Last
blog post I talked about the initial processing of a large photograph
collection to the file level. The
goal as I noted was to provide the university with some intellectual control
over the collections in their archive. That really is the point of processing,
that and helping to preserve the physical material. After the project concluded
several collections were earmarked for digitization by the library if and when
money became available. Well, money has become available so we are starting to
prepare the photograph collection for digitization.
As
I mentioned there are at least 10,000 photographs processed to the file level,
not the item level. That doesn’t
count negatives or slides. I
emphasize that because digitization requires metadata (information) about each
photograph digitized. That means
we must process every file to the item level and we have only a few weeks to
accomplish this. Now I had spent the better part of a summer organizing the
photographs to the file level and imposing some order. My goal was to make that
photographs accessible to anyone at the university who might need photographs
from a particular topic like university buildings or football or faculty. I wasn't processing for digitization. As I mentioned before, the photographs had arrived
at the library thrown into boxes, some in manila folders, some in the envelopes
from the printing company, but most just simply tossed together. I should note that a previous attempt
had been made to identify the individuals in the photographs, but this had
failed and those photographs were simply thrown into boxes for another
move. Since the photographs were
for the most part kept by the Public Relations Department many had been used in
publicity. Others had been
published in the yearbook. The
yearbooks and university newspaper are already digitized so many of the
photographs are already on line.
Of course unless you search for every photograph there is really no way
to know what is already on line.
Money is limited so that wouldn’t work. What to do? Well, you compromise and do the best you can
with what you have at least that is what we are doing.
 |
| Some of the more organized boxes prior to file level processing |
Since
there’s not money to digitize everything we had to make decisions. Older photographs where the image could
be identified were chosen because of their importance to the early history of
the university. Even if the photograph was online in yearbooks or the campus newspaper,
these early photographs will still be digitized. The rationale is that a digital image from the original photograph would be
clearer than one in a yearbook
picture. Attempts are being made
not to digitize duplicate pictures, but this has proved difficult because the
same picture may be in multiple files.
Portraits of significant university presidents, for example, can be
found in various files. One person
working on a collection might catch duplication, but with multiple people
helping it is impossible. I’m not sure how to avoid duplication given time and
money constraints. This is one
area where we are still addressing, especially in terms of portraits. Even if you avoid duplicates how many different portraits of one
particular person do you need? If it was a faculty member there might be a
portrait for every year they taught and that may have been years.
At
first we started with everyone taking a box. Each individual made the decision, which photographs were to
be digitized, numbered them, and provided the metadata. Progress was slow. Currently we are approaching the
problem like an assembly line. One
person, me, goes through each box, chooses the photographs to be digitized,
numbers each item, and re-houses as necessary (most of the photographs are not
in their own sleeves as they should be).
The next person is in charge of entering the metadata and making the final decision of what gets digitized. Hopefully this will better address the
duplication issue and allow the proper housing of the material. We’ll see how fast it goes. We have also decided to divide the
collection in two, that is, not try to do it all at once. We only have money for 1500 photographs
and last count we were near a thousand.
Wish us luck.
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