Hello,
The following are minutes of the third meeting of the ARLIS New York
Electronic Resources Discussion Group (ERDG). The topic of discussion was
Digitization and the meeting was hosted by the Watson Library at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Respectfully submitted,
Deborah Vincelli
Electronic Resources Librarian
Hazen Center
The Thomas J. Watson Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
[log in to unmask]
(212) 650-2912
* The meeting began with a presentation by Deborah Vincelli on the
Watson Library's pilot digitization project. The Watson Library is
digitizing part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Clippings and Ephemera
Collection 1870 - . The collection consists of news clippings,
illustrations and ephemera that document the history of the Museum, its
collections, staff, activities and programs. The collection is housed in
156 boxes and part of it is also in Scrapbooks and Vertical Files. The
first 75 boxes of this collection have been microfilmed by OCLC's
Preservation Resources. The Watson pilot digitization project involves
digitizing the first reel of microfilm. The goal is to make these digitized
files available and full-text searchable in a Web-enabled database.
* Watson Library has asked for bitonal, 300 dpi, 1 bit depth (B&W)
digitized files. They will be getting TIFF files with PDF image-only
derivatives and OCRed text files. Watson staff are also currently working
on defining metatags for the collection. They will ask Preservation
Resources to enter these metatags retroactively and provide them with XML
files.
* A short discussion ensued after the presentation about other
people's experiences with digitization vendors and content management
programs.
* MrSID (Multi-resolution Seamless Image Database), an image
compressor and viewer that enables instantaneous viewing and resizing of
images, was mentioned as a useful product. More information about MrSID can
be found at the LizardTech Web site at http://www.lizardtech.com/.
* Another product mentioned was the Madison Digital Image Database
(MDID). The software has been developed by the Center for Instructional
Technology at James Madison University and is available as a free download
at http://cit.jmu.edu/mdidinfo/.
* Database software products mentioned in Deborah's presentation
included
FilemakerPro, ContentDM, Olive Software, Microsoft Sharepoint and InMagic.
Angela Graven (Christie's) said she found InMagic very easy to use.
* Roberta Blitz spoke about one of Columbia University's digitization
projects which involved linking to digitized images from the collection's
finding aid. The Finding Aid to the Greene & Greene Architectural Records
and Papers Collection is available from the Avery Architectural and Fine
Arts
Library Web site at
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/avery/greene/.
This finding aid is encoded in EAD and contains MrSID images. Roberta also
announced
that Columbia would be presenting a digitization program at the 2004
ARLIS/NA conference.
* City College Archives has also done some digitizing. See the
Historical Photographs
Sampler at http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/library/Divisions/Archives/index.html -
scroll down
to Historical Photographs Sampler then click to enter.
* The American Museum of Natural History has a digital library
collection available at http://library.amnh.org/diglib/?src=r_b
* The Frick is currently looking into digitizing a small portion of
its negatives collection. The negatives collection contains approximately
60,000 negatives. The Frick is exploring the option of in-house scanning
since the negatives are fragile. Outside vendors are being considered for
other aspects of the project including scanning supplemental images,
scanning
accompanying information and data entry. The goal is to create a database
for use by
the Frick's readers and to make preservation quality scans of the negatives.
* The question of fund-raising and applying for grants to fund
digitizing efforts was discussed.
* A question was asked about archiving the Web. See the
Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org/.
* The group also spoke about the nature of the forum and whether
presentation formats were preferred to more informal seminar gatherings. It
was agreed that the format of the group could be determined by the topic, as
some topics might warrant a presentation while others would be more
discussion-driven.
* Suggested topics for the next meeting included copyright, image
databases and negotiating vendor contracts. Heather Topcik suggested the
topic of Bibliographic Instruction for Spring of 2004. We also thought of
asking ARTSTOR to present to the group.
* The session adjourned with the agreement that the next meeting of
the Electronic Resources Discussion Group would be sometime in September
2003.
____________________________________________________________________________
___
DV 06/13/03
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