Transcript Document

HBCU-GSU Digital Project Team
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Dr. Rosemary Mokia –Director of the library. Leading the digital
project, delegating tasks, and directing the project activities
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Cecilia Iwala -Systems Librarian / HBCU-GSU Project Coordinator.
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Ms. Maraine Hall -Library Specialist for collection analysis.
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Mr. Derek Addison - Scanning Technician
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Student Assistant helps in scanning as well.
Grambling State University (GSU):
Overview:
 Founded in 1901 as a private industrial school to
educate African American citizens of north central
Louisiana and GSU is now a comprehensive
university offering undergraduate, graduate,
professional and continuing education programs
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The 375-acre campus is nestled in the heart of
Grambling, Louisiana, a small but growing
community located in Lincoln Parish.
GSU overview continue …
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More than 800 courses and 68 degree programs
are offered at Grambling. There are five colleges,
including an honors college, two professional
schools, a graduate school, and a Division of
Continuing Education.
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http://www.gram.edu/prospective/degrees.asp
Mission:
Grambling State University strives:
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to render service to the community and to the
citizenry of Louisiana
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to provide equal access to higher education for all
applicants regardless of race, color, sex, national
origin, age, religion, disability, and veteran status
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to serve as a repository for preserving the heritage
of people of African American descent.
HBCU-GSU Digital Project:
Introduction:
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Grambling State University is one of the ten
Historically Black Colleges and Universities to
partner with Cornell University in an effort to
digitize the historical hidden treasures on
HBCU campuses.
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The project was made possible through a grant
from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Definition:
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The Collaborative Digitization Program defines
digital imaging as “An electronic photograph
scanned from an original document, made up of
pixels.
Reasons and benefits for HBCU-GSU Digital Project:
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Access: Providing access to materials.
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Preservation: Method of reducing wear and
tear on items.
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Education:
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Research:
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Knowledge sharing: As a tool for
As a tool for creating awareness
Method for data investigation.
disseminating ideas
Planning for Project:
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Digital Project Planning at the Grambling State
University A.C. Lewis Memorial library covers the
methodology, the digitization goal, and objectives
defining and identification of the project.
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Project implementation is facilitated by all staff
members who identify materials and provide a
forum for discussion of policy issues.
Mission:
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Our mission is to help HBCU-GSU faculty and
students in various departments across the campus
and the community to make the most effective use
of the digital historical treasures at any time and any
where without restriction.
Goal:
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The main goal is to help foster effective
access and methods to the historical
preserved documents and hidden treasures
of the HBCUs.
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Making the retrieval of the documents easier
and motivating stakeholders to use the
historical digital collections.
GSU Black-Gold Digital Collection:
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We are currently digitizing Grambling State
University founder’s documents, Presidents’
Reports, Inaugurations, games, and professional
appointments.
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Extraction of all the metadata information such as
the image pixel dimensions, compression format,
the Dots Per Inch, file type and size, date scan,
physical dimensions of the source file, and indexed
color, are stored on a local PC and other backup
drives .
GSU Black-Gold Digital Collection continue …
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We plan to start digitizing yearbooks next. We will
select pertinent images from the yearbooks.
Selection will be based on relevancy and the
relationship to the University’s goal and objectives.
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We plan to archive some special collections from
The Eddie Robinson artifacts.
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The HBCU-GSU Digital Collections are located at:
http://contentdm.auctr.edu/cdm4/browse.php
Metadata:
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This is a data about data and it plays a critical role
in document description, authenticity, structural,
and retrieval systems with the entity relationships.
Metadata continue …
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This is how I can best emphasize the importance
of metadata. A beautiful database system with the
most beautiful graphical interface design system
without good reference structure for satisfactory
search is as good as a database without external
interface to view the contents of the database
tables.
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At GSU, we want to be sure that our method is
constant and the data has valid associations or
relationships with the original documents.
The challenging questions and the steps taken in creating our
metadata:
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One of our major challenges is making decisions
about material selection.
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Deciding which aspects of metadata are essential
for content description and retrieval of the
documents.
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Lack of archivist to help with collection
identification and copy right issues.
Metadata challenging questions continue …
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We are currently using the metadata standards
provided by the CONTENTdm application. We are
considering adding additional metadata or
enhancing the metadata as needed and necessary
in the future to suit our collection description.
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Currently our metadata extraction comes from the
document contents such as document title,
subject, key words, abstracts and descriptions.
Checklists:
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At GSU, we verify our digital collection
against the digital standards provided
by the HBCU-CUL Project Coordinator.
It is very important to perform checklist
and verification so that intelligent
decision can be made early in the
project phase as to what procedure is
better suited for the collections.
Validating the Products and Deliverable Readiness Review
I am
testing for
bugs
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Validation is the process of
confirming that the collections
conform to the requirements
established for the project.
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This process involves peer
and/or team reviews to ensure
that the solution meets
acceptance criteria of the
HBCU digital standards.
Lesson: What should a Digital Liaison know?
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Understand and define the project
objectives and goals.
Understand the organization’s policies,
objectives and goals.
Understand the organization collection
management as related to project.
Conclusion
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This collaborative effort will help to
foster the development of an
infrastructure that consists of high
quality production standards, better and
long lasting storage, and distribution
methods for development of digital
image technology and knowledge base
systems to preserve the HBCU-GSU
collections.
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At your convenience, please visit
our Online collections at
http://contentdm.auctr.edu/cdm4/browse.php
and come to see us at Grambling
State University where everybody is
somebody.
–Thank you.