Roy TennantThe California Digital Library

escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/presentations/2005sfs/

Moving Beyond CaptureThe IT Perspective

1. Having the Right Gear2. Making the Right

Decisions3. Luck!

The Importance of Metadata Platforms Databases: Pick Your Poison

A Brief Demonstration Your New Best Friend I Know This Much Is True

Outline

The Importance of Metadata

Metadata: structured information about an object or collection of objects

No matter what access system you use, having the right metadata is essential

The services you want to offer will define the metadata you must capture

The storage format is not that important as long as you lose nothing and you can output it in all the ways you wish to support

Capturing it at the correct granularity is key

Metadata Granularity The degree to which you segment

or “chop up” your metadata Gross: <name>John Doe</name> Fine:

<name><given>John</given><family>Doe</family>

</name>

Item v. Collection Metadata Collection-level metadata:

Discovery metadata describes the collection Example: Kentuckiana Digital Library; see

www.kyvl.org/kentuckiana/digilibcoll/digilibcoll.shtml Item-level metadata:

Discovery metadata describes the item Example: MARC or Dublin Core records for each

item; see californiadigitallibrary.org

Both types may be appropriate Doing both often takes very little extra effort

dgilib.kyvl.orgdgilib.kyvl.org

californiadigitallibrary.orgcaliforniadigitallibrary.org

Platforms

HardwareHardware

Operating SystemOperating System

Application Software

Application Software

DataData

Platforms

HardwareHardware

Operating SystemOperating System

Application Software

Application Software

DataData

SystemAdministrator

or Service Provider

SystemAdministrator

or Service Provider

Platforms

HardwareHardware

Operating SystemOperating System

Application Software

Application Software

DataData

DatabasesoftwareDatabasesoftware

Databases: Pick Your Poison Virtually any database or indexing

product will in most cases work Key considerations:

What do you already have (in-house or via a service provider)?

Which platform are you on? Which product will your IT staff or service

provider be willing to support? What do you want your users to be able to

do? How much money do you have to spend?

Databases: Examples Targeted to the market and

purpose; e.g., CONTENTdm from OCLC

General purpose commercial; e.g., Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server

General purpose open source; e.g., MySQL, SWISH-E

Shrink-wrapped consumer; e.g., MS Access, Filemaker Pro

Database & Indexing Sofware Sample Indexing

Systems/Databases: Sprite (Perl module) Microsoft Access, Filemaker Pro SWISH-E, swish-e.org MySQL, mysql.com ContentDM, OCLC Oracle or Sybase

Less More

The power & complexity continuum

Sprite SWISH-EMySQL/ContentDM

Access/Filemaker

Oracle,Sybase

Two Brief Demonstrations… SWISH-E Components:

A web server (Apache) and Perl Free SWISH-E indexing software An edited version of the included Perl

script Hand-created XML files (let’s do one!)

FileMaker Pro Components: FileMaker Pro Web Access Plug-in enabled

Your New Best Friend Your System Administrator/Service Provider

will be very important to you Definition: The one person or organization

upon whom the success of your project rests (i.e., God); and, the one person or organization who can most easily damage your project (i.e., the Devil)

Foster good relations Communicate your needs clearly, and listen

well

I Know This Much is True Never forget for whom you are doing this! Neither an early adopter nor latecomer be Never underestimate the power of a

prototype Back it up or kiss it goodbye Computers are cheap, people are

expensive Storage is cheaper than dirt Buy hardware at the last possible moment

I Know This Much is True Don’t buy software with a zero at the

end of the release number Like love and money, you can never

have too much RAM, disk space, or CPU speed

All things being equal, open is better than proprietary

Know your source of support going in

I Know This Much is True For any given

project, there are many ways it can succeed

Just focus on (you guessed it): 1) having the right gear, and 2) making the right decisions ( and coming here was a great start)

Final Advice Start and end with your users and the

services you wish to provide Digitize at the highest quality that you

can, and save an unprocessed copy Capture as much metadata as you can

stand and store it in a highly granular fashion

Have fun!