DASE Germanic Studies Database

UT-Austin's Liberal Arts Digital Archive SErvices (DASE) offers a place for the department of German to store images taken from various textbooks to be accessed by anyone with a UT EID. When you click on the Germanic Studies button, you are directed to a page that shows all of the attributes that apparently serve as metadata and how many records are in each category. A sidebar allows students to build their own virtual collections and their own slideshows.


While this seems like a good thing in theory, the front end of the operation, and perhaps the back end too, leaves quite a lot to be desired.

(1) It's really slow to load images.

(2) 'my cart'? Need I say more? Are we selling something here? It just seems to me like a tacky gimmick.

(3) Metadata are sparse at best. The categories listed are Legend, Dase Rights Level, Category, City, Country, Date, Filename, Media Type, Name, Series, and Source.

(4) Metadata are sometimes entered in German, sometimes in English or French, and are not at all consistent.

(5) The metadata record principally the objects seen in the illustrations and have no way of recording the type of digital object; e.g. jpg from a printed book.

(6) There is no way to determine when a particular photograph was actually taken so we do not know what is really represented in it (Let's say it's a pre-war photograph of a medieval cathedral taken from a book printed in 1978; the photograph may or may not be representative of the cathedral today, but we have no way of knowing.)

(7) Captions to photographs in books depend very much upon their context within the work for meaning. I hadn't really realised how important that was in modern books before last night. Captions without context are at best vague, and at worst misleading.

(8) While each of the categories can be searched and sorted, if you click on St Gallen under city you find a photograph of the Stiftsbibliothek, but not the two versions of the Abbey Plan (9th century) which I located last night searching by date. And the two photographs of these two plans were not right next to each other but separated by several other digital objects.

(9) Categories are so vague that they are less than helpful. This is not a big problem for small collections of digital objects, but once you have to start scrolling (or even worse going from page to page) it becomes hopeless.

I could go on and on with my quiggles on this one, but I'll spare you for now. I will be interested to see how the proposed record album cover database is arranged on the metadata and navigational fronts.

The Open Video Project

The Open Video Project is a project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The purpose of this project is "to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library and other research communities." It is put together by the Interaction Design Laboratory at the UNC's School of Information Resources and Library Sciences. They continue to explain that researchers can use it for the study for various problems.

This project started in 1998 with 195 video segments. Eventually, the formats available increased to include MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and Quicktime. They also wish to increase the different available genres that are included in the depository.

Their collections are broken down into two groups- the Special Purpose Collections and the Contributor Collections. There is no clear indication as to what the policy is for adding to the collection, however, they do accept contributions, if the available staff is available. As of right now, they are not accepting contributions because the staff is not sufficient.

The audience of this, as stated in the about section, are researchers. While others can use it, researchers are the target audience. It allows for them study different problems, test for algorithms, creating surrogates for describing video content and various other studies.

This project looks like its coming along well. They stated in thier project status that they are continuing to upgrade their systems in terms of what will be available and also focusing on how their users will be able to access different items in the depository.

Voice of the Shuttle

Voice of the Shuttle (VoS) is arguably the most comprehensive humanities site on the web. It was begun in 1994 as a suite of static Web pages. VoS has since been rebuilt as a database that serves content dynamically on the Web.

Collection Principles
VoS was created by Alan Liu of the University of California, Santa Barbara, English Department with a team of graduate students, IT integrated database design and networking specialists and graphic designers. VoS is still evolving. In a plan for a later implementation phase, a system of user accounts with differing levels of access will be put in place. The goal is to have VoS function as an open platform serving the needs of both general and specific communities of users with contributions subject to editorial review by Alan Liu and VoS editorial assistants.

Characteristics and Metadata
The site is structured based on the way the Humanities at UC Santa Barbara are organized for research and teaching. Currently there are still some mis-orderings of categories and author names due to the migration to the dynamic Web database. Even with the legacy data issues, the site is easily navigable. To foster usability, VoS provides extensive help for the user to understand how to best utilize the site. The help page offers information on navigation, search strategies, how to contribute to VoS, and technical specifications regarding the site.

The user can search the entire database through a keyword field or the user can browse by category. Browsing by a category, such as cyberculture, opens a page with hierarchically organized links and subcategories. On the right hand side of the screen is a list of subcategories which, when clicked, will open its own VoS page. The links lead to a wide range of informational sources including but not limited to articles, videos, databases, blogs and other digital intiatives. In addition to webpages on humanities subjects, there are also VoS pages focused on resources such as journals, zines, reference materials, listservs and newsgroups. These resources incorporate professional and research related social networking sites and electronic publication into VoS.

Audience
VoS is quite a remarkable site. The resources it weaves together into one location are amazing. After the initial period of adjustment to familiarize myself with the organization of the site, I was especially impressed by the logical hierarchical progression that leads the user to narrow search parameters. VoS is a valuable source for fueling academic and non-academic interests and an excellent illustration of the strengths of dynamic web.

Picture Australia

Picture Australia is an online photo archive created by staff at the National Library of Australia, using images from archives, libraries, and museums across the country, and from Flickr. The images include photographs, pictures of artworks, and pictures of ethnographic objects. All of the materials on the site are in the public domain or have been licensed to Picture Australia. Members of the public are encouraged to donate images to the collection via Flickr; images are licensed through an American nonprofit called Creative Commons. The pilot for the Picture Australia project started in 1998 and the archive continues to grow. The about page includes acknowledgements of sites and services that provided inspiration and ideas for the project coordinators-- these Australians, they're really just too nice.

Images have been organized into themes, or "trails", that can be used for browsing, or can be searched for using a broad variety of attributes: title, creator, subject, date, publisher, collection, and more. Image quality, however, can be quite poor, particularly with old b&w photographs, which often look out of focus. (Like this wombat, for example. Maybe it's because the original is bad.) The archive mostly consists of links to objects on participating repositories' sites, so there's no standardization of size or resolution or or of the metadata displayed to the user. As far as metadata linked to the object is concerned, the site uses Dublin Core, and it uses the Australian Pictorial Thesaurus to provide index and search terms. There is a metadata guide on the website for those who want to know more about Dublin Core.

it's possible to order copies of many of the images online (although not for free)- I wonder how often that service is used and whether it's worth it for the repositories. There are also free promo materials distributed through schools and libraries. I like this site's participatory nature and find it very interesting that they decided to partner with Flickr.

Digital Collections - Pictures - Campbell, Marrianne Collinson, 1827-1903

I came across this lovely book whose images are reproduced by the National Library of Australia for its Digital Picture Collection: Wildflowers, Fruit and Butterflies of Australia.

This is one the first collections I have found that is well-documented, at least with respect to the original images, which were watercolors pasted into the book. The Library is apparently digitizing its entire image collection, so there is no information about why this particular book of images has been digitized. On the other hand, there is nothing about the digitized image other than the properties information available when one "right-clicks" on the image. The sizes available are not very large, not large enough to see any detail in the watercolor.

In fact, one other thing that seems off-putting, at least to me, is that the images are made available for research and study but any other use requires permission. The author/artist died in1903, Australia's term is life of the author plus 50 or 50 years from date of publication or making, so there's no chance that the book is still protected by copyright. But it's Australia, so maybe they consider a digital image of a 2D work in the public domain to have a new copyright. Their copyright page doesn't say this explicitly, but it is strongly implied. Still, I would have hoped for more from a library.

This book is one "collection" of watercolors among many other groups of images in the Digital Pictures Collection. The site includes search capabilities across not only this collection, and the entire Picture Collection, but across the entire Digital Library. It's also possible to browse the images. The "about" page explains the site's functional capabilities.

Digital Library of Appalachia: Sound Recordings

I love roots music and have over the years really enjoyed Smithsonian's Folkways CDs, but unfortunately they do not have very much available online. In looking around for a different resource, I came across the Digital Library of Appalachia's sound recording collection . This site is sponsored by Berea College in Kentucky.

As they state on their website:
"The Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives is mainly comprised of non-commercial sound and video recordings that document Appalachian history and culture and the history of Berea College. These recordings are especially strong in the areas of fiddle and banjo tunes; ballads and songs; Old Regular Baptist singing and preaching; folktales and legends; and oral history."

They allow search by title, performer, genre, subject, and also county state. I searched for the song "Cuckoo Bird," a staple song of roots/folk music. I received ten hits, seven of them were the song that I was interested in. The search results page provides a picture of the artist (if available), the title of the song, subject search terms, and a description. I clicked on "Cuckoo Bird" by John Lawson Tyree. This took me to a much more detailed record of the file, listing: contributors, place, time period, date, holding library, type, format, indentifier, note, relation, rights, file size, duration, and details about the thumbnail on the search page.

From this page you can display the item, which means play the song. You can also add this item to your favorites. This is a great feature because it allows you to make a list of songs and then save them as an HTML page.

I wish that the site provided more data about how many songs are in the collection, the provenance of the songs, and what the selection process for digitization was. All in all, I think it is a great resource for scholars and fans of this type of music. It's great to be able to look at a lot of different versions of certain songs and learn some of the context of when and where they were created.

MIT OpenCourseWare

MIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The goal is to put materials from all of their classes online and make it available to students and non-students alike. The site does not just post syllabi, but also videos from course lectures, quizzes, exams, and answer sheets. A non-student may complete all the work that a paid student would complete and can receive the same information, but the non-student does not have access to the professors, nor do they receive course credit or a degree.

Collection Principles
The university's goal is to put all class content online by 2008. According to the site, "MIT OCW provides users with open access to the syllabi, lecture notes, course calendars, problem sets and solutions, exams, reading lists, even a selection of video lectures, from 1550 MIT courses representing 34 departments and all five of MIT's schools."

Object Characteristics

The content of the course I downloaded was pretty standard. (Intro to Women's Studies) I am still unsure why I downloaded the files as it seems that each one I open just leads me to a URL. I was hoping to find images of primary documents or photographs in the folder, but have yet to find anything of the sort. Many of the readings are linked to the full text. It simply looks like an online course syllabus and nothing more.

Metadata

The amount of metadata on this site is remarkable. Not only are items tagged with LC classification numbers, but the site has an entire page devoted to explaining what types of technology were used to create the site, the design infrastructure and the creative and proprietary flow of material from instructor to web. It even has a section entitled "metadata."

Audience
In case the audience was not completely clear. MIT OCW created a minute long advertisement for the program with testimonials from two people who benefitted from the program. The first was a father in a rural area without a library who, along with his wife, homeschools their children. The two adults have been using the MIT OCW online courses to gather content and create lessons for their children. The other testimonial is from a young woman at a public university that does not offer all the courses she needs and she accesses content through MIT OCW. This project was featured on a recent episode of Marketplace from American Public Media. In the broadcast, MIT student's were asked their opinion of the program with one student objecting because he felt that his ideas were an essential part of the class and that others should not be given access to them. It seems that he was specifically referring to online lectures.

A Virtual Tour of Creation's Journey and All Roads are Good

A Virtual Tour of Creation’s Journey and All Roads are Good at the George Gustav Heye Center is a virtual exhibit from the Museum of the American Indian on Manhattan Island in New York. This online exhibit is a joint project between the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Museum of the American Indian and the Four Directions project. It originally stared out as collaboration between these groups to educate the public. It serves as and educational resource for those who are unable to make it to either New York or Washington DC. The exhibit itself consisted of two parts: the virutal tour would be as seen through children's eyes of the permanent exhibit and a virtual museum of the students' cultures.

The site is set up to give the user the experience of actually attending the museum. Its fully interactive. The site allows you to enter and ‘browse’ through different halls that contain objects for viewing. One of the interesting features to this exhibit is the use of flash. The user is able to rotate the image in a 360 degree view, which in turn allows them to select the the exhibit hall they want to view. In each of these halls are images of the items in the collection. The object appears in a window on the right hand side and gives the user the options of zooming in and out, as well as horizontal, or a 360 degree view of the object. Included on this page is a map of the 'museum' where the user can select where they would like to go next if they choose not to use the interactive flash display.

Each of the objects contains a brief explanation as to what it is and in most cases an explination as to why it was chosen to be in the exhibit. It is because of the programs desire to help educate and work with Native American children that led to the objects in the virtual tour to be selected by students. Students from two clases were selected to chose from the permenent exhibit the artifacts they liked.

Flash is incorporated in order to give a more realistic view of the exhibit, especially since it is supposed to be through a child's eyes. The virtual exhibit is for the general publie. Most of the descriptions are by children, and as such, scholars may not find this a usable source. However, it does give the viewer a general sense of the objects presented.

The Bata Shoe Museum

The Bata Shoe Museum, part of the Cultural Affairs Sector of the Department of Canadian Heritage, began an online exhibition program in June 2006 to present their collection to a larger audience. The online exhibition program, entitled "About Shoes" presents five different "stories" that, "offer digital cultural content aimed at enhancing knowledge of Canadian cultural diversity." About Shoes contains 500 images of which 200 are in 3D, using AVT technology designed specifically for the Museum. All of the images contain a zoom feature. As the museum website states, "With animation and sound introducing each exhibit, artifacts come to life and can be manipulated and examined so that stitching, beadwork and even the most intricate embroidery can be appreciated."

At first I thought, "This sounds really boring. Who cares about the shoes that Canadian people have worn throughout time?" But, they have done a good job organizing and designing the information so that it is actually not awful. Of the five different stories that are available (stories signifying different exhibitions) I chose "Japansese Footgear: Walking the Path of Innovation."

The site contains a fair amount of information and does have a very high-quality zoom feature. The images have fair bibliographic data, but very limited metadata.

In regards to intellectual control of the material, they made it nearly impossible for me to copy any images from the site. This image of their physical exhibition was the only picture I could retrieve from their site:



For all the fancy features I think they could have gone a lot further if they had presented more images from their collection and focused less on viewing technology. Overall the site lacks the depth needed for valuable research but is informative and fun to use for the non-academic user.

Welcome to INF 385 - Survey of Digitization

Here is the new version of the class blog - on new blogger for all of you who were having such trouble logging in to the old blogger.

Enjoy!