Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

Digital Technologies and AccessAt Cornell University

Peter B. Hirtle

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

pbh6@cornell.edu

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

Overview

Describe some of the activities of CIDC

Lessons learned– Projects are more than just scanning– Collaborative projects work well

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

What does CIDC do?

Explores the use of digital technologies in teaching and research

Cornell focus, but with a broader perspective

Educates, through workshops and publications– Digital imaging workshops;

DigiNews; D-Lib Magazine

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

Representative projects

Image collections– Slide libraries; Japanese theater; Contemporary

African Art; Birds

Textual materials – printed and MSS Textiles and costumes

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

Museum Online projectMuseum Online project

collaborative project with H. F. Johnson Art Museum

digitize 25,000+ objects in the museum – purchase of high-end digital cameras

– staffing and systems support

– two year time frame

add subject terms to public access catalog

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

SagaNet

Collaborative project with the National Library of Iceland

Scan 400,000+ manuscript pages, 100,000+ printed pages

Create a comprehensive resource for Saga studies

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

Making of America

Previous Cornell project to scan 750,000 pages of 19th-century journals

New project to OCR and index the text, provide word access to the contents

Available at <http://cdl.library.cornell.edu>

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

Lessons learned

Projects are still difficult – no “off the shelf” solutions

Projects involve more than just scanning – Only a small portion of the tasks

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

Importance of the full digitization chain

Benchmark capture requirements– Purpose

Preservation? Access? For how long?

– Nature of documents

Capture and conversion– QC is hardest part

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

More digitization chain

Metadata creationFile management and storage

– Backups, migration

Network infrastructureDisplay derivativesOutput options – print, etc.

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

2nd Lesson Learned: Importance of Collaboration

Almost all our projects involve collaboration– Museum, slide libraries, faculty,

Computer Science, other schools

Not a natural act…– Differ over access, fear of loss of control

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

Value of collaboration

For maintenance and support– Museum Project is one example

Library provides technical support

– Bits are bits…For technical exertise and advice

– no one has all the answer– SagaNet good example

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

More benefits to collaboration

To create an integrated resource– Can’t think in terms of collections– Can’t think in terms of repositories– Researchers use everything

As a service to users

Cornell Institute for Digital Collections

Summary

Digitization is more than scanning– Need a commitment to the full

digitization chain– Recognize that your level of indexing

will probably be higher than beforeCollaboration can be an effective way

to decrease cost and increase value