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On January 22 2001, HATII interviewed Liz Bishoff, Director of the Colorado Digitization Project and Sue Kriegsman, the Operations Co-ordinator. The CDP represents the collaboration between several archives, libraries, museums and historical societies throughout Colorado State. It seeks to increase public access to the resources contained by these institutions, while ensuring efficient delivery of primary text and visual resources in digital form. The Project also intends to establish comprehensive criteria and standards for the selection of material to be digitized, thereby encouraging ongoing activity in this area.
The Colorado Digitization Project is the organizational center for a number of individual projects throughout the state of Colorado. At the time of the interview there were 30 projects involving 48 organizations. There was no collection survey as such of the individual projects. However, the scope of the funding was primarily targeted at areas associated with Colorado – its scientific, cultural, and historical heritage – and those projects funded had collections that were pertinent to these requirements. For example, a project whose aim was to digitize coin collections from China, although valid and interesting in itself, would not be funded as it would not meet the CDP’s criteria.
A survey was sent out to 300 possible projects to identify the content of the collections that might be digitized, and to those who had attended the December, 2000 CDP Leadership Seminar. Four subject areas were surveyed: Alpine Life (including flora and fauna, snow and floods); Water Resources; Colorado History; and Immigration/Migration. Based on this survey the CDP focused on more specific areas: water resources and trails. The subjects of the collections in the CDP fall into two distinct tracks: the historical societies/museum collections and the Library/archive collections. However, the CDP does not distinguish between different institution types in the guidelines, training, standards and funding. The content of the digitized collecitons has to be primarlily based in Colorado.
The CDP solicited projects from institutions including Denver Public Library, University of Colorado, and University of Denver. These are well organized collections and some had already started digitization, but the CDP’s primary objective was to create new images – 50,000 in two years. Some institutions will digitise 1,000 items, while the larger grantees will digitise 3,000 items each.
Projects that wanted funding for software development for existing images were not accepted as this is not the primary remit of the CDP.
The CDP has a variety of working groups that help define standards and guidelines for the individual projects and a Collection Management Working Group operated as the grant reading panel. The content also has to be of interest larger than the local community – the State of Colorado and the areas identified as the primary focus are the drivers for the project and thus the resulting digital deliverables.
The collaboration between the projects, from the largest to the smallest and from the rural to the urban, is without doubt the most interesting and fruitful aspect of the CDP.
The main criterion for the selection of material for the overall project is scientific, historical and cultural value. Teaching and learning and intellectual property rights are important, as are research significance, provision of user services and improved functionality. Disadvantaged groups include the geographically diverse. Other issues are addressed at local level, such as conservation and potential commercial exploitation. The K-12 community is high priority, and teachers are motivated by students’ need to have access to these resources.
Collaboration is one of the main objectives of the CDP, and this has naturally taken place with a variety of projects, including archives, libraries, museums, and corporations (in the form of public broadcasting stations examining archival video and moving the channels to digital). These collaborations are local and regional. At the time of this interview, the CDP was exploring the concept of a Rocky Mountain states collaboration project and including nearby states, such as Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
The CDP has great experience in collaborative projects through the Director and through the willingness of the projects to be involved. Its success has been attributed to a commitment to equal participation, where all members are equal players. Everyone contributes to the concepts which shape the project. The steering groups and board reflect the four major types of institutions. In new projects started specifically for the CDP, there is a high level of camaraderie due to the flexibility which the minimum standards set by the CDP offer each project. Many of the smaller projects look to larger ones such as Denver Public Library for assistance, but the CDP recognizes that, while not all projects can perform at this level, they can nevertheless produce worthwhile material and run a successful project if they follow the standards and guidelines it sets. These standards were developed with this sort of collaboration in mind, so that the smaller projects can play an equal role along side the larger institutions.
It is necessary to have people with cross cultural heritage experience on any steering group so that one type does not dominate at the expense of others. The knowledge base must be wide, with representatives of different areas, for example metadata and collection management.
Communication is at the heart of successful collaboration. Email and conference calls are useful day to day tools, however, face to face and site visits cement the collaborative relationship at all levels, not only at management but also at operator level, which ensures inclusiveness for all projects, no matter how small or where geographically placed. The CDP runs regular and extremely popular training sessions on all aspects of digital imaging, and these have the additional effect of creating a community that knows and relates to each other as well as improving skills.
The CDP’s website describes the main goals and purposes for the creation of digital materials. This statement of intent is explicit about the scope, rationale and primary audience for the project:
“The purpose of the statewide-digitized Library is to work collaboratively to bring together, from all corners of the state, digitized materials that will:
The source materials vary widely and include letters, diaries, government documents, manuscripts, photographs, maps, digital versions of exhibits, artifacts, and oral histories. The different projects determine whether the material is a sample or the entire body of resources.
The CDP has used standards and created guidelines for the projects involved to adhere to. These are minimum standards to enable the materials to be integrated into the union catalog, the key to accessing the resources from all the projects. The Project looked at CIMI, Dublin Core and other metadata standards and is exploring EAD. The guiding principle behind the union catalog is that the CDP can take anything from the projects. The CDP specifies the fields that it must have in a record, but the individual projects can decide what format to supply the data in. This approach is to ensure that the collaboration is as inclusive as possible and that one large project is not prescribing the format for others. The categories are broad, using Dewey Classification.
The target audience is broadly defined by five categories: general user/visitor; K-12 lifelong learner; vocations/hobbyist; scholar/researcher; and business community. All the aspects of the CDP derive from these categories to ensure that each has the tools and resources needed for their specific purposes. There was no formal evaluation of the target audience, but the steering group established the categories at the outset of the project and these have driven the project.
They have used both internal and external advice on project management. The CDP is set up as a not-for-profit organization. The four major institution types provide a variety of steering groups to decide on the guidelines for the participating projects. A primary board oversees the running of the CDP in general, while there are groups on collections, metadata, scan centers, website, heritage, audio standards and educational use.
The CDP uses electronic means to disseminate information, such as listservs, to the projects but has found these very quiet and therefore not the best way to encourage communication.
The CDP was established with a LSTA grant of $70,000 to create a website, declare the standards and run a pilot project. The pilot was carried out by the University of Denver, involving teachers over one week using images on the topic of labor in south Colorado coalfields. The images came from the DPL, Colorado Historical Society and faculty and helped the teachers create lesson plans around the materials. From this pilot project the CDP has adapted and adopted standards and practices.
The digitization is carried out by the different projects in different ways. They use in-house facilities as well as out-sourcing. Material is digitized in-house when it is fragile or oversized. The CDP has established scan centers in the state for the use of those projects which lack the technology in-house. They have flatbed scanners, slightly larger than A4. The project trains in the use of the scanning and the use of the centers, while each institution has to do their own scanning. The scan centers are located in central points in the state allowing access for all the geographically dispersed projects. The workshops run by the CDP explain how to calibrate and how to use benchmarks in the scanning process.
There are only two full time members of staff in the CDP, the Director and the Operations co-ordinator, and between them they cover the roles of curator, digitizer and technical development. They rely on the work of the committees to assist them with strategy and decisions on guidelines. Both have cross cultural heritage experience, which is invaluable when dealing with the variety of sub-projects. They have assistance from the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries and the Colorado State Library for technical development, such as the union catalog and the website.
Training for these staff and for staff in the projects is on-going; full time staff receive training both on external courses and in house. Training topics include: project management; application of technical standards; preparation and handling of materials; technical operation of digitizing equipment; metadata creation; and digital preservation.
The copyright issue is dealt with on an individual project basis and the digital deliverables available to users vary from project to project.
The CDP has addressed the issue of preservation by using a panel of experts (one of the committees) to look at the existing resources and how each project preserves the digital material.
The catalogs for each project will vary in depth and format depending on the type and size of institution. These can range from an uncataloged box of 4,000 photographs to a full inventory and catalog of a collection.
The CDP recommends that the projects catalog the digital object under the source object. The metadata for the digital object is based on guidelines from Dublin Core and MARC. However, the projects can decide their own level of metadata, as long as they adhere to the CDP guidelines. There are 18 CDP Dublin Core elements recommended to the projects, but these can be delivered in any format to the union catalog. These elements cover the digital object, digitization process, technical details, staffing details, and administrative details. It will vary from project to project as to who creates the metadata.
The relationship between the digital objects and catalog varies with each project, however copies of metadata for each digital object or website section is sent to the CDP for it’s union catalog. All images are locally stored and serviced. The project also allows institutions that have a separate Z39.50 accessible database of digital objects and metadata to be searched at the same time as the CDP union catalog database.
The CDP has basic guidelines on format, resolution and compression, and different projects use different levels for the various materials. Examples include: PDF for text as images; TIFF for capture and preservation; GIF, JPEG and PDF for delivery of images. The minimum resolution for images is 300dpi for capture, 75dpi delivery of thumbnails and 75-150dpi for larger delivery items. Bit depth varies between 1, 8 and 24. Both compression and delivery are via GIF or JPEG. Compression is used to improve access, decrease storage and to reduce theft. They do not recommend that the projects carry out post imaging processing because of its huge time implications. File sizes vary from project to project.
At present no projects use audio or video but they are working on guidelines for these. They are also developing guidelines for quality control and will be offering training on this from a project management perspective.
Users have access to the catalog and materials through the union catalog, but access to the master images is controlled by the participating institution. The union catalog uses Z39.50 technology to implement this access. The CDP is considering e-commerce for some projects where this is viable and it is possible to purchase the high-resolution images.
Front-end evaluation for the CDP took the form of the pilot study and the focus on the five user groups. This has adjusted the project direction and led to more specific purposes and goals. Training sessions also offer opportunities for outcome based evaluation and the CDP responds to the project needs through these outcomes. There are also focus group discussions in the various constituencies.
Since 1999 the CDP has received a variety of funding for the organizational project as well as for the project partners, totaling almost a $1 million – $177, 000 from the Colorado State Library and $550, 000 from the Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS) and $36,000 from the Regional Library Systems of Colorado. More funding would enable CDP to employ one more person to deal with administrative issues as well as more technical help on the website. Financial and progress reports are produced for IMLS every six months. The projects have to complete a grant form at the onset of a sub project, with a detailed budget plan and a quarterly report to the CDP.
The CDP recognizes that long term sustainability is an area to be explored. At the start it recommended storage on CDs, now it asks projects to send the digital objects via FTP to the CDP for storage on a live server as well as on CD. This is for back up as well as to insure against disaster and for recovery.
The Project is now developing a plan for operation systems migration. IMLS and NEH wish to ensure that the digital objects remain accessible in the long term due to the unique nature of the resources and so are the main influence behind this project. This sustainability depends on self-generating funds and they are considering a membership based organization to generate revenue. They still have a year of full funding remaining so this strategy is not tested yet. The possibility of an exit strategy is still under discussion if it were required, possibly moving the management to the state Library or to the distributed projects. As with all projects that involve commitment and resources, the loss of the digital deliverables would be a matter of concern.