balboa park commons: collaborative digitization for a public resource

Alan Renga, ArchivistSan Diego Air and Space Museum

Rosa Longacre, Registrar/ArchivistSan Diego Museum of Man

Kristi Ehrig-Burgess, Library Archives and Digitization Manager, Mingei International Museum

Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli, Asst. Director of Digital Media, Balboa Park Online Collaborative

COLLABORATIVE DIGITIZATION

DIGITIZATION AT THE SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM

Alan Renga, Archivist

San Diego Air and Space Museum

The Museum’s Library & Archives

Major national aerospace-related resource Open to the public San Diego has a very significant aviation heritage:

Curtiss, Ryan, Consolidated/Convair

SDASM’s Archives houses over 2 Million photos, slides, negatives and transparencies documenting the aviation history of San Diego, the U.S. and the world!

And…several thousand films, videos, cassettes, reel to reel audio tapes…etc…

etc..

Just received a donation of 3000+ Atlas Missile Films from Lockheed/UAL

MISSIONSThe Museum’s mission is to:

Preserve significant artifacts of air and space history and technology.

Inspire excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Educate the public about the historical and social significance of air and space technology and engage its promise for the future.

Celebrate aviation and space flight history and technology.

The mission of the Library & Archives is to:

identify, acquire, preserve, and make available for research published, documentary, and visual materials that chronicle the development of aerospace technology and experience.

Digitization is vital in achieving these missions!

Film Digitization

Sniper 16mm Hi Def Film Digitizer AVI files Captures slower than real time…50% speed

Successes

You Tube Non Profit Partnership: no time limit on videos

Over 1100 have been put on YouTube 800,000 Views Adsense???? Excellent for grants! Easy to add Youtube links in our online catalog,

“Aerocat” by EOS linked on Expression Engine designed website Fulfilling the Library and Archive’s Mission on a scale never

before thought possible!

http://www.youtube.com/user/sdasmarchives

Sample Comments

It is difficult for me to concisely summarize how much I enjoyed watching this. It brought tears to my eyes, honestly.

Beautiful history of aviation.

This is pretty cool stuff for any of u aviation / history / gear head grease monkey types out there.

The "youth" that built this glider is my daddy!! He was born to fly...absolutely fearless. That grin at 1:41, I have never seen him smile like that except when I watch this video.

Unfortunately, my father, LCDR James A. Smith, did not survive....this is a very tough video to watch. But thank you for sharing this video, and thank you to all that fought this fire and saved a countless number of other men.

My dad was on this carrier and thank you to whom ever put this footage on here. I've heard this story many times since I was young. I also saw him in this footage. Very sad incident. Glad he lived to tell it.

Challenges

Files enormous…AVI files over 10GB Transferring to DAMS slow process Have to reformat all metadata to the DAMS

specifications Had to purchase additional server space to allow

DAMS to download files Causing a lag in uploading Films to BPOC

Commons

Current IMLS Grant

Link YouTube, Flickr and Online Catalog to DAMS and store metadata in one place (DAMS)

Store metadata in one place

Balboa Park Commons: Collaborative Digitization for an Open Public Resource

Rosa Longacre, Registrar/Archivist at the San Diego Museum of Man

Over 50,000 photographs, slides, and negatives

Over 400,000 ethnographic collections; including baskets, pottery, textiles, weapons, and folk art

SDMoM Photograph & Object Collections

• Photographs Albums, oversized

• Slides 35mm, stereo slides, lantern slides

• Negatives 35mm, 4x5 negatives, glass plate negatives

Photographs, slides, and negatives, oh my!

2012 Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Hidden Collection Grant Two Year cycle Allowed us to catalog 25,000+ images from Southern

California in PastPerfect Export the metadata from PastPerfect to Piction

2014 Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Hidden Collection Grant Three Year cycle Will allow us to catalog an additional 25,000 images &

7,000+ archaeological records in PastPerfect Export the metadata from PastPerfect to Piction and

ArcGIS

CLIR Grant

Photo Capture Station Canon EOS 5D photo

capture station Captures images in

RAW with EOS Utility Manipulate images

with Adobe Bridge and Photoshop

Cataloging Procedures

PastPerfect 5.0 Cataloging Procedure

Manual for both Object and Photo Catalogs

Cataloging “Digital Surrogates”

Allows SDMoM to put our collections online for the first time, giving access to researchers and the public

Great collaboration with neighboring institutions

Ability to borrow photo capture station Great for grants Allows us to catalog from digital surrogates

Less handling of originals

Successes

Data ingestion into Piction Exporting metadata from PastPerfect to Piction

Fixing mistakes in Piction Information must be re-FTPed

PastPerfect Lone wolf in the park

Challenges

Collaborative Digitization

Mingei International Museum

Kristi Ehrig-BurgessLibrary Archives and Digitization Managerkehrigburgess@mingei.org

Digital Initiatives SymposiumUniversity of San DiegoApril 9, 2014

Art of the People. Art of the World.

Our MissionFurthering the understanding of art of the people

(mingei) from all eras and cultures of the world

• Collections and Exhibition PR/marketing and IT budgets

• Grants, private donations, foundation funds• Strategic Plan- buy in and support from upper

management and board members• Staffing needs for digitization: interns,

volunteers, museum staff, professional photographers

Frances Hamilton White Reference Library

Library, Archives & Object Collection

• 10,000 books, periodicals, videos• 300 linear ft. of institutional archives which include

documents, PR articles, photographs, 35 mm slides, 4” x 5” transparencies, film strip negatives, 16 mm film, VHS, Beta, DVDs

• 24,000 permanent collection objects from 141 different countries includes pottery, jewelry, textiles, costumes, baskets, furniture, dolls and toys

• 15,000 beads, one of the largest collection of beads in the world

Variety of Media

Variety of media requires various methods of digitization

• Rapid Capture station (Canon EOS 5D photo capture station) for photos, transparencies, negatives

• Slide Scanner for 35 mm slides (Nikon LS 5000 ED- Super CoolScan 5000) save files as NEF and convert to DNG, cropped and adjust files in Photoshop

• Samma Solo for VHS and Beta tapes-http://www.fpdigital.com/Solutions/Downloads/SAMMAsolo.pdf

• Cannon Image Runner 3230 (“copy machine” as scanner) scan at 600 dpi

• Objects (point and shoot for quick record shots, professional photography for print and web projects)

Scanners

Samma Solo

• Samma Solo for VHS and Beta tapes-http://www.fpdigital.com/Solutions/Downloads/SAMMAsolo.pdf

• Real time capture• Cataloging on the fly along • Excel lists• Offsite- 52 U-matic tapes - BPOC offices• Onsite Mingei International Museum - 250

VHS with volunteers and interns to assist

SAMMAsolo

Photo from the Hallwalls BLOG,Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY

File Output Derivatives

• FLV _ Flash Video• mov• mxf• proxy.mov• wmv• XmlThe BPOC has all of the files in storage. Mingei typically stores the proxy.mov file and converts these to mp4 files through iskysoft convertor for upload to vimeo or in the case of study video we provide dropbox links to staff and docent for the videos

Digitizing Objects

Photography-Rapid Capture Station

• Can work for some 3d work, but is best for flat objects

“Studio” Photography

Image courtesy of Dennis Price

Images courtesy of Dennis Price

Workflow• Organize media by similar types and sizes• Digitize materials (cataloguing* may take place before or after digitization)• Save images to external drive• Rename image RAW files• Convert images to DNG, create Master tif files• Copy images from external drives to servers, upload to DAMS ftps • For images of permanent collection objects, link images in Embark (CMS)• Create files for website and upload to website FTP• Export metadata from Embark, send to BPOC as .xslx or .csv file for

syncing• “Push” selected images and metadata to the BPOC Commons• Goals: Create MARC records in web-based Library World Database for

archives collections with attached pdf finding aids, create EAD finding aids and disseminate these through the OAC (Online Archive of California

Challenges

• Diversity of materials to digitize• Lots of images and metadata in many “locations” means that it

is not easy to update information consistently• DAMS, CMS, Website are not integrated – they do not “speak to

one another (i.e. Systems integration with DAMS; CMS: EmBark, PastPerfect, Library World, EOS; Websites: WordPress, Drupal)

• Multiple servers/server space for all the digital files• In many cases we are all using different databases to track our

collections• Servers assets in more than one place, ftps, multiple servers,

consistently syncing data

Great Aspects of Collaboration with the BPOC

• Borrowing digitization equipment• Implementation of the shared Piction DAMS• IT support and technical expertise• Learning from and sharing with partner

institutions• Balboa Park Commons