Digitizing CUA's Student Newpaper

WRLC's Digitization Process

History of WRLC

The Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC) is a non-profit corporation established in 1987 as a means to provide the metropolitan Washington DC university libraries with access to digital library systems, facilitating resources sharing among participating universities and off-site book storage. As a consortium of five private and two public universities in Washington DC and the neighboring counties, WRLC has managed and maintained a reciprocal borrowing program, interlibrary loan, as well as sharing the benefits of bulk book and electronic materials purchases and leasing. In the 1990's WRLC embarked on the venture to share the online catalog that would further support the ILL program. The shared online catalog allowed the member libraries to fully share library functions such as circulation, cataloging, and other libray functions. The program developed to control the consortium's holdings was called ALADIN (Access to Library and Database Information Network). Through this system students and staff were able to connect to consortium holdings, course reserves, and internet databases among other features. Students had immediate access to materials otherwise separated by distance available immediately or available for interlibrary loan at no cost to the user.

In 1991, resources such as electronic journal articles were added and in 1993, internet access was added to the many services offered through the consortium. In 1995, libraries became equiped with the ability to create and store their own digital images in databases. Today these resources are accessible to students and staff from anywhere with an internet connection.

The collaborative project to digitize manuscript and newspaper collections began in the late 1990's among the member libraries. WRLC provided these libraries with the technological and equipment support necessary to digitize large collections of printed data. Resources in the WRLC consortium include digital imaging equipment, file management, metadata and image delivery as well as the organizational and technological infrastructure, project management expertise, and the ability to have the collections fully integrated into the WRLC database. The consortium digitization project focuses specifically on the digital conversion of single loose-leaf flat text or images in black and white or sepia tone.

The WRLC database operates on the ALADIN digital library catalog system, which supports over 600 workstations throughout the Washington DC metropolitan area. ALADIN runs on the Endeavor Voyager software, providing searchers access to the OPAC and the OLIVE ActivePaper Archives. Collection records are available in MARC format from the OPAC, and web pages are coded using HTML which provides access to records from a variety of entry points. Images are saved as JPEG files and metadata is based on the encoding standard of Dublin Core, which can also be viewed through protocols like Z39.50. Finding aids are encoded with the Encoding Archival Description (EAD) format, stored as XML, and displayed as HTML files.

Because of the relationships WRLC has with the consortium they are able to offer a portal to the various resources available from the individual universities. Aside from the library database WRLC offers access to collections that are unique to the university and provide contextual references from a single site as well as highlight special services. These resources are available to view using a variety of encoding standards and the timely application of technological advances.

Summary of WRLC Guidebook

The WRLC maintains a Digital Collections Production Center (DCPC) that supports library staff in planning digitizing projects, designing digital collections, designing and entering metadata, scanning materials, and converting machine-readable finding aids. The DCPC also assists library staff with specialized projects that are outsourced to a service bureau. The DCPC has already assisted both Georgetown and American Universities with the digitization of their student newspapers.

WRLC maintains a "Guidebook" that provides project planning information, considerations for undertaking a digitization project, and sample project documents to assist the library staff. Prior to the start of a digitization project, the library staff must first select a collection to be digitized and then either confirm that the library has the rights to digitize the materials or plans to obtain copyright permission from the copyright holder to do so. Once rights issues are determined, WRLC will assist the library staff with developing several planning documents, including a project agreement, a rights and permissions statement, a summary of material characteristics and scanning specifications, and a metadata scheme and template.

The library staff is responsible for providing descriptive information about the collection, preparing physical items for transport to WRLC for scanning, reviewing the prototype web site for the digital collection, and creating a collection-level record for the WRLC catalog. The library staff is also responsible for the ongoing maintenance and enhancement of metadata throughout the life cycle of the collection.

In return, the WRLC and DCPC staff will design the collection header and search options, test and select a scanning method, scan the items, design a metadata template in conjunction with library staff, create descriptive and administrative metadata, and develop a preview site for review by library staff.

A WRLC digital collection will consist of four data categories:

1. a bibliographic record in MARC format
2. the header (home page) in HTML format
3. item metadata in Dublin Core format
4. an optional finding aid in EAD (Encoded Archival Description) format.

The scanning specifications adopted by WRLC are as follows:

Master image

• Format: TIFF
• Compression: None
• Resolution: 300 dpi
• Bit-depth: 24-bit color
• Dimensions: actual

Display image

• Format: JPEG
• Compression: Medium
• Dimensions: Manuscripts: 800 pixels wide for both landscape and portrait.
• Graphic materials and typescripts: 600-800 wide (landscape); 300-400 wide (portrait).

Thumbnail image

• Format: JPEG
• Compression: Medium
• Dimensions: 150 pixels wide

Case Study: American University's The Eagle

Since 2003, American University has had a Digital Initiatives Team that consists of seven members and one resource member. In 2006, they digitized American University's student newspaper The Eagle.

The Digital Initiatives Team at AU works closely with WRLC-DCPC staff throughout the entire process of a digitization project. The AU Team duties include:

• Establish priorities and guidelines for identifying collections to be digitized
• Determine copyright ownership for collection materials
• Prepare collection materials for digitization and WRLC storage
• Create cataloging for digitized collections
• Develop supporting materials on the WRLC Digital Collections website
• Apply for supplemental grant funding of digitization projects
• Create publicity campaigns to improve local and national visibility for digitized collections.

Our team spoke with Susan McElrath at American University about her experiences working with WRLC to digitize The Eagle. For the AU project, WRLC functioned mainly as a coordinator for the project. WRLC-DCPC staff helped design the front page for the collection and helped with a recent software update. WRLC also hosts some of the data from the collection, while other files are hosted by the university.

The basic process that American University went through with WRLC-DCPC to digitize The Eagle is as follows:

1. OCLC digitizes the microfilm and Olive distills the files by breaking TIFFs into smaller components that can be indexed.
2. Olive hosts and stores the data on its server.

If preferred, the university can host and store the data on its own university network servers. OCLC can also microfilm newspapers if needed. The basic costs incurred for the AU project were costs associated with creation of microfilm, digitization of microfilm, distillation of the images, and the hosting and storing of digital files.

Case Study: Georgetown University's The Hoya

Our team contacted Lynne Conway at Georgetown University to inquire about her experiences working with WRLC to digitize their student newspaper, The Eagle. Ms. Conway worked very closely with Georgetown's Digital Library Services unit on the digitization project. Her main role was preparing bound copies of the paper for microfilming and writing a narrative history of the paper to include on the digital archive website; this narrative history helps to set the digitized copies of the paper in proper context. Ms. Conway also provided input on the appearance of the site and on how the April Fools' issues of the paper should be treated. Ms. Conway also suggested that we contact the Digital Library Services unit for more detailed information; unfortunately, we were unable to contact them prior to the due date of our assignment. Any other information we receive from Digital Library Services or Ms. Conway, we will forward directly to our client Leslie Knoblauch.