Medieval Manuscripts Collection

&Government Posters

Collectionat DLS

Minglu Wang2008 Fall

Special Thanks to

• Mark Anderson, Digital Initiatives Librarian, DLS-- my mentor, who patiently worked with me and showed me how to build a digital collection, step by step.

• Amber Jansen, Digital Library Fellow, DLS-- my fellow colleague, who generously shared everything she had learned with me.

Thanks to (continued)

• Other DLS librarians:– Keo Hoang, for his technical support;– Wendy Robertson, Jen Wolfe, and Ellen

Jones for their help on metadata;

• Government Publications Department:-- Marianne Mason, John Elson and Students

• Conservation Department:-- Kristin Baum

Part IMedieval Manuscripts

Collection

Medieval Manuscripts Collection• A project close to finishing (started by Amber Jansen)

Add more items to this existing collection

My goals in this project: get trained to

• Digitize fragile and large format material;

• Edit scanned images ready for upload;

• Upload images with metadata to ContentDM.

MMC: digitization

• Close cooperation with conservation department

• Over-head scanner issues– Over exposure– Blurry

MMC: editing images

• Using Photoshop Elements 6– Batch reformatting tiff

images to jpg images– Stitch images

48cm x 66cm

MMC: ContentDM uploading

• Simple compound project: multiple images with one entry of metadata

Part IIGovernment Posters Collection

Federal Government Posters Collection

• Background: (1,500 posters 1960s-2008)– “University of Iowa Libraries has been a federal

depository library since 1884 and a regional depository in partnership with the Government Printing Office (GPO) since 1962. ”

– “UI Libraries has accumulated a collection of government-issue posters that promote government services, programs, and initiatives or have been used as social marketing tools. ”

– “This visual collection has the potential to complement academic course work in public policy, history, communication studies, and health sciences and to enhance outreach activities to primary and secondary (K-12) students. ”

GPC: before digitization

• An underused collection:– lacks consistent online bibliographic

description – has not been promoted as a resource due to

the practical difficulty of handling large flat paper sheets

– has consequently been designated as non-circulating

GPC: more reasons for digitization• There are no collections in the State of Iowa that

approach the size of the UI Libraries’ poster collection and no poster collection has been digitized from any of the 52 regional libraries nationwide.  

• Only several World War I & II digital posters collection exist:

GPC: digitization partnership• Potential partnership with GPO:

– GPO has been developing partnerships with Federal depository libraries and other Federal agencies to increase access to electronic Federal information since 1997.

– With an increasing amount of Federal information available electronically, partnerships ensure permanent public access to electronic content and provide services to assist depositories in providing access to electronic material and in managing their depository collections.

– Content partnerships assist with providing permanent public access to electronic U.S. Government information. Partners agree to provide storage capacity and user access without restrictions on re-dissemination. In the event the partner is no longer able to provide free, public access to this electronic information, the partnership requires the agency or library to transfer a copy of the content to GPO. GPO will then make the content available either through GPO Access or in cooperation with another partner.

My goals in this project

• Collecting metadata for all posters

• Digitization

• Uploading to ContentDM

GPC: metadata - 1• 1,000 posters have InfoHawk records, which

are migrated OCLC MARC records

GPC: metadata - 2

• My work:– Look though all the 1,500 posters;– Identify posters without InfoHawk records;– Find OCLC records if they have them based

on their SuDocs numbers or their titles;– Record posters without any existing records,

will need to catalog them later.

GPC: metadata - 3• SuDocs classification

system – The Superintendent of

Documents classification system has been used for over 90 years to identify public documents which were distributed to depository libraries and described in the Monthly Catalog of U. S. Government Publications.

examples

GPC: metadata - 4

• Metadata harvesting and cross walk– Based on the OCLC numbers of the posters, Wendy

extracted all the OCLC MARC records in a XML file;– Library IT persons transform XML file into

speadsheet;– Wendy and Ellen mapped the MARC structure to DC

extended structure, which is our collection’s metadata structure.

– Mark and I worked on the metadata to make it into the format that we need.

– Jen and Ellen finalize the metadata spread sheet.

GPC: digitization - 1

• Small posters (less than 28cm x 43cm)– Use regular flatbed

scanner– Finished

GPC: digitization - 2

• Medium size posters (less than 60cm x 46cm)– Use overhead scanner

– Finished 300 posters

– Now, blurry issue

GPC: digitization - 3

• Large posters – 54” Large format roll-through scanner on

Oakdale campus– Will work on this during the break

GPC: uploading - 1

• Simple project:– One image

with one entry of record

– Finished uploading 189 small posters

GPC: uploading - 2

• Multiple compound project:– Multiple posters with one entry of record

• Poster with front and back images;• Posters belong to one series

Part IIIConclusion

Some thoughts on post-production tasks

• Are we able to add links of these poster images to InfoHawk, OCLC, and Catalog of U.S. Government Publications ?

• Is it appropriate to contribute these poster images to Wikimedia Commons orFlickr: The Commons?