Creating a Digital Archive

on a Shoestring
Marin County Free Library California Room
Digital Archive:
http://www.co.marin.ca.us/library/crm/

Laurie Thompson, MLS: California Room Librarian

Sarah Houghton, MA, MLIS: eServices Librarian
Marin County Free Library

PLA 2006
 And the question is…
How do you create a digital archive of local
history materials with no additional
funding or staff?

With willful determination and

scraped together time.
 Today’s Talk
1. Assessing your materials
2. Creating a digital archive on a shoestring
3. Design process
4. Workflow
5. Technical details
6. Tour of the archive
 Why Create a Digital Archive?
 Dissemination: To share your historical
photographs, ephemera, oral histories and
other materials with a larger audience

 Preservation: To preserve your primary

source materials for posterity by limiting
the handling of the rare and fragile
originals
 I. Assessing your Materials
 Survey the primary source materials in
your collection
 Determine which items would be of
interest to your patrons
 Evaluate the intellectual property rights of
the chosen items
 Determine whether these items can be
safely scanned or digitized
 Survey Your Materials
 Do you have historical
photographs?

 Do you have paper

ephemera?

 Do you have oral

histories? Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Marin
County Civic Center, circa 1962. Anne
T. Kent California Room Collection.
 Do you have maps?
 What Do Your Patrons Want?
 Images showing the people,
culture, institutions and towns
in your community

 Oral histories with pioneers,

politicians and anyone with a
story to tell

 Historical Maps and charts

showing how your community
Vaudeville performance at San has changed over time
Quentin Prison, circa 1915. Anne T.
Kent California Room Collection.
 Ephemera such as pamphlets,
playbills, newspaper clippings
 Can the Items be Digitized?
 Item won’t chip or
break when handled

 Item can be safely

placed on a flatbed
scanner

 Exposure to light
won’t damage the
item Mountain Play Program,
1914. Anne T. Kent California
Room Collection.
 Copyright Issues
Suggested Resources & Websites:

 Copyright Term & Public Domain Chart:

http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/training/Hirtle_Public_Domain.htm

 Investigating Copyright Status:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ22.pdf

 Mary Minow’s Library Law site:

http://www.librarylaw.com/
 II. How to Create a Digital
Archive on a Shoestring
 Sell your digital archive vision to Library
Administration
 Consult with IT staff in your city or county
 Leverage the skills of your staff
 Use volunteers
 Raise money through Friends & other
library support groups
 Purchase economical hardware & software
 SELL YOUR VISION
Creating A Digital Archive will:
 Preserve rare  Allow 24/7 access to
materials by creating archival materials
digital surrogates
 Promote your library
 Share historical in the community
resources with
patrons & community  Perpetuate itself, as
you start small and
 Disseminate materials use the digital archive
to a broad audience, as a fundraising tool
via the Internet
 Leverage Your Staff & Volunteers
Create a team using:
 Staff or volunteers with knowledge of local
history or specialized subject areas
 Library or IT staff with the skills to create digital
image and audio files
 Library or County webmaster to create the
website
 Head of history room or special collections to
serve as project manager
 Friends, volunteers and staff members to
promote your digital archive in the community
 Basic Equipment
HARDWARE SOFTWARE
 PC with approx. 250 GB  Scanning software
of storage & 128 MB of (archival scans are
RAM generally 600 dpi .tif
 Monitor with a minimum files)
resolution of 800 x 600  Imaging software such as
 Flatbed scanner Photoshop
(minimum of 600 x 1200  Audio software such as
dpi with 32 bit depth) MusicMatch Jukebox Plus
 Server maintained by the  Word processing software
Library, City or County  Adobe Acrobat to create
 Sound card and video PDFs
card
 CD-R/RW drive
 Use the Digital Archive to Raise Funds

Give a Talk & Demo to: Grant Sources:

 Friends of the Library  LSTA Grants (in
California they have a
 Library Foundation Local History Digital
Resources Projects
grant)
 Community groups  Local foundations &
such as Rotary Clubs banks
& historical societies
 NEH grants
 III. Design Process
 Desired a historical look and feel for the site
 Marin County web style very firmly established
 Our Own Look and Feel
 Background

 Typefaces
– Poetica Chancery I
– Centaur
 Colors
– Deep red for headings and links, black for all else
 Buttons
 Uniform on Every Page

Top: Navigation

Bottom: Contact, Copyright, Logo

Uniform Layouts
 Searching the Archive
 We added a Google Search to our site
 Free and easy
 Search button in the standard navigation
 IV. Workflow
Who does:
– What?
– When?
– And how long does it take?
 Photo Album Workflow
 California Room Staff (13-24 hours)
– Select and scan photographs at 600 dpi for
preservation (on server)
– Catalog each photo with 30 fields of metadata
– Confirm attribution of photos
– Rearrange in a logical order
– Write captions for each photo
– Resize/alter selected photos for the website
– Write introductory essay for the album
 Photo Album Workflow, contd.
 eServices Librarian (4 hours)
– Transfers all image files to the web server
– Creates page for the introductory essay
– Creates page for the thumbnail images
– Creates page for each individual image
– Adds link and brief description to photo
albums index page
 Oral History Workflow
 California Room Staff (13 hours)
– Transfer original oral history recording from
cassette tape to a digital file (also creating a
back-up on an archival quality CD, DVD, and
server)
– Transcribe the complete interview into a Microsoft
Word file template and convert to PDF
– Select brief (1 minute) audio clips from the
interview
– Write brief biographical essay
– Digitize and resize a photograph of the
interviewee
 Oral History Workflow, contd.
 eServices Librarian (1/2 hour)
– Transfers image, audio, and PDF files to the
web server
– Creates new main page for the oral history
with links to the various elements
– Creates new page for the transcript,
converting Word transcript to HTML
– Adds link and brief description to oral histories
index page
 Publicity
 We publicize each new addition on:
– The Library’s blog
(http://www.marincountyfreelibrary.blogspot.com)

– The Library’s monthly e-mail newsletter

(http://www.co.marin.ca.us/library/newsletter.cfm)

– E-mails to all staff

– Library homepage when appropriate
 V. Technical Details
 Hosted on the County’s web server with the rest
of our website
 Simple HTML only
– No javascript, XML, or CSS

 Why just HTML?

– It’s easy and quick to create
– Looks good on anyone’s browser with any screen size
and resolution
– Accessibility
– County IT does not support CSS
 Accessibility
 All fonts are variable (can increase and
decrease font sizes)
 All images have ALT tags
 Reads easily using a text screen reader
 W3C standards are used for the code—not
perfect, but meets all priority 1 guidelines
and most of priority 2 and 3
 Online Findability
 Major search engines crawl our site every 1-3
months
 Ask search engines to crawl after major
additions
 Sample ranks in Google
– San Quentin: 5
– Mountain Play: 5
– Frank Lloyd Wright Photos: 7
– Marin History: 14
– Every oral history shows up in the top 10 for the person’s name

 Listed in The LII, Marin.org, historical society

websites
 2005 statistics: # of visits
 24,000: San Quentin Album
 3,500: Frank Lloyd Wright Resources
 2,400: Oral History Main Page
 2,100: Interactive Marin Rancho Map
 2,000: Golden Gate Bridge Album
 VI. Tour of the California Room
Digital Archive
Featured Categories
 Oral Histories

 Images

 Frank Lloyd Wright

California Room Digital Archive Homepage

 Maps
 Oral History I
FEATURES
 Overview of the Oral
History Program
 Link to an in-depth
history of the Oral History
Program
 Link to an alphabetical list
of oral history
interviewees
Opening Oral History Page
 Photographs of Oral
History Program pioneers
 Oral History II
FEATURES
 Alphabetical list of
interviewees with
links to individual oral
histories
 Birth & death dates of
interviewees
List of Oral History Interviewees with links  Brief summary of
to individual oral history transcripts
each oral history
 Oral History III
FEATURES
 Portrait of the interviewee
 Biographical summary of
interviewee
 One-three audio clips
from oral history (about 1
minute each)
 Complete transcript of the
Page for each oral history interviewee
interview
 PDF version of transcript
 Images I
FEATURES
 Alphabetical list of
image albums
 Summary of contents
of each thematic
album
 Link to each image
album
Image Collection Main Page
 Images II
FEATURES
 Essay providing a
context for the image
album
 Sample photograph
from album
 Link to view the
album Opening page of an image album
 Images III
FEATURES
 Thumbnails of entire
album

 Link back to album

essay

Image album thumbnails

 Images IV
FEATURES
 Image with caption

 Navigational buttons
to flip through album
sequentially or to
return to thumbnails

Sample Image
 Frank Lloyd Wright I
FEATURES
 Links to:
– Two photo albums
– Inter-active oral
history page with
audio clips
– Historical chronology
– Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright Homepage resources in the library
 Frank Lloyd Wright II
FEATURES
 Essay about speaker or
interviewee
 Links to audio excerpts
from speeches & oral
histories which shed light
on the design and
construction of the Frank
Lloyd Wright-designed Inter-active Oral History Page
Marin County Civic Center
 Maps
FEATURES
 Inter-active map created
in “Flash” by California
Room-volunteer
 Click on a rancho to see
the name of grantee and
acreage
 Click to read essay on
grantee and history of
rancho
Inter-active map of Marin County’s
original land grants
 What We’ve Learned Part I
 Creating a digital archive involves a tremendous
commitment of time and resources
 Maintaining the digital archive is more labor-
intensive than creating it
 Policies, structure and staffing need to be in
place to ensure the archive is maintained and
backed-up
 It is recommended that the project manager and
staff receive training from experienced
professionals
 What We’ve Learned Part II
 People find our text and images through
search engines and link to us from their
blogs and websites
 Unfortunate delay in getting things up due
to overloaded eServices Librarian
 CSS would make updates much easier and
page loading faster
 A database-driven site is the next step
 Tips from the California Room
 Back-up digital files on a second server as well
as on archival CDs or DVDs and digital tape
 If possible, work with your city or county’s IT
dept. to additionally back-up files onto their
server
 Make one of your staff members the digital
archivist and make another the project manager
 Questions?
Presentation available at:
http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/DigitalArchive.ppt

Laurie Thompson
ljthompson@co.marin.ca.us

Sarah Houghton
librarianinblack@gmail.com
IM: LibrarianInBlack