Elizabeth S. Blog #3: Making of Modern Michigan

Collection Principles

According the the description on its main search page, "The Making of Modern Michigan is a collaborative project involving more than 50 Michigan libraries. It includes local history materials from communities around the state. Michigan's unique heritage is represented through photographs, family papers, oral histories, genealogical materials, and much more.

As of January 2005, MMM includes contributions from 36 libraries. Collections from another 15 libraries are in the works and will be available soon.

The Making of Modern Michigan is headed by the Michigan State University Libraries, in partnership with the Library of Michigan, the Michigan Library Consortium, and the 50+ libraries currently participating in the project."

It is really an excellent and holistic initiative to make some of the state's tremendous cultural heritage materials available to a larger audience, especially considering the steady decline of financial resources. I highly recommend browsing the collections from the Detroit Public Library's Burton Collection, which is devoted to the history of the Detroit automotive industry from a variety of perspectives.

Image Credit: Cadillac Motor Car Company, Detroit, Mich.
C.T. Photochrom. Detroit Public Library

Object Characteristics
There are several different institutions contributing to this project, ranging from small town public libraries, such as Holly Township Library's Centennial Edition of the Holly Herald to major universities, such as Michigan State University's 19th Century Cookbook Collection. The overwhelming majority of the objects are .jpg images and .pdf files, all of which can be downloaded. You can search by keyword, or browse the list of participating collections. Based on a inactive link, it looks as though they eventually intend to make the collection searchable by format as well. The overall interface of the MMM has some bugs--namely links that do not work at all, or do not work on one page, but do on others--which makes it a little tricky to navigate.

Metadata
The Making of Modern Michigan clearly identifies and provides detailed instructions to its participants concerning every stage of the digitization process, from selection to scanning settings, photoshop tutorials, available equipment resources, file naming conventions, copyright information, and DC metadata.

They define the Preservation Standards for Digitization as follows:

Image formats: dpi, color depth, lossless vs. lossy formats
* 1-bit color, 600 dpi, TIF format (GIF if TIF is unavailable).
* 8-bit color, 400 dpi, TIF format only
* 24-bit color, 400 dpi, TIF format only

Sound formats: sampling rate, sound depth, formats
* CD quality WAV format: 16-bit quantization sampled at 44.1 KHZ

Video formats: sampling rate, sound depth, formats?
* DV standard (highest)
* DVD quality MPEG2 (next highest)

Text digitization: consider transcription accuracy
* manual transcription standard is about 99.995% accuracy (1 error per 20,000 characters)
* lower rates acceptable if used for searching only, not display

Intended Audience
The intended audience seems to be the general public, but effectively it will most likely comprise students, educators, and researchers.