Saturday, December 8, 2007

Week 15: Wrapping Up

This week I wrapped up the web interface design, except for one feature on the home page allowing users to search pamphlets by category. That probably won't be active until all the pamphlets have been added. But other than that, everything is basically done. I got feedback from Sid in Special Collections, and made some adjustments based on his suggestions. I've gotten positive responses from everyone I've shown the design to, and I am very happy with the end product. I was lucky to have a good web designer to work with, as I couldn't have made it look nearly as good on my own. Thanks Linda!

I also began receiving some assistance from Bobby, the DLS library assistant, who has started scanning and cropping pamphlets for me to upload and catalog. This saves a lot of time on my end and will enable me to expand the collection size considerably. The help is greatly appreciated. Bobby will continue where I left off when I finish my stint on the project, so I went over with him my criteria for selecting pamphlets and showed him where they are located in Special Collections. Since I've only had time to look through maybe half the boxes containing pamphlets, I will leave him a list so he knows which ones to focus on after I'm gone.

I didn't get around to working on my presentation for finals week, so I'll start that next week in addition to continuing with production.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Week 14: Lots of Editing

I didn't post last week because of Thanksgiving break. I did, however, go into DLS Monday through Wednesday afternoons and work on production. This week, I focused mainly on editing both web page text and metadata. I re-tooled my essay to include links to pamphlets in the digital collection, to illustrate the main points of the text. I think it helps strengthen the historical analysis and make the essay more relevant and interesting to read.

I also went over the metadata for all the pamphlets I've digitized so far, and made some adjustments. Looking at the metadata I created at the beginning of the project with fresh eyes, hit home for me how subjective the process can be. There's a lot of wiggle room for making judgments about how to catalog things, and it's still somewhat elusive to me. But I've definitely learned a lot from being forced to do it on the fly. I'm looking forward to taking a cataloging class to get a firmer grasp on it.

Linda and I continued to work on the web interface. It's really coming along, and I'm happy with how it looks. I plan to show it to the content providers (Sid and David in Special Collections) next week, and see if there are any changes they'd like to make.

I also heard from Nicki that there is a possibility DLS may be able to provide some extra scanning resources for the project. This would be great, as there are many pamphlets I would love to add but wouldn't have time to scan myself. I am already planning to do production work over winter break to increase the size of the collection, so hopefully this means I will end up with at least 50 pamphlets (I'm currently at 41).

Next week, I plan to wrap up the main aspects of the web interface design, start preparing for the public presentation of fellowship projects on the 19th, and do as much production work as possible.