Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library
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Talk given during UCL Digital Humanities visit, 3 May 2013.
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Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library
- 1. Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library 3 May 2013 Matthew Brack Digitisation Project Manager
- 2. What is a ‘library’ today? “I think if you were to treat the research library as though it were a start‐up, and if you were to start from today, you would look at creating a product that emphasised connecting people to information as quickly and as efficiently as possible….”
- 3. Digitisation is not innovative “Providing access to digital content isn‟t really innovative … it‟s just keeping up.” – Chrystie Hill, Community Relations Director OCLC “It‟s quite „steady state‟ in terms of digital provision now. That means we‟re failing to exploit the possibilities of the technology and really to drive out the innovation that the technology can offer…” “You can have many thousands of users using one original text, you can have clever analytical tools applied to the text which simply could never be applied to the physical original. That’s where the digital material will start adding more value, becoming more valuable potentially than the original…”
- 4. Problems to overcome “If I ask you to talk about your collections, I know you will glow as you describe the amazing treasures you have… Wellcome Digital Library Programme But then if I look at the results of [your] digitization projects, I find the shittiest websites on the planet. It‟s like a gallery spent all its money buying art and then just stuck the paintings in supermarket bags and leaned them against the wall.” - Nat Torkington, Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong in Simon Tanner, Measuring the Impact of Digital Resources: The Balanced Value Model
- 5. Overall, how would you rate your experience of the following aspects of digital library collections? Responses: 50 Content – the information made available in the collection Design – how easy, or not, it was to access and use that information Functionality – the extent to which that information could be shared or manipulated
- 6. The nature of digitisation Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library
- 8. The nature of digitisation Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library
- 9. Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library CATALOGUE RETRIEVAL CONSERVATION FINAL PREP CAPTURE SYSTEMS
- 10. Digitisation Workflow and Logistics Early European Books Genetics Books London MOH Reports
- 11. ProQuest EEB Project Overview Project Scope: 14,000 books 5.5 million images Incunabula to 1700 Printed outside UK Access in UK and HINARI – 10 years First 2000 books now online: http://eeb.chadwyck.com Digitisation Workflow and Logistics
- 12. Wellcome Digital Library Programme
- 13. Digitisation Workflow and Logistics Cataloguing (metadata)
- 14. Digitisation Workflow and Logistics Retrieval and final prep 1. Generate unique ID 2. Create ‘scan list’ 3. Create „review file‟ 4. Make unavailable to users 5. Create barcodes 6. Retrieve items 7. Insert barcodes 8. Deliver items for imaging 9. Update tracking list [Re-work] a. Return b. Remove barcodes c. Update tracking list d. Make available to users e. Pray for no more re-work f. Repeat for next batch
- 15. Digitisation Workflow and Logistics Conservation
- 16. BOOKS IN STACKS IN SCOPE NOTE STAY ON SHELF ONLINE CAT? PRINT CAT? NOTE GENE- RATE SHELF LIST DUPLI- CATE CHECK SINGLE SHELF LISTS SORT BY SIZE CHECK OUT CHECK OUT CON ASS- ESS UPDATE SHELF LIST RETURN TO SHELF DIGI- TISE CONDI- TION? REPAIR BOX TO CATALO- GUE? CATA- LOGUE 1.22 STORE 215B STACKS 1.22 STORAGE CONSERVATION CATALOGUING NO NO YES YES LARGER NO WAY NOT OK OK FAIR POOR YES 1.22 STORE NO 1.22 STORE START 1a 1b 1c 1d 2 3 4 5 6 11 7 8 9 10 BOOKS IN STACKS IN SCOPE NOTE STAY ON SHELF ONLINE CAT? PRINT CAT? NOTE GENE- RATE SHELF LIST DUPLI- CATE CHECK SINGLE SHELF LISTS SORT BY SIZE CHECK OUT CHECK OUT CON ASS- ESS UPDATE SHELF LIST RETURN TO SHELF DIGI- TISE CONDI- TION? REPAIR BOX TO CATALO- GUE? CATA- LOGUE 1.22 STORE 215B STACKS 1.22 STORAGE CONSERVATION CATALOGUING NO NO YES YES LARGER NO WAY NOT OK OK FAIR POOR YES 1.22 STORE NO 1.22 STORE START 1a 1b 1c 1d 2 3 4 5 6 11 7 8 9 10 1.21 DIADEIS
- 17. Digitisation Workflow and Logistics Project Scope: Up to 2,000 books 600,000 images 1850-1990 Freely available ALCS copyright clearance Future OCR
- 18. Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library Managing Ingest AUGUST 2012 APRIL 2013 GOOBI ARCHIVES PQ WDL 3RD PARTY GENETICS MOH
- 19. London MOH Reports Project Overview Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library Project Scope: 8,000 reports Up to 1 million images London boroughs Mid-19th to mid-20th century Full OCR
- 20. Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library
- 21. MOH REPORTS: Preparation Phase Retrieval Conservation Cataloguing 945 global update MARC export Goobi bib import Create barcodes Packing and shipping Matt Debs June Joao DIGITISATION
- 22. MOH REPORTS: Digitisation Phase Create inventory Pre-scanning preparation Imaging Pre-stage QA OCR / image editing Final QA GOOBI INGEST Microformat Planman Receive DMD and originals Image delivery Packing and shipping Wellcome Error reporting Feedback Receive originals
- 23. MOH REPORTS: Goobi Ingest Phase Image QA Image upload Edit METS Ingest Officer 1 Ingest Officer 2 JPG conversion Automatic SDB ingest Feedback Planman
- 24. #DigiDoctor Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library A free one-day workshop that explored the practicalities of digitisation and to facilitate conversation between those involved in digitisation projects.
- 25. Digitisation Projects at Wellcome Library Thanks m.brack@wellcome.ac.uk @WellcomeDigital
Editor's Notes
- Presentation will look in detail at some of our projects…Digitisation Project Manager – trained in conservation and recently completed an MA in DAM, also worked in front line services in the Wellcome Library before I started this roleThought I’d start by taking a step back and giving a little context……then look at the digitisation process itself in more detail…
- It’s an exciting time to be in libraries at the moment, because everything is up for grabs…In some research I did…. a number of interviewees mentioned the need to re-define the library for the 21st century…WHY? Meeting today’s user needs is tough when digital is seen as an ‘extra’second service…So there’s a solution that says: strip down your traditional infrastructure and start funding more digital initiatives……appears to be the most likely way that libraries will rightly take their place as information hubs in a knowledge economy…Aside from user behaviour, there’s economic pressure to change – at the moment it’s hard to find anyone who is interested in funding the traditional library model
- Project Gutenberg– started in 1971 – sticking ‘electronic’ text (as it used to be called) online has been around forever…Digitisation = easy win. Apparently. But if you just think access and preservation you won’t make an impression on your users – we’ve not met their expectations (yet). CLICK… Becomes interesting to users once you treat it as a collection in its own right and start adding functionality etc.Basically you treat the digitised content as though it were ‘born-digital’, rather than a ‘digital surrogate’, to achieve its potential…In all digital projects you see a constant tension between mass digitisation and smaller, value-added projects – ideal is definitely large scale and value-added Tension comes from the amount of time and resources it takes to add even enough metadata to a collection just to make it usable…Primary Research Group survey of digitisation in US 2011 said 50% of time on digitisation projects are taken up by metadata activity – adding the amount of value that a user might expect from a digital resource is a HUGE resource issue.
- Falling short of user expectation…
- When you do digi you tend to come across a couple types of people:Those with an understanding of digital collections and computer systems, and those who understand physical objects and collections management. It’s very important that you strive for an appreciation of both the digital and the physical and how they interact in order to execute a good digi project.So all of THIS (1) nice stuff is inevitably going to become THIS (2) for the purposes of a digi project…You will need the latter to control your project effectively…
- Digi is full of variables (collections, equipment, personnel, on-site/off-site etc.) I can guarantee that every project will be different and on a management note: small projects don’t equate to simple projects. There are no simple projects and project size is simply an indication of project duration and never ease of execution – they all require a great deal of care and consideration…
- This outlines a REALLY SIMPLE workflow… [which starts here]Which I’ll refer to within the presentation…Actually… I’m really going to focus on the preparation side of things, as that’s where most of the project management happens…Dave is going to talk more about [systems] and then we’ll visit the [imaging] studio after these talks
- I’ll also refer to a few projects…ProQuest Early European Printed Books (Incunabula 1700 CE)Genetics Books (Modern 1850 1990 CE, many on open shelves in fact)London MOH Reports (annual reports from boroughs and districts of London covering all from infectious disease to weather to local industry)
- The workflow: Digitisation involves a lot of stakeholders…Because of the IT infrastructure, the new roles or personnel, the involvement of more senior members of an organisation in championing such projects and the enhanced access to collections, there are more people who will want to know what’s going on…Also slices through the traditional library organisation…I work for Digital Services but we’ve been working extensively with Collection Management and Operations – particularly conservation and cataloguing.It’s really common not to know just how many items you will be digitising on larger projects – because not everything is catalogued…
- [All the different places where you use metadata] …You need good cataloguing to do digi – you shouldn’t start without it…Otherwise you don’t know what you have, where it is, or any way of controlling it…In particular you need administrative metadata that connects back to the physical object you’re digitising…Which goes back to bridging the gap between physical and digital…With metadata you have to string that thread through from beginning to end…
- Retrieval sounds really simple… BUT…Someone’s got to do the legwork and know where the stuff you’re digitising is…… and if all that sounds relatively simple…Noticed that existingsystems often won’t help you manage physical itemsE.G. Work in batches of 200 on two collections – small books for Atiz (about one month), large books for Zeutschel (about two months)…All books are available to users through online request so have to make them unavailable… Done using catalogue – my scan list = shelf in actual numerical order, but catalogue only shows data in decimal, so have to copy and paste each individual record manually until I have the 200 needed for batch…This stuff takes time… Simon Tanner’s anecdote…
- Traditionally in conservation you have different disciplines…But digi conservation may be a new one…(1) More objects (2) with less time to work on them (3) and lots more stakeholders….Working on a conservation policy to tackle this… DIGITISATION IS NOT PRESERVATIONYou’re creating an extra collection with it’s own distinct preservation needs… As for the originals, you need to know exactly what is going to happen to them after digitisation – they haven’t just been ‘preserved’…If you change to a more restrictive access policy, there could be implications:You’re going down the path of self-imposed obsolescence for physical holdingsNo one will ever say that a digital version is a suitable replacement for the originalThe digital medium has an inherent fragility that the original doesn’t (just shove it on a shelf)Someone high up with less sympathy might begin asking why you need physical holdings at all
- Digitisation is all about preparationImage capture is the quickest and simplest stepThis workflow doesn’t even include all the QA and ingest that we do
- Where we are…Just another irony of all this digital stuff is sometimes it’s easier to just stick stuff to a wall and colour it in…Actually, for phase 2 we now have an ingest officer in place who is now in charge of this….
- About 5 crates of reports (800) each month…
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