Repurposeable Digital Repositories • “What Mark Said” • One way that one institution is doing this…the California Digital Library’s content management system • First, what we can do with it, then how we do it…

26. ark.cdlib.org www.loc.gov/standards/mets/ Information about the constituent files ARK/METS Digital ObjectRepository RecordCreationProgram Descriptive metadata Image capture metadata Library Catalog OtherMetadata

27. ark.cdlib.org www.loc.gov/standards/mets/ Search Index FieldExtractionProgram IndexingSoftware Search Index Information about the constituent files ARK/METS Digital ObjectRepository RecordCreationProgram Project Profile Project Profile Descriptive metadata Image capture metadata Library Catalog OtherMetadata

28. Search Index Search Index Actual digital objects ARK/METS Digital ObjectRepository Resultsin XML XSLT Object description in XML XSLT

31. Metadata: Types • “Cataloging by those paid better than librarians” • Structured description of an object or collection of objects • Basic types: • descriptive - e.g., title, creator, subject - used for discovery • administrative - e.g., resolution, bit depth - used for managing the collection • structural - e.g., table of contents page, page 34, etc. - used for navigation • preservation - e.g., file types

32. Metadata: Appropriate Level • Collection-level access: • Discovery metadata describes the collection • Example: Archival finding aid encoded in SGML; see http://www.oac.cdlib.org/ • Item-level access: • Discovery metadata describes the item • Example: individual metadata records for each item; see http://jarda.cdlib.org/cgi-bin/imagesearch.pl

33. Collection Level Access Images Individual Finding Aid Search Interface Individual Finding Aid

34. http://jarda.cdlib.org

35. Item Level Access Finding Aids Images Search Interface

36. http://californiadigitallibrary.org

37. Metadata: Granularity • <name>William Randolph Hearst</name> • <name> <first>William</first> <middle>Randolph</middle> <last>Hearst</last></name> • Consider all uses for the metadata • Design for the most granular use • Store it in a machine-parseable format

38. Metadata: Qualification • <name role=“creator”>William Randolph Hearst</name> • <subject scheme=“LCSH”>Builder -- Castles -- Southern California</subject>

39. Metadata: Machine Parseability • The ability to pull apart and reconstruct metadata via software • For example, this: • Can easily become this: <name> <first>William</first> <middle>Randolph</middle> <last>Hearst</last></name> <DC.creator>Hearst, William Randolph</DC.creator>

40. Metadata Standards • Decide to which industry standards you wish to comply • Use an internal metadata infrastructure that complies with those standards as well as your specific requirements • Consider the issues of item v. collection level, granularity, qualification, and machine parseability • Understand that your internal infrastructure will be more complex than what is required for standards compliance

41. Recap • Determine what you want your users to be able to do (your access goals) • Consider your constraints, opportunities, and long-term goals • Capture images at the best quality you can stand • Collect metadata in an amount and form that supports your access goals as well as interoperability with relevant standards • Build repurposeable digital repositories, which will enable uses you can’t even imagine yet