Maennerchor Project Digital Collection

Transcription

1 Maennerchor Project Digital Collection Mission This digital collection s mission is to collect and preserve artifacts and documents relating to the Maennerchor building. It features blueprints, photographs, and documents from the history of the building up to its demolition. The Maennerchor Building was a historic part of Indiana that housed everything from German singing choirs to IUPUI s first School of Law students. Erected in 1904 and demolished in 1974, it was a staple of German architecture and culture within the state of Indiana. Since this structure no longer exists except in collective memory the IUPUI University Library seeks to digitize and preserve any memorabilia concerning the building for future use. We will collaborate with other institutions such as Indiana Landmarks to try to make a cohesive collection. Audience The main audience for this collection will be researchers however there will be a very broad audience. These researchers may vary from those interested in architecture to those interested in Indiana history. Educators and other libraries may also be interested in this collection, particularly the digital recreation aspects of the project. Users of all ages will be able and encouraged to look at the collection. The focus will be to make it generalized for a broad demographic Goals To educate users about the Maennerchor building To preserve and digitize memorabilia into a lasting format To bring awareness to digital recreation projects To support any informational needs of researchers To help encourage more preservation of demolished architecture Collection Development & Selection Policy The selection and collection development policy is fairly open since the goal is to preserve as much on the Maennerchor as possible. The collection will be open to accept a wide variety of objects in various formats. Items must pertain to the Maennerchor building in some way. The item must have some informational value relating to the overall missions of the project.

2 Demand is low for these items, but they are still worthy of preservation so selection will not be too focused. Photographs and blueprints are of particularly high value, but videos and other material particularly regarding the digital recreation of the building will be considered. Funding is taken care of with grants. When choosing objects, we will consider how much this will dip into the funds. Items relating to the Maennerchor choir will also be accepted but they must have concerned the building in some way for instance a photo taken inside the building of the choir. The collection wishes to protect the personal information of individuals and would not have any memorabilia pertaining to individual choir members. Copyright is public domain for all materials. We will communicate with any items that are part of a cross collection with Library of Congress or Indiana Landmarks to ensure that this copyright is still open access to users. The collection development policy is to maintain this collection as well as possible to ensure access for all types of users. Guidelines for Digitization Condition Evaluation We will check any and all items donated or already within the collection to ensure that they can safely be digitized. For instance several of the blueprints are in unstable conditions due to their age. If we feel these cannot be safely scanned with our map scanners then we will need to evaluate other methods to obtain digitization or find other copies. Photographs and text documents can be worn down from the digitization process so we have to ask ourselves serious questions about whether we can stably digitize them. If we do not have the means to properly digitize the collection then we will outsource the digitization process to Indiana Landmarks or our special collections department. File Format Standardization Still Image Resolution: 600 ppi, 2400 ppi for photographic negatives with Digital Ice used. Overhead scanner usage for all photos. Tones and color balance of the digital image should match the original image. Bit-depth: 24-bit (or higher) RGB Color, or 8- bit grayscale for black and white photos. File Format: Uncompressed TIFF for master file, JPEGs for web usage. Naming Convention: ex. MB-SI-001_photo1 (does not have to be adhered to, recommended. )

3 Moving Image Archival Master and Copies: MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), 640 x 480 resolution (assuming 4:3 original aspect ratio), 30 bit sample size, 30 MiB/s data rate, AVI (.avi) or QuickTime (.mov) file format Naming Convention: ex. MB-MI- 001_3Drender (does not have to be adhered to, recommended. ) Text Resolution: 400 ppi or higher for scans, 2400 ppi for photographic negatives. Bit-depth: 24-bit (or higher) RGB Color if any color on page, or 8-bit grayscale for any other documents File Format: Uncompressed TIFF for master, PDFs for all compound objects Microfilm ISO 7000/0076, 600 dpi, Master and use files Metadata Standardization We will be using Simple Dublin Core standards for this collection because of Dublin Core s wide usage and ability to be mapped to by most other forms of metadata. Controlled vocabulary will vary based on what term you are filling out. Below is a table to showcase what rules to follow when filling out the metadata templates for the collection, common sense should also be used. Field Controlled How To Vocabulary Title None used Title of object Maennerchor Concert Hall Subject Library of Congress Subject Headings Look at object, define themes and subjects, use Description None used Create brief abstract of item Creator Library of Congress Authority Format Use last name then first name Karp, Mort Publisher None used Detail name of publisher who gave us the material or co-created the material and include their address if possible Contributors None used Detail name of any entity that helped with the distribution of the item, this will usually be IUPUI archives Date None used Typically use YYYY-MM-DD format. If date is unknown write n.d. If approximate date is known use circa ca s

4 Type DCMI Type Vocabulary StillImage, Text, MovingImage will be used primarily. Any others should be referenced Format MIME type Mime type will be used for these for instance image/png. Identifier None used Naming convention will generally be MB- 001_typeoffile. If you have a folder of Still Images then it would be MB-SI-001_typeoffiles Source None used Tell what type of analog document the digitized format comes from before its digitization. Language ISO 639 Two type language codes, will generally be for English or German for example en Relation None used Include any IUPUI, LOC, or Indiana Landmark collections that the file may pertain to or be a part of. Coverage Getty List city with city first and state second. Indianapolis, IN Rights None used Make sure that you use No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government; images copied from other sources may be restricted. Unless specified otherwise Transcript None used Text documents will be ocr ed at a future date and text will be included within this field. Accessing the Collection

5 The searching of this collection has been designed to be as easy and open to general audiences as possible. There are four main features on the landing page that would be important for a user to know. The first is the About section, this section focuses on describing what the collection concerns in more detail and is located at the very bottom of the page. The second is the Viewer or carousel that is featured in the center of the page. A user can scroll through all the items within the collection and visually see what an item is before clicking it. Third is the Search bar, this features both basic searches and advanced searches for users to go through the collection as needed. A user can search for specific material and if necessary use advanced search to narrow their options down. Finally Recent Additions allows users to see newly added items and receive updates from the collection if they would like to receive them. If a user wishes to search for something like library, they would type that search term into the bar. Results will appear in a grid format with a thumbnail appearing on the left hand side. They are sorted in terms of relevance and the search will go through subject, description, and title fields. Here is what library would have turned up: A user can narrow this down by searching solely in title, description, or subject by selecting a different relevance. The grid format can also be changed to a more thumbnail centered format under display options. You can also broaden or narrow your search terms by including other collections from the Contentdm server into your searches.

6 As we can see two searches appeared for this, but if we were solely looking for the blueprint we could have used the advanced search option. This pulls up just the Maennerchor Library blueprint that the user would be wanting. This offers new options for users. A user can display the item in various formats. They can scroll zoom, fit to their screen, and rotate the item for better viewing in the center. In the upper right they can print or download the item. In the upper left they can share the item to various social platforms or grab a reference url to use as a citation. Finally they can peruse the metadata of the item, this will help a user learn more about it but also discover new or related resources within the item. Just like most browsing services users can also add tags and comments to items so that librarians may add things in the future. These pages are designed for ease of access and searches can be fairly broad as long a keyword hits within the copious amounts of searchable data. Services While not offered currently we hope to add some services to the project as it expands. One of these is an ability to talk to a librarian working on the project and the project s digital recreation services. Another is getting students involved. Currently there are several students working on various digital recreation projects at the IUPUI campus, but these are all for classes. We hope to transform this into a motivational force for high schoolers to gain interest in not only

7 librarianship but architecture and historical recreation. We think this could provide many credit internship opportunities for students as well as great resume and skill building opportunities. Field Tests I created a brief Likert scale test with 1 being either strongly dislike or strongly disagree and 5 being strongly like or strongly agree. I then instructed each user to try to evaluate the collection as critically as possible. I asked them to provide as many comments, questions, likes and dislikes using the scale and comment sections as they felt necessary. 1. Male, Age 26. No prior knowledge of project Despite no prior knowledge of the project the user still reported ease of use overall. They said that the about the collection allowed them to come up with keywords and then they used metadata to scroll through the rest of the collection. They strongly agreed to ease of navigation and use, but strongly disagreed to the items being interesting to them. They detailed in the comments that the collection felt stale and would need more visual appeal in the future to captivate non-researchers and non-librarians. 2. Female, Age 28 Prior knowledge of project User two felt agreed strongly that the items were of interest and used keyword searches to find several photographs they found interesting. They found the display options of Contentdm and the overall look of the collection to be clean and helpful. They did say that the collection was difficult to view on mobile due to large file size. 3. Female, Age 33 Coworker on project With prior knowledge and having worked with the materials user three was able to get the most out of the collection. They found several interesting items and claimed to strongly agree with ease of navigation and depth of collection. They said that some of the metadata should be detailed out more in the future and that the collection should be cross cataloged more with other collections. Future of Project This collection is still in the very early developmental phase, but we hope to grow it a rapid pace. We hope to incorporate the Contentdm collection within an explorable 3D environment of one of the rooms of the Maennerchor building itself. So that a user may go through the building and learn about it as they walk through. We hope to make this as interactive as possible for users to create an immersive experience. We hope to incorporate more detailed metadata and also to ensure that all related collections get credit within our metadata. User s needs are also a priority. We will be adding an Ask the Librarian and FAQ section as questions are posed. Finally we hope to ensure that we get all the items from the collection digitized and uploaded for users to see and use.