Digitizing materials and working with digitized materials

At Schlesinger, the digitization team manages digitization of archival material. Most paper-based formats get sent to Imaging Services at Widener for digitization. Joanne manages all photograph and Audiovisual digitization. In the last ten years, we have digitized a number of collections, most have been 19th century (out of copyright), fragile (digitization provides a great surrogate), or of some specific high-research interest (grant-funded, etc.). In general, we prefer to digitize entire collections, and we always digitize to the folder-level. Metadata for digital objects is pulled from our finding aids, and links to digitized folders are provided from the finding aid. The digitization team are experts in assessing physical issues that might complicate digitization (scrapbooks with folded-up items, etc.). Archivists provide expertise in collection management, finding aid metadata, and sometimes in curatorial decisions about what or how to digitize.

This section addresses a number of topics, and primarily addresses digitization of paper formats:

Processing collections that will be digitized | Preparing collections (both metadata and physically) to be digitized in conjunction with Digitization Team needs | Post-digitization workflows and procedures | Processing collections with donor-digitized material

PROCESSING COLLECTIONS THAT WILL BE DIGITIZED

It may come about that a collection needs to be processed before it can be digitized. In these cases, usually the Library has plans to send material to Imaging Services, and needs a finding aid created in order to deliver the digitized materials as well as provide metadata for digital objects. (It may also be the case that the collection really needs to be processed!)

The processing of the Dorothy West Papers and the Judy Chicago Additional Papers were undertaken so the material could be digitized by the Library. The Harriet Adams Earhart papers were requested to be digitized by a patron, and we created a basic finding aid for the collection before digitization.

If you're working with a collection where you know in advance that some or all of it will be digitized, discuss in detail with the Digital Archivist overseeing the digitization - there may be some physical things you can do while processing (removing staples, etc.) that can help with digitization prep. Also keep in mind that folder titles will be linked in the resulting finding aid - using a folder-level scope note is thus a good metadata practice to avoid overly-long links.

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PREPARING COLLECTIONS TO BE DIGITIZED in conjunction with digitization team

Ideally, the digitization team determines what will be digitized on an annual basis. Archivists are needed to perform a set of tasks before a collection can be digitized AND may need to be on call throughout the digitization process to answer questions that come up. Our new ideal workflow is for an archivist to be assigned as a liaison to each collection (or set of collections, if small) to be digitized. The archivist liaison needs to perform four kinds of tasks (described in more detail below):

Pre-digitization closure: ensuring the catalog record and the finding aid (if one exists) are updated to include "closed while being digitized" language. The metadata specialist (Paula) will enter closures into Alma/HOLLIS and ArchivesSpace/HAD.
Collection management: can all the physical pieces of the collection be easily obtained by the digitization team? are there fragile, closed, oversize, discarded, etc. material that might be hard to locate?
Finding aid metadata review and addition: are multiple folders grouped together? Does the finding aid data and/or folder-level metadata need to be updated?
Providing on-call curatorial advice to digitization team: must we image a blank piece of paper? Each collection is different and questions may arise where the digitization team wants your help to make a decision

At the beginning of a new project, the archivist should do a collection assessment, to identify the above areas that will be needed and/or might cause issues.

For example, if a collection was previously microfilmed, some issues might be:

collection is now housed in a "microfilmed collections" box - many collections are reboxed post-digitization, in this case you will want to talk to Johanna about possible intermediate and final housing options
collection may already be restricted with a "closed - use microfilm" so it may not need any additional closure statements
finding aid may have some metadata issues as a result of how hierarchical description went into ArchivesSpace - a group of folders might be described in the same way, but they might in fact be different. This is the time to clean up the metadata and it is worth your time.

Each collection selected for digitization will have its own set of issues. Archivist liaisons should be familiar with present and past Schlesinger processing, collection storage, and metadata practices and policies in order to identify issues and help solve them. A general rule of thumb is that pre-digitization is an excellent time to do any needed work on a collection: adding addenda, updating a call number with an accession range to an MC#, etc. Johanna is available to provide guidance based on the last 5 years of digitization work done in the department.

After doing your initial assessment of the collection (is the material easy to find in Tracker? Does the finding aid need a lot of work? etc.) It's a good idea to touch base with your digitization team member and let them know what work you need to do/how long it may take. At that time you can ask questions, determine how much help they may need from you in locating material, answering questions, etc.

Pre-digitization closure (to be determined by metadata specialist)

Begin with a conversation with the digitization team member your work will support. When will the digitization take place? How much of the collection will be digitized? The goal of ensuring closure statements appear in catalog records and finding aids is to assist researchers (and research services staff) that the collection will be off limits for a period of time.

Follow suggestions in the Standard Language for Digitized Material in Finding Aids and HOLLIS Records page when doing this work. If it is a small collection and the digitization team member is confident of the end date of the project, you could use that date in your closure text. If it is a large collection, and digitization will take more than 6 months, it is better practice to not put an end date in the closure notice.

ARCHIVIST LIAISON TASKS

Collection management

This step is more important for some collections than in others. In many cases, no such issues will be identified during your assessment. In others, you may need to locate (or help the digitization team locate) fragile material that has previously been pulled, oversize material, memorabilia housed separately. When we digitize collections, any fragile material that has been pulled from a collection is found and refiled, so that the original is digitized rather than a photocopy. This work is performed by the digitization team, but they may have questions you can assist with. As noted above, collections that were previously microfilmed are housed together, and generally not in boxes with their own call numbers. Discuss this situation with Johanna if it comes up for you and you are stymied.

Finding aid metadata review and addition

Again, there may be minimal work for you here, or extensive work. Depends on the project. A finding aid created in the last 5 years is more likely to have data that is "cleaner" for digitization purposes, but not necessarily.

Here's what you want to look for:

Do an overall review of the finding aid before getting into the folder level. Are there things you can change to bring the document up to date with current best practices? E.g., can you add dates and box ranges to series titles? If you think the finding aid could use a lot of additional metadata cleanup beyond the scope of the digitization-related work, discuss whether or how much to do with a colleague or your manager. If the finding aid has more than 10 links in it, discuss with Johanna ways to best edit the metadata in the ArchivesSpace environment.
Intellectual description of more than one physical folder (e.g.: 5.2-5.5. Passports, diaries, receipts from Ghana trip).

In this case, you need to make an assessment about the intellectual description and the physical object (folders). You'll need to have the physical folders with you to make the correct assessment. What is listed as one component <c> will be digitized as one digital object. You need to determine if the material is best served being described and digitized an one unit, or if it is best served being described and digitized as each individual folder. The Library has many variant past practices you may encounter; make a decision based on what will be best for a digitized product.

EXAMPLE from Doris Stevens papers, where the material was better described as two folders:

ORIGINAL description:

70.1-70.2. Haiti, 1928-1938; includes Elvire Bayard, Alice Garoute, letter to Helena Hill Weed from Haitian president Vincent

NEW description for digitization:

70.1. Haiti, 1928-1934.

Scope and Contents: Includes Elvire Bayard, letter to Helena Hill Weed from Haitian president Vincent.

70.2. Haiti, 1935-1938.

Scope and Contents: Includes Alice Garoute.

In this instance, the folders contained clearly chronologized correspondence, so each folder had clear dates written on it, and the items described specifically appeared in different folders; it seemed better to create description for each folder. (NOTE: this project was completed before the move to put folder-level description in a folder-level scope note).

Large ranges of folders do not need to be broken up for digitization, but can be if the physical material follows the above example of clearly chronologized correspondence that would be simple to break up into a new <c>. Amy has stressed that her team can handle runs of folders if they are appropriate and the grouping is important.

OF COURSE, remember that you can not just cut and paste when working in these finding aids as the identifiers for each new <c> need to be new as well. We like to call this "declumping." In the above example, I added a brand new <c> to the finding aid, and copied some of the description into it.

EXAMPLE from Judy Chicago papers, where the material was better described in a large unit, as found in the finding aid:

12.17-12.21. The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage. Part II [draft], ca.1979.

These folders contained one large draft, and it was not possible to describe each folder as a separate unit, as they were not units on their own. In this case, it is better to let the digital object hold the entire draft across 5 folders. So after review, it was left like that in the finding aid.

3. Description that appears to have come from a cumulative heading.

This is more likely to appear in an older finding aid, when the practice was to describe a set of folders, and then list the folders (which were sometimes just listed with dates) underneath. Much of this description was moved to folder-level with the move to ArchivesSpace, and this is the time to take a look at it and see what each folder actually contains.

When you have something like this, you also want to take a look at what the content actually is. In many cases with old finding aids, scope or bio information was put in a cumulative heading that is either not necessary at all, or is better off somewhere else in the finding aid. Your goal in looking at this material is to tighten the folder title and description as much as possible.

EXAMPLE: Margaret Foley papers (MC 404)

If you take a look at series II, you can see that every folder has the same information, which would be much more helpful being written once, in a series scope note:

24-26. Alphabetical, ca. 1903, 1910-1926; arrangement by Foley? Some re: suffrage: B

27-29. Alphabetical, ca. 1903, 1910-1926; arrangement by Foley? Some re: suffrage: C

You would be better off making sure that the scope note for the series includes the information contained in " arrangement by Foley? Some re: suffrage" and then making each folder title and date match each folder more exactly. so, for example:

25. Correspondence, B, 1910-1920

26. Correspondence, C, 1915-1926

(I made those folder titles up as an example without looking at the folders. This is bad practice! ) In this particular instance, you may actually want to provide more detailed description at the folder level; if so, use a folder-level scope note.

4. Generic or catch-all folder titles

Does the folder title actually make sense, does it describe the contents? This may be particularly relevant for oversize folders in older finding aids, but is a good general practice. "Loose items" is another old chestnut we can do a better job with.

5. Memorabilia that is not in the database

While you're handling it, create a "current" model description and also make sure it is in the memorabilia database. Discuss with Johanna if you have questions.

It's good practice to do whatever you can to a collection before it is digitized. If there is a half file box of addenda, process that and add it to the finding aid while you're working on the stuff. For the most part, we'd like the finding aid (including the call number, etc.) to be as "complete" as possible before digitization. Consult with Johanna if you have questions about this.

6. Remove old style "nested c's" when possible.

Older finding aids with true item-level description were marked up with components <c> inside the main folder <c >to create a list. These are problematic and need to be collapsed into a single scope and content note. In this case you will need to make use of semicolons to divide the listing, as we do with other notes.

OLD:

<c level="item"><did><unitid>1. </unitid><unittitle>Henry Weston Smith:</unittitle></did>

<c level="item"><did><unittitle> "Preacher Smith: Martyr," printed booklet by Leland D. Case, 1929, 16 pages.</unittitle></did></c>

<c level="item"><did><unittitle>"The Second Monument Erected by the People of the Black Hills in Memory of the 'Martyr Missionary', Rev. Henry Weston Smith, Aug. 20, 1914," by Edna Ione Smith Tyler, ts. cc.</unittitle></did></c>

<c level="item"><did><unittitle>"Prelude to A Missionary's Reverie," poem by Edna Ione Smith Tyler, n.d.; photocopy of brief biography in <title xlink:type="simple">Encyclopedia of World Methodism</title></unittitle></did></c>

<c level="item"><did><unittitle>Postcards with pictures of monuments to Henry Weston Smith</unittitle></did></c>

<c level="item"><did><unittitle>Leaflet for dedication of Preacher Smith Memorial Room, Layne Library, Dakota Wesleyan University, 8/25/1961.</unittitle></did></c>

</c>

NEW:

<c i level="item"><did><unitid>1. </unitid><unittitle>Henry Weston Smith, 1929-1961, undated.</unittitle></did>

<scopecontent><p>Contains "Preacher Smith: Martyr," printed booklet by Leland D. Case, 1929, 16 pages; "The Second Monument Erected by the People of the Black Hills in Memory of the 'Martyr Missionary', Rev. Henry Weston Smith, Aug. 20, 1914," by Edna Ione Smith Tyler, typescript. carbon copy; "Prelude to A Missionary's Reverie," poem by Edna Ione Smith Tyler, undated; photocopy of brief biography in <title>Encyclopedia of World Methodism</title>; Postcards with pictures of monuments to Henry Weston Smith; Leaflet for dedication of Preacher Smith Memorial Room, Layne Library, Dakota Wesleyan University, 8/25/1961.</p></scopecontent>

</c>

7. In general, make sure that metadata is updated to our current standards.

If you see a practice that we no longer do, you can correct it. Some examples include:

Change n.d. to undated
Move folder title information into scope and content notes when necessary
Remove the old style "bonus" tagging from notes in the upper levels of the finding aid. Examples include removing <date> and <persname> from the processing information note and <num>, <persname>, and <corpname> from the acquisition information note
Remove the of the use of doublequote attribute from title tags present in older finding aids; we no longer use <title render="doublequote">.
Spell out abbreviations (i.e. t.s. for typescript and c.c. for carbon copy, if you need them) and acronyms
Remove language about uncataloged photographs (i.e. use of asterisk) from the scope and content note. Remove uncataloged photos notes from folder descriptions in inventory. Leave any "reference copies" notes in inventory.
Remove photograph counts from photograph folders (number of photographs per folder)
Remove any document counts from older finding aids
Reparative description: if you see language that is outdated, please discuss with Kelcy about updating it. You should also consult the guidelines outlined in the reparative language section of our wiki.

Checklists are your friend! These were created by Paula and Cat in 2018:

Assessment checklist.docx

Assessment checklist for small As and Bs.docx

On-call curatorial advice during digitization prep

The process of how material gets digitized is entirely managed by the digitization team. However, they often have questions where they want someone to make what we usually say is "a curatorial call," or else they aren't sure what might be important/not important about a specific type of thing.

Sample questions:

There's a card file box of addresses. Out of 100, 3 have pencil marks on the verso of the cards. The rest are blank. Should we image the verso to get those 3 pencil marks?

There's a diary that begins one way, then a ton of blank pages, then continues on the last 10 pages. Should we image all the blank pages? How many?

As you're learning the process, you will get some experience answering these questions. Trust your instinct. We want to provide the researcher who uses the digital surrogate with an experience as much as possible like being in the reading room. However, the digital environment has different issues, and we need to keep those in mind as well. Imaging content should take precedence over imaging "experiential" realities.

Post-digitization boxing

Many collections (again: old) need to be reboxed after digitization. In general, Johanna and the end processor will take care of this. However, it's good to check in with Johanna to ensure this is true.

LANGUAGE TO USE TO DESCRIBE DIGITIZED MATERIAL

Guidelines on the Use of Originals that Have Been Digitized

POST-DIGITIZATION TECHNICAL ISSUES AND PROCEDURES

Once material has been digitized and deposited into the DRS, there are a set of technical and metadata issues to be addressed by the Metadata Specialists:

Linking to Digital Objects in Bibliographic Records and Finding Aids (Instructions for Metadata Specialists)

Creating a NET holdings in the Holdings records (LINK TK) (Instructions for Metadata Specialists)

Fixing captions in the PDS (LINK TK)