Hey, What About Access? Roy Tennant The California Digital Library, University of California A Practical Guide to Decision-Making

Outline  What are your access goals?  What are your constraints?  What opportunities do you have?  Capturing  Describing  Providing Access

What are Your Access Goals?  On-screen viewing  Thumbnail preview  Screen-size  Detail study (and how much?)  Printing  Artifactual Fidelity or Intellectual Content

Printing  On-screen resolutions are typically inadequate for printing  For non-transparency material (prints, books, objects, etc.), 300dpi is a good resolution for printable versions

Artifactual Fidelity or Intellectual Content?  Artifactual fidelity  Must preserve the appearance of the actual object  Can provide an enhanced sense of experiencing the real object  But in some cases, preserving the look and feel of the artifact obstructs the content  Doug Greenberg’s “compulsive authenticity disorder” (  Intellectual content  Optimized to provide the best presentation of the content itself, not the artifact  The sense of interacting with the actual object may be diminished or destroyed  Both strategies may be required

What are Your Constraints?  Hardware  RAM  CPU speed  Disk space  Storage  Software  Staff  Time  Skill and experience  Money

What Opportunities Do You Have?  Grants may be available to finance your project  Grants often expect a certain level of quality; if so, what capture quality is specified?  Do you have access to student help? Interns? Volunteers?  Can you cut a deal with a vendor like Octavo?

Capturing  Monitor resolutions are improving  640 x > 800 x > 1280 x 768  What is a good resolution for onscreen viewing today, may not be tomorrow  How many times do you want to scan your material?  Scan at the best quality you can justify given your goals, constraints, and opportunities

Capture Recommendations for Access (not preservation)  Photos, illustrations, maps, etc.:  300dpi  24 bit color  B/W Text document:  300dpi  8 bit grayscale  Negatives and Slides:  2200 pixels in longest dimension  24 bit color or 8 bit grayscale

Describing  Good metadata is essential to your success  Three types:  Descriptive  Administrative  Structural

Describing: Appropriate Level  Collection-level access:  Discovery metadata describes the collection  Example: Archival finding aid; see  Item-level access:  Discovery metadata describes the item  Example: MARC or Dublin Core records for each item; see  Both types of access may be appropriate  Doing both often takes very little extra effort

Search Interface Collection Description Images Collection Level Access Collection Description

Search Interface Images Item Level Access Collection Descriptions

jarda.cdlib.org/search.html

Describing: Metadata Granularity  William Randolph Hearst  Consider all uses for the metadata  Design for the most granular use  Store it in a machine-parseable format

Describing: Machine Parseability  The ability to pull apart and reconstruct information via software  For example, this: William Randolph Hearst  Can easily become this: Hearst, William Randolph

Describing: Metadata Qualification  William Randolph Hearst  Builder -- Castles -- Southern California

Describing: Formats & Syntax Dublin Core EAD MARC TEI XML Which ones?

Describing: Metadata Storage Formats  It doesn’t matter so long as:  You captured the quantity required for your purposes  You captured it at the granularity required for your purposes  You qualify the metadata where required  You store it in a machine-parseable format  You can output it in any format to which you wish to comply  Given that, you can do anything!

Describing: Standards  Decide to which industry standards you will comply  Use an internal metadata infrastructure that supports compliance with those standards, as well as your specific requirements  Consider the issues of item v. collection level, granularity, qualification, and machine parseability  Understand that your internal formats may be more complex than what is required for standards compliance

Describing: Making Your Metadata Searchable  Sample Indexing Systems/Databases:  Sprite (Perl module)  Microsoft Access, Filemaker Pro  SWISH-E, swish-e.org  MySQL, mysql.com  Oracle or Sybase Less More The power & complexity continuum SpriteSWISH-EMySQLAccess/Filemaker Oracle, Sybase

Providing Access  Exhibit  Browse  Search

Providing Access: Exhibit  Goals:  Inviting  Easy to navigate  Highlight selected parts of a collection  Teach  Requirements:  Great graphic design  Informative and succinct commentary  Interesting subject matter

Providing Access: Browse  Goals:  Provide intriguing and interesting paths into and throughout a collection  Give a broad sense of a collection, but not show everything necessarily  Requirements:  Logical browse paths  May have multiple paths to the same items (e.g., time, geography, subject)

Providing Access: Search  Goals  To provide post-coordinate access to all items in a collection relevant to a particular query  To provide good methods to create a search as well as refine or alter the display as required  Requirements:  Good search software (database or indexing software)  Good metadata (minimum is probably a title or caption for each item)  Good interface (options for navigation, search refinement, etc.)

Recap  Determine what you want your users to be able to do (your access goals)  Consider your constraints, opportunities, and long-term goals  Capture images at the best quality you can stand  Collect metadata in an amount and form that supports your access goals as well as interoperability with relevant standards  Never underestimate the power of a committed individual and a cheap scanner!

Final Advice  Don’t scrimp on tools — staff time is the most expensive part of any project  For any given project, there are several ways it can succeed and countless ways it can fail  Do it right, or don’t do it at all?  NO! From the access perspective, it’s much better to do it as well as you can than to not do it at all.