saa annual conference august 15, 2009 barbara aikens aikens@si
DESCRIPTION
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 [email protected]. Collections Online http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline. Entire collections vs. selected items - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Going With the Flow Going With the Flow
Mass-tering Digitization at the Mass-tering Digitization at the Collection Level: Workflow at Collection Level: Workflow at the Archives of American Art the Archives of American Art
SAA Annual ConferenceAugust 15, 2009
Barbara Aikens [email protected]
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
Collections Online: Scaling Up Digitization of Special Collections
No item level accessContextual display &
navigation Effective and efficient
integration of existing archival descriptive practices
Automated workflowPrimarily grayscale, 300 dpi –
some color Easy to operate equipmentRepurpose traditional archival
practices and workflows
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
<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>
Sample XML Encoding for Collection to be Scanned
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
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
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.
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)
For more Information For more Information Karen Weiss
Information Resources ManagerArchives of American Art,
Smithsonian [email protected]
Barbara AikensChief, Collections Processing Archives of American Art,