Missouri Digital Heritage: Missouri’s State Wide Digital Portal

(www.missouridigitalheritage.com)

Haiying Qian

Missouri State Library

Haiying.qian@sos.mo.gov

CALA MW 2010 Annual Conference, May 22, 2010

Outline of Topics• Birth of Missouri Digital Heritage

(MDH)• Highlights of digital collections• Outreach• Collaboration • Usability study• Future plans

The Birth of MDH• Formerly Virtually Missouri • MDH was established by the Missouri Office

of Secretary of State (SOS) in July 2007• Large format scanners purchased• Collections transition to CONTENTdm server• Officially Rolled out April 2008

MDH Structure and Collections• Formerly Virtually Missouri linked collections • About 80 digital collections on CONTENTdm

server• Missouri State Archive’s SQL databases• Exhibits and lesson plans • Federated search

Outreach

Outreach letter / Letter of Intent sent

Digital Collection Coordinator site visit / appraisal

LSTA Digital Imaging Grant / In house digitization

State Librarian and State Archivist evaluate and

approve collections to be added to MDH

In house digitization at Digital Imaging Center

Collaboration Across State Regional digitization collaboration Projects

Ozark Region Kansas City region St. Louis Region Southeast Missouri

Example: Community and Conflict Project http://www.ozarkscivilwar.org/

Collaboration Across State Agencies

Signature project of MO Secretary of State

Administrated by Missouri State Library and Missouri State Archive

Partner with State Historical Society of Missouri

Challenges Different Culture and Concepts

library vs. archive practices

access vs. preservation, archival master

Policies and Proceduresdifferent chain of command

workflow

Project ManagementMDH Management Team

MDH Working Group

Digital Imaging Center

Challenges Technical Difficulties mesh different data sets, SQL database & CONTENTdm

granularity vs. lowest common denominator Political Entities everything has to go through communication dept. low priority

IT Support firewall, large project ftp timeout staff turnover compete with other projects on IT support

Usability Study Contracted with Information Experience Lab

at MU School of Information & Learning technologies

Usability Study from Jan. – June 2010 web statistics review

comparative review focus group studies

Comparative Review5 digital project comparables

Georgia

Maine

Arizona

Denver Public Library

South Carolina Digital

• first impression• design/layout• functionality• special features• content

Usability Study- Focus group studies

Genealogist (done)

Researcher/ Librarians (done)

Teachers/Students (in process)

First Time Users (drafting questions)

Usability StudyWrap Up in June, 2010

Preliminary results from comparative review and genealogist focus group

great content, but categorization confusing

navigation is cumbersome, not intuitive federated search not effective, have to use Google

exhibits confusing

huge banner

lack of dynamics

Future PlansCivil War Sesquicentennial promotion

Civil War Portal on MDH

Federated search improvement

Web redesign based on usability study

EAD Finding Aids

Multi-site server and metadata harvest?

Questions