Jonny Grass Blog 4, Baldy Editorial Cartoons

The Clifford H. Baldowski Collection is a collection of the lifelong work of Georgia-based editorial cartoonist Clifford “Baldy” Baldowski.  The collection is housed at the Richard B. Russell Library, a special collections library for political research and studies within the University of Georgia Libraries.  Baldowski donated his work to the library, including 6740 pen and ink drawings and 2460 velox.  Thus far, the digital collection consists of approximately 2500 cartoons from the Baldy Editorial Cartoon Collection.  The digital collection has been created to provide good digital surrogates for research purposes, in order to better preserve physical objects and microfilm copies.

 

Collection Principles

The collection was donated entirely by Clifford Baldowski, the creator of its objects, beginning in 1994.  Baldowski donated approximately 3000 of his own cartoons to the library between 1994 and his death in 1999.  The collection was completed in 1999, upon Baldowski’s passing, as he willed roughly 4000 more cartoons to the Richard B. Russell Library.

 

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Metadata

The metadata about the collection is quite extensive.  A link called “About the Project” lists lots of collection metadata, both about the physical collection and the digital collection.  Since the digital collection has been produced largely to facilitate online research instead of research with the physical objects, the library has included good descriptive data on the website, including title, date, abstract, subject headings (LCSH and LCNAF), name and location of publication, format of original object, notes on copyright, and physical object location with unique identifying number.

 

Extensive technical metadata is included on the site, describing the techniques for preserving the physical objects and transferring them into digital surrogates in preparation for the online collection.  This metadata includes various types of equipment and preservation standards.  The site also provides detailed explanations of the reasons for its preservation and other choices, as well as its extensive procedures for reviewing and evaluating the web interface of the collection.  This review and evaluation process is a standard of the GALILEO (GeorgiA Library Learning Online) system, and involves user testing and keeping of use metadata (which is available at another site that is linked from this page).

 

Object Characteristics

Images are provided as thumbnails that can be clicked to link to a larger version of the image.  “To provide online access, DLG staff scanned the preservation microfilm using a Polaroid SprintScan 35 Plus film scanner to create 300 dpi grayscale images with a bit depth of 8. The non-bracketed exposure was scanned to provide the proper tonal range.” 

“The original scans are LZW compressed TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) format files.  The LZW compression is a lossless compression.  At the point of scanning, staff adjusted the white point to compensate for grayness from the film and darkening of the original due to the paper's acid content.  Occasionally after scanning, staff manually adjusted brightness and contrast.  These high-resolution TIFF images are retained by the Russell Library and the Digital Library of Georgia for archival purposes.”

 

Since the newspapers in which these cartoons originally appeared hold the copyrights to them, the library has scanned digital images with a watermark and copyright information.

 

Intended Audience

The collection is available for use by the general public, and intended primarily for research use.  It is based on a research collection housed at a research library, the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies.  The online collection is designed to be as useful to researchers as the physical collection in order to reduce use of —and damage  to —the physical collection.

Yunmeng Du Blog 1: Spanish Colonial Architecture

Collection Principles

The Spanish Colonial Architecture as Represented in the Alexander Architectural Archive is a collection of digitized drawings and photographs of eighteenth-century Spanish missions and San Antonio’s Governor’s Palace. These records, dating mainly from the 1920s through the 1950s, reflect how the structures looked before various efforts of restoration and reconstruction. Selected from collections within the Alexander Architectural Archive, they include works by Harvey P. Smith, Stewart King, Ayres and Ayres, Robert Leon White, and measured drawings by UT Austin School of Architecture students in the Texas Architecture Archive.

Metadata

Spanish Colonial Architecture presented has plenty of metadata for each image. Below each piece of work is a list of information for this image. The list includes the assigned indexed name generated by a set of characters, date, description, type, format/size, creator and citation. Above the image is the official name as well as its location. The right side of each page along with an inside search engine created by Alexander Architectural Archive. Users can do a general keyword search or some more focused searches sorted by locations, creators, image types or years. I tried several terms in the Keyword Search box; unfortunately, it does not support Boolean operators. No search functions can be found to search through the whole collection. But there are five tabs on the top of the homepage such as home, properties, FAQ, contact and copyright, which allows users to navigate through this website.

Object Characteristics

The exhibition of images in this collection is well-organized and presented. Each image occupied one page with a small copy on the upper left and a larger one in the center. A small red rectangle can be dragged through each part of the small copy of the image. Meanwhile, the corresponded part on the larger copy of this image in the center of the webpage will be automatically moved to the center. Sometimes, users can even see the texture of each piece of work. On the larger copy of this image are placed seven buttons allowing users to zoom in, zoom out, move towards left, right, up or down or rotate the image. A small black triangle between image and buttons also can be dragged horizontally in order to zoom in or zoom out the image. Each image has its own assigned indexed name located above the real name. When the cursor moves to its indexed name, a small window will pop up. This shows indexed names of other images grouped under the same category.

Intended Audience

This particular collection does not provide specific information for its audience. However, since all the images here are selected from collections existing in Alexander Architectural Archive and measured by School of Architecture students, it is most likely that their targeted audience are architects, researchers focusing on architecture, or students with architecture related majors.

Blog #5 - Emily V - The Yevonde Portrait Gallery

I stumbled upon The Yevonde Portrait Archive on accident when I was trying to determine if the National Portrait Gallery has online exhibitions. They don’t. The Yevonde Portrait Archive, however, has an extensive online collection. Unfortunately, they do not indicate where the actual archive (or any of the portraits) and physically located – though it seems that the collection has been exhibited extensively.
There is no information about who administers this collection or who digitized it. All I can tell is that the collection is administered by someone in the UK, as the e-mail address and telephone number indicate as much.

Collection Principles

There are no clearly stated collection principles, other than stating that the collection consists of “3,000 sets of the original 1930's VIVEX tri-colour separation plates and more than twice that number of b/w images on plate and film” we, the audience have no idea of how this collection was compiled, or how it is maintained.

Object Characteristics

The digital images are of fairly good quality, however they can not be enlarged ot zoomed in on

Metadata

Aside from title, date, and a number (though what the significance of this number is is not made clear) no metadata is included about any of the prints.

Intended Audience

I am not certain about the intended audience of this collection – I suppose anyone interested in art portraits would find this site interesting, The photographs are beautiful and well done, I imagine anyone with an interest in art would enjoy these lovely photographs.

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.

John G. Blog 1 Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, & Mermaids

The "Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, & Mermaids" was an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York from May 26, 2007 - January 6, 2008. It showcased mythical beasts from land, water, and air throughout human history. According to the introduction page on this website, the purpose of the exhibition was to provide patrons with information in regards to how these mythological creatures have remained a part of human culture for thousands of years in different cultures around the world.

Collection Principles

This exhibition was designed and produced by the American Museum of Natural History's Exhibition Department and incorporated a variety of scientific divisions of the museum. It was also created in collaboration with several different museums around the world. The goal was to digitize and chronicle the exhibition so that patrons could interact with the art, stories, folklore, songs, and mythical creatures in a multimedia format even after the exhibition was over. There are exhibit summaries, thumbnails of digitized artifacts, and podcasts.

Object Characteristics

The digital exhibition contains a wide variety of artifacts including: maps, drawings, paintings, models, historical accounts, photographs, and other artwork. The website also contains podcasts with virtual tours of parts of the exhibit. Viewers are redirected to podcastgo.com to view the podcast portions of the exhibit. Digitized artifacts are embedded throughout the site and are divided and grouped into categories in regards to where the mythical beasts were believed to have lived. They are not separated by artifact type (for example, maps are not grouped together, etc.) but can be found in a consolidated "thumbnail" view under each category.

Metadata

Each digitized artifact contains a brief description, the copyright of the photographer or owner, and the name of the collection that it was borrowed or on loan from. The American Museum of Natural History website has a "copyright" link at the bottom of the page with a disclaimer outlining how parts of the digital exhibit may be used.

The exhibit also provides information regarding the curators of the exhibition. A brief bio and resume is provided for each curator listing their past experience and areas of expertise (Paleontology and Anthropology).

Intended Audience

The intended audience is museum patrons of all ages that are interested in mythological beasts. Although this exhibit is no longer on display at the museum, patrons can still visit the exhibition online. The website also includes maps of the exhibit, cool interactive informational and game links for kids, and resources for educators.

Kempleel blog 4 - North Carolina Maps

North Carolina Maps is one of the special digital collections for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, housed under their auspicious Documenting the American South program. NC Maps is pretty self explanatory - its a work in progress that hopes to digitize about 1500 maps of the Tar Hell state dating from the 16th century to the 1960s, all held at the three largest archives in NC; the North Carolina State Archives, the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the Outer Banks History Center.

Collection Principles: This project is currently the beta version, release July 2008. They hope to be completed by 2010. The selection criteria, and digitization and cataloging principles are explicitly stated on the "about" page, and are both comprehensive and concrete. A complete list of maps scheduled for digitization, their place of holding, their date, and their status is available in PDF format.

Object Characteristics: The objects can be browsed according to a number of criteria; data, location, subject, type, etc. they can also be searched for a specific keyword. UNC is using ContentDM for this collection, so all maps are displayed at high resolutions and can be zoomed, rotated and clipped. Their size is displayed as a percentage of the "real" size of the object - most objects can be zoomed in 4 or 5 orders of magnitude. Since these are maps, the resolution can get exceedingly high, and the objects are ultimately very large files. All objects are displayed on their own page including text documenting the object and containing the object's full metadata.

Metadata: Full metadata for each object is included on the page with it's graphic, including the location of the original object, its dimensions, and the authority for it's digitization (the Library Services and Technology Act, distributed through the State Library of North Carolina)

Intended Audience: Clearly, like all the DocSouth collections, this is meant primarily as a free public history resource for the people of the State of North Carolina, or anyone with an interest in southern geography or history. All of the collection is freely viewable with a web browser. Unlike many collections I've been blogging about lately, it's also meant to stand alone, instead of to supplement the somewhat obscure paper resources it utilizes.

Katie R - Blog 4 - Yale Daily News Historical Archive

The Yale University Libraries are working on archiving the Yale Daily News, the oldest student-run daily college newspaper in the country. The Yale Daily News Historical Archive is a digital project started in 2006 by the Yale library system and two other partners.

Collection Principles
The project is trying to digitize the entire holdings of the Yale Daily News up to 2001, which is when the paper started archiving online. So far only groups of years have been digitized, but they smartly chose important eras to start with - the first year of publication (1878-79), the WWI years, WWII years, the late 1960's, and 1978-81, when Yale apparently had an important President. The group responsible for working on the digitization, called DPIP, the Digital Production and Integration Program, looks for alumni who are interested in funding specific years, or for grants. By digitizing important years of history, the project is more successful and beneficial to researchers.

Object Characteristics
To search the collection, users must access another site that allows specific searching or browsing (this site is actually contains the main collection URL). ContentYale explains how during digitization "an image of each page is made. These images are "cleaned up" to improve readability on the screen and to improve the quality of printing." They take out any yellowing of the paper, which is somewhat questionable from an archiving aspect, but understandable from a straight content-research side. Also commendable is the zoning technology used, so "when the material is scanned, so that articles that display on different pages are joined together." Clicking on the 'zoned' area will bring up the entire article. Zoom features allow the user to get quite close up on words.


Metadata
Each page of the newspaper has been indexed and OCR'd. Yale provides detailed information about their digitization process, including the different contractors and their locales. The site explains that "the images are delivered in lossless JPEG 2000 format (300 ppi, 8-bit, high-contrast grayscale, or 24-bit color) and then "word positions, article boundaries, document structure, and OCR output are encoded following METS/ALTO standards. Finally, cleanup work (such as verification of article boundaries) and quality control checks are performed by staff in Cambodia." The information is stored on a server at Yale.
Because so much information is recorded about each page, for later issues copyright has become an issue. At my internship this summer I sat in on a meeting with DPIP as they were discussing how to deal with copyright issues around the comics that appeared in the paper in the 1970s-80s. They were discussing how to restrict access to those items to only Yale-affiliated users in order to get around some Family Circus or Garfield copyright problems.


Intended Audience
This digitization project is aimed at researchers and also benefits the library, as reformatting the older YDN issues will decrease physical use. The collection is also of interest to Yale alums, since that community is quite strong.