saa annual conference august 15, 2009 barbara aikens aikens@si
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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 aikens@si.edu
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)
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