Change & Opportunities

in a Digital World

Roy TennantCalifornia Digital Library

escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/presentations/2002mlnc/

Disclaimer

• I’m going to be all over the map — from the conceptual to the nitty-gritty

• Do not blame the conference organizers

• I must leave here knowing that you’ve had at least one opportunity to consider these issues

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

— A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Let’s Travel Back in Time…

• 15 years ago (1987) - early glimmers of the Internet

• HyperCard, an early hypertext system

• 10 years ago, a watershed event: Gopher

• Shortly thereafter, another watershed event: the Web and Mosaic [the power of a common protocol and encoding standard]

• This revolutionary change has had a far-reaching impact on libraries…

Reference Usage is in DeclineRatio of Reference Queries to Professional

StaffSource: ARL Statistics

Circulation is in Decline

• 51% of the respondents to a Library Journal survey* cited a circulation decline

• Of those respondents, 95% blamed the Internet

* Annual book-buying survey, as reported in the Feb. 15, 2000 issue

The Pivotal Opportunity

• But with this change and challenge comes a tremendous opportunity:– To create a new relationship with our

users– To expand the reach of our

collections around the world– To create services that are not

bound to time and place– To redefine the word “library”

Creating and Managing Digital Collections

• Be careful what you wish for, because you will never go back

• It is tremendously rewarding…• …and a heck of a lot of work!• You will learn things they didn’t

teach you in library school• And apply some of what you

learned in new ways

A Story From the Field

Digitization Synergies

• Standards and best practices• Virtual collections• Synergistic services

Virtual Collections

Synergistic Services

How Will You?

• Capture• Describe• Serve• Preserve

Capture

• The highest resolution and bit depth you can possibly afford

• Consider outsourcing• Be clear about your rendering

intent

Rendering Intent:Content v. Artifact

• What is your “rendering intent”?– To present the item as it is now

(perhaps decayed)– To present the item as it may have

been when it was created (or at least in a more usable form)

• Why not both?

Planning for Change

• The natural state of the universe is change

• Dealing with change well requires planning for it

• How should digitization projects plan for change?

• By focusing on key considerations such as formats and description

Formats

• Ubiquitous (widely used)• Open (published standard; e.g.,

TIFF)• Standardized structure (for text)

Description

• Commonly referred to as metadata

• Collect as much as you can• Store it in a machine-parseable

form• As granular as future purposes

may require• And qualified when appropriate

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 (slice and

dice as small as you can stand)• Store it in a machine-parseable format

Metadata: Machine Parseability

• The ability to pull apart and reconstruct metadata via software

• For example, this:<name>

<first>William</first><middle>Randolph</middle><last>Hearst</last>

</name>• Can easily become:

<DC.creator>Hearst, William Randolph</DC.creator>

Metadata: Qualification

• <name role=“creator”>William Randolph Hearst</name>

• <subject scheme=“LCSH”>Builder -- Castles -- Southern California</subject>

Metadata: Organization• The schema or software you use to

store it doesn’t matter • What does matter is that you:

– Capture the quantity required for your purposes

– Capture it at the granularity required for your purposes

– Use appropriate vocabularies, if any– Qualify the metadata where required– Store it in a machine-parseable format– Can output it in any format required for

interoperability with those important to you

Serve

• Collection- vs. Item-Level Access• User Malleable Interfaces• Interoperability

Collection- vs. Item-Level Access

• 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: MARC or Dublin Core records for

each item; see http://jarda.cdlib.org/search.html

• Both types of access may be appropriate (“more is better”)

• Doing both often takes very little extra effort

Images

Collection Level AccessCollection Level Access

Search & Browse

Interface

IndividualFinding Aid

IndividualFinding Aid

ImagesFinding Aids

Search & Browse

Interface

IndividualFinding Aid

IndividualFinding Aid

IndividualFinding Aid

Item Level AccessItem Level Access

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/

jarda.cdlib.org/search.html

Images

Combined AccessCombined Access

Search & Browse

Interface

IndividualFinding Aid

IndividualFinding Aid

Search & Browse

Interface

Main Entry Point

User-Malleable Interfaces

• The ability of a user to make changes to what they see for their own purposes

• It’s often easier than you think to provide these capabilities

XMLDoc

Information

Transformation

Tomcat

Cocoon

Web Server

XSLTStylesheet Presentation

XHTML Document

(no displaymarkup)*

HTMLStylesheet

(CSS)

* Dynamic document

Interoperability

• The ability of two or more disparate and distant collections to act as one

• Standards are required• Two standards to watch:

– Metadata Encoding and Transfer Syntax (METS)

– Open Archives Initiative

Preserve

• There are no digital preservation formats, only a commitment and a migration strategy

• To be ready for migration:– Follow best practices in capture– Store your objects in standard

formats– Describe them well in a machine-

parseable storage format

Why We Digitize

• Our users often go to the Internet rather than to us

• By putting useful, interesting content and services on the Web we can win them back

• When Yahoo! And Amazon are no more, we will still be here…

• …with rich collections and services carefully and methodically created over years…

• …to serve their needs as we have for centuries