You need a WPL Card to Access Mergent, RefUSA, HeritageQuest and ...

If you or your patrons would like to access WPL's remote access databases, a WPL library card is required to access those databases.

The WPL's remote databases are listed below:

Auto Repair Center (EBSCO)
Gale - Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC), Something about the Author (SATA), Short Story Criticism (SSC), Children's Literature Review (CLR)
Gale - Literature Resource Center
HeritageQuest.com
LearningExpress Library
Mergent Online
NetLibrary
NovelistPlus
p4a-Antiques References
Photofact Online
ReferenceUSA
TellMeMore
Worldbook Online

In order to help librarians in the region to remember which database requires a Worcester PL library, we have also listed the WPL databases in the right column of the Regional Reference Blog. See the image below.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Keynote Speaker Tom Clareson - Digital Commonwealth 2010

Fundraising for your Digital Collection by Tom Clareson

Select your project for funding according to the specific area covered by the fund-granting institution. Research the grants that are available, and tailor your proposal to the grant you are seeking.

Monitor grant activity.

Even in our current economy, there is a lot of funding for digital projects.
Document what you work on, even if you do not complete your project; it might be something someone else could use.

Government Grants: Federal and State

• Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
• National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
• National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
• National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC)
• Save America's Treasures (SAT) - Grants for historic buildings - lately interested in what is inside those buildings
• National Science Foundation "the digital promise"

For digitization, large, or hidden projects, look at what has been funded.

Kinds of Grants:

• Grants to Preserve and Create Access to Humanities Collections "brittle books" cataloging prior to digitization
• Challenge Grants - matching money
• Incubator grants like the Joint Urban Studies Center (JUSC)
• Grants for new grant users

US Newspaper program - Statewide or Collaborative Projects for local newspaper preservation
Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections $40,000 for planning $400,000 for implementation

This one is do-able:

NEH up to $6,000 springboard
mid-May deadline

4 pages / 1 page budget
50% - 75% awarding
assessment
training
supplies, equipment , storage furniture

Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Digital Resources
National Leadership Grant (NLG) Advancing Libraries and Museums, Leadership in the field
21st Century Librarian Program
Connecting to Collections Call to Action

• what are key issues in preservation conservation
• under-served collections /populations
• Conservation bookshelf best practices print ansd web materials
  

Statewide Implementation Grants
Massachusetts Connecting to Collections surveys

• where we should go what direction should we shoot for
• voice you concerns
  

IMLS "WebWise" Conference, Washington D.C. 2010

• Sustainability
• real-life stories of how projects have failed lessons learned
  
• free admission
• some time around Thanksgiving
  

Foundations: 5 kinds

1. general purpose large endowments
2. special purpose - usually science, but coming our way
3. Company-sponsored foundations Target, American Express, Coca-Cola, H W Wilson (Polar?)
4. Community foundations - regional Massachusetts Cultural Council, local - collaboration
5. Family foundations - staffed by an attorney / family/ individuals

Fundraising strategies for digital projects (programming)

• Alumni
• Friends groups
• community drives
• corporate gifts
• "hitching on" to other collaborative projects
• subjects/ themes/ other projects nationally that work with your collection
  

Grant Writing "How To"

STATEMENT OF NEED

• how grant will change people's lives
• what are you famous for?
• what is unique to you?

SURVEYING

• market research/focus groups

WRITING

• persuasion
• in response to a need: why is this project seminal?
• how are funds allocated
• exactly how project is going to come to fruition? be realistic
• guidelines: how project is going to be implement
• what programming you have done - use to get grants
• must be easy to read - no jargon
• asking for other staff to take over your other work
• budgets: look at other projects online
• appendices: documentation

COMMON CONCERNS

• lack of communication with program officers
• failure to follow guidelines
• quantification of collection formats and size
• ownership and IP rights
• lack of detail in plan of work
• no letters of support or commitment
• missing information on project staff
• budget errors

Tom Clareson offers a free service to review grants

Speaker Robin Dale - Digital Commonwealth 2010

Getting Started with the Digital Commonwealth, by Robin Dale

There are two types of use for the Digital Commonwealth:

• portal: only metadata. It does not have to include digital pictures.
• depository: stores a digital collection of images which is searchable.

The Digital Commonwealth Portal

• Dynamically created to display recent activity
• Includes links

How do you get info into the portal?

• Open Archives Initiative (OAI) protocol for metadata processing
• Indexed
• The portal is dynamically updated
• OAI works with a static repository document
  

The depository lives on server (not on your real estate)

• You can link from the Digital Commonwealth to your online digital collection until dynamic option is available
  

The Digital Commonwealth Repository

How the Repository is different from the Portal:

• There is a separate fee.
  
• It is a hosted service.
  
• The licensing is temporary until database is used locally
• The local institute still owns images
• The Digital Commonwealth will use the same branding that is on your library's site - institutions, collections, objects, logo
  

Objects in the Repository:

• The objects are dynamically updated.
• High resolution images come in a variety of sizes.
• You can include metadata in same screen as your image.
• You can link into your catalog
• The Digital Commonwealth will not change your image.

Getting Started:

1. The Initial Consultation

• One-to-One.
• You will be consulting with professionals such as speaker Robin L. Dale
• You will be discussing what is important about your collection what are you are known for.
  

2. You sign the Digital Commonwealth legal agreement


Considering your collections:

• should it be digitized?
• can it be digitized?
• may it be digitized?
• who can host it?
• what system will be used?
  

Metadata is necessary to find digital images
With metadata, the cost for the repository is mainly the human cost: labor.
Costs will include administrative costs: those with access to files.
The metadata has to cover all groups.

Metadata Standards:
The user can use XML. Components include: element sets, standards, protocols.
The Digital Commonwealth uses Dublin Core (DC).
DC 15 has common elements. The Digital Commonwealth also uses "OAI-PMH:" Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
It is standard - so computers can talk to each other.

Using the repository: this is the easy part.

• Obtain the member toolkit.
• Send sample metadata.
  
• Upload the repository!
  

Keynote Speaker Roy Tennant - Digital Commonwealth 2010

Engaging Users, by Roy Tennant

There are two different user groups who use your organization's website:

• those with a natural affinity for your site, including those who have to use it (Tennant calls them "within shouting distance"), and
• free floating web users

Those with the "natural affinity" find your site:

• online, through email, facebook twitter, links and ads on allied web sites, and
• offline, through marketing: t shirts, flyers, print, and bookmarks
  

Those who are "free floating" find your site through

• links, and
• hubs massive sites start sites (Wikipedia)

Searching Google:
70% of users get indexed in Google

TO INCREASE VISIBILITY OF YOUR WEBSITE:

• Get linked on Wikipedia, or
• put photos on Flickr
  

The Library of Congress put their photographs on Flickr
Created amazing statistics and exposure
Since Flickr is one of the top 50 viewed websites, and the Library of Congress is one of the top 6,000 websites, they increased their visibility exponentially.

On Flickr, users can comment to add information they have to existing image, and they can link to other people who have additional information.

Can you find your site on Google?
Include a site map on your website.
Expose your URLs to Google crawler so that it can be read.

The hidden web: all a site map is is an index to your page - it is a stupid list containing all of the URLs on your page. If you expose this list, your visibility increases.

Use Google Webmaster Tools!

Google doesn't crawl everything. You have to manually create code to get your page seen.

This code, stored on the text file, robots.txt, blocks all of the links that Google crawls.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Tennant suggests creating as liberal a code as possible, so that Google will giveit the most visibility. He suggests the code in the robots.txt file

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Tennant also suggests registering your sitemap with Google, and to read Google's Search Engine Optimization (SEO) document. It is not important only to create something great, but also to push stuff out. Get links to your website where are your users found.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Tennant turns now, from getting users to your sites, to engaging users.

You might have several audiences. What turns them on? What gets them excited? You need to change your site in order to meet the needs of your users.

"Rinse and Repeat." This is not only a one-time operation. You need to re-evaluate over and over again. Use the 5 Ws to ask about how to engage your user: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.

Use interactive tools to engage users:

tagging: LibraryThing uses tagging as a crowdsource method of cataloging. Other interactive devices include: commenting, listing, rating, and reviewing.

Use all of these on a digital collection. Allow users to tag digital images interaction and other ways of finding objects. Use crowdsourcing. Allow audience to correct images created using Optical character recognition, (OCR). Think of incentives that are easy, fun, and fast.
Avoid passwords. They create a barrier to otherwise interested users. Who wants to remember another password?

be there
engage
PROFIT!!!

Speaker Dodie Gaudet - Digital Commonwealth 2010

Metadata I: From the Beginning, by Dodie Gaudet

What is metadata? It is:

• data about data
• a method for organizing information for retrieval
• bibliographic record - cataloging, among other definitions.

Metadata can be data about an object that is visible, or it can be administrative metadata, important for maintaining collection. Catalogers are responsible for metadata and use a variety of standards, such as EAD, AACR2 and MARC. Gaudet covered the basics of Dublin Core, or "DC."

If "Core" is part of the name of the standard, that means that the standard is pretty basic. Standards have a governing group. DC is maintained by Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI).

DC is flexble because it is extensible, works with other metadata, and uses commonly understood terminology.

A program, programming language, or protocol is extensible if it is designed so that users or developers can expand or add to its capabilities. ex. a Dewey number might get longer as a book's subject gets more precise: 782.9867875432. Dewey is extensible! Some common mark-up languages used to make web pages use the letter X to signify extensibility, such as XML and XHTML.


Differences of Dublin Core when used with Digital Treasures Project (DTP):

• DC is extensible, but not when in use with DTP
• In DC, all elements optional can leave a field blank. In Digital Treasures all items require title
• all items are repeatable / can appear in any order while in use
• controlled vocabulary is recommended (LC Subject Headings)
• similarity in bibliographic record
  

There are 15 Elements in a Dublin Core Record:

1. Title self-explanatory / it is helpful to use something specific
2. Creator / author /who took photograph / can not use on separate lines/ use semicolon
3. Subject /content of the resource / what is in photo?
4. description / freedom
5. publisher: C/WMARS
   
6. contributor: help / assistant / illustrator
7. Date: date of photograph or text / ISO8601
   
8. type: image or text
   
9. format: image/jpg or text/jpg
10. identifier: to find in your library
11. source: consider relation item first; can describe ex. 8.5 x 11 text
12. Language: ISO639 en-US
13. Relation: came from said book, or letter is from collection
14. coverage: time period or physical location
15. rights: copyright / permission

To use the Digital Treasures Project:

• simply send your metadata and photo to C/WMARS -you must create metadata first, or it might never get done.
  

Speaker Mark McCormick-Goodhart - Digital Commonwealth 2010

The Role of Print Permanence in the
Digital Age, by
Mark McCormick-Goodhart

Both digital and original photography need attention by the modern archivist. In our culture, it is easy to discount the value of our digital images because they are in such an abundance. They are easy to lose. Original print images have archival, physical needs. Print permanence has become more complicated because:

1. color fading on original photographs is ubiquitous. There are many ways to "fix" this technically, and standards are necessary.
2. printing techniques have become complicated. There used to be very few elements involved in photography production, such as limited numbers of types of photo paper. Now, there are plenty of types of computers, printers, color cartridges, and papers, just using personal computer production as an example.
   

In order to address the needs of the archivist, McCormick-Goodhart has set out to create a "Consumer Reports" type of database for technologies that produce / maintain color, providing a metric which evaluates that retention.

Aardenburg Imaging and Archives is McCormick-Goodhart's company and website. The site has public and subscriber components, geared towards the professional. The archivist working with physical and digitized images will find this site useful.

Following the tab marked "Test Results" leads the user to the part of the website consisting mainly of a spreadsheet with sortable columns, wherein there are results of his testing and comparisons. McCormick-Goodhart has made a good use of crowdsourcing by opening out the testing of aspects of photographic images such as "light fading" to members of the website. There are many ways a print can degrade, ex. light-induced, temperature induced, etc. The spreadsheet covers what equipment was used and what the results of the "light fading" experiments were. Using these metrics, an archivist can make print life predictions.

McCormick-Goodhart raised the question: archival or even "reasonable care" can make even fragile pieces last 100 years, but what kind of shape is it in?

McCormick-Goodhart then spoke of the history of the digital image.
Printing is now optional and there are images now that were "born digital."
In 1997, consumers could purchase a do-it-yourself home photo printer.
In 2008, Walmart created a machine that used roles of ink-jet paper, which mass-produced images. Contrastingly, 1996: Fine art printing studios began using digital processing to make "original" pieces of art, and digital fine art printers were used as early as 1991.

We can value printed photos in two ways:

1. print as storage container - information content, or
   
2. a medium. The photo is a treasured object, so we need to preserve that object.
   

Do we color balance that object, or does the re-purposed image have the same value?

When a photograph ages naturally, or by means of an artificial aging process, the color changes. We are all familiar with yellowed family photos. That yellow is an example of "false color." The two major areas of film degradation are

• color, and
• tone.
  

The I* metric, created by McCormick-Goodhart, is an objective metric for quantifying the retention of color and tonal accuracy in an image. He does this by assigning a percentile scale to photographic degradation, simplifying the whole process for those who do not understand the sciences of color and tone in photographic imagery.

These percentiles are the evaluative metrics that are available at McCormick-Goodhart's Aardenburg Imaging and Archives website under "Test Results."

Vegworcester.com

Hello, I am excited to share an informative site with you. It is a terrific local resource for vegetarians, vegans and people interested in learning more about either. The website has a blog on Worcesster vegan issues and events, there are lists of vegan restaurants, cafes, and stores where special vegan foods are available in Worcester. There is even a free vegetarian starter kit that can be ordered.

Something to look forward to is their Vegan Festival coming up on April 17, 2010. It will be from noon to 5pm in the student center at Worcester State College. Admission is FREE!!! There will be free food samples, speakers and live music.
I can honestly tell you that if I didnt have to work that day I would be there for sure!

http://vegworcester.com
http://vegworcester.com/festival


kr

Excerpts from an article about Jay Walker, curator of the Library of Human Imagination

From "Browse the Artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker's Library," by Steven Levy, WIRED MAGAZINE: 16.10


...Nothing quite prepares you for the culture shock of Jay Walker's library. You exit the austere parlor of his New England home and pass through a hallway into the bibliographic equivalent of a Disney ride. Stuffed with landmark tomes and eye-grabbing historical objects—on the walls, on tables, standing on the floor—the room occupies about 3,600 square feet on three mazelike levels. Is that a Sputnik? (Yes.) Hey, those books appear to be bound in rubies. (They are.) That edition of Chaucer ... is it a Kelmscott? (Natch.) Gee, that chandelier looks like the one in the James Bond flick Die Another Day. (Because it is.) No matter where you turn in this ziggurat, another treasure beckons you—a 1665 Bills of Mortality chronicle of London (you can track plague fatalities by week), the instruction manual for the Saturn V rocket (which launched the Apollo 11 capsule to the moon), a framed napkin from 1943 on which Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined his plan to win World War II. In no time, your mind is stretched like hot taffy...

...Wearing a huge can-you-believe-it grin is the collection's impresario, the 52-year-old Internet entrepreneur and founder of Walker Digital — a think tank churning out ideas and patents, it's best-known for its lucrative Priceline.com. "I started an R&D lab and have been an entrepreneur. So I have a big affinity for the human imagination," he says. "About a dozen years ago, my collection got so big that I said, 'It's time to build a room, a library, that would be about human imagination.'

Walker's house was constructed specifically to accommodate his massive library...

...What gets him excited are things that changed the way people think, like Robert Hooke's Micrographia Published in 1665, it was the first book to contain illustrations made possible by the microscope. He's also drawn to objects that embody a revelatory (or just plain weird) train of thought. "I get offered things that collectors don't," he says. "Nobody else would want a book on dwarfs, with pages beautifully hand-painted in silver and gold, but for me that makes perfect sense."
What excites him even more is using his treasures to make mind-expanding connections. He loves juxtapositions, like placing a 16th-century map that combines experience and guesswork—"the first one showing North and South America," he says—next to a modern map carried by astronauts to the moon. "If this is what can happen in 500 years, nothing is impossible."...