class 10 lesson plan

Creating Sustainable Digital Collections, Part 1: Digital Issues

The Lesson

Part I: Defining Digital Objects (45 minutes)

1. Digitized
2. Born-digital
3. Artifact vs. content

In-Class Activities

• Look at the Hoagy Carmichael Web site. Have students examine the site in the context of their reading of the “Objects” section in A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections.

This multimedia Web site was part of a project to catalog, digitize, and preserve every item in the Indiana University Archives extensive collections pertaining to the life and career of master songwriter Hoagland “Hoagy” Carmichael (1899–1981). It includes digitized objects, such as lyric sheets and photographs, and born-digital objects such as the virtual tour of “The Hoagy Carmichael Room” (see pointer under “Introduction” on the home page). The site is necessarily a blend of digitized and born-digital objects. The exercise is to discuss and determine which materials are digitized objects and which are born-digital, and to consider how they blend and support one another.

The following questions relating to artifact vs. content could be raised: How do the digital images relate to the original artifacts? For use? For preservation? Does digitization bring added value to the content? Is some content dependent on the Web site? Why?

• Look at the home page of a university Web site. Analyze it as a digital creation that may or may not be preserved. Identify some of the digitized and born-digital items (i.e., links, digital images, Web site itself, commentary, streaming video, etc.). Could the content be preserved in analog format (i.e., printing the pages out) while still preserving the essence of the Web site? Students and instructor should refer to the reading The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task Force on the Artifacts in Library Collections.

Part II: Criteria for Selection of Digitized Objects (45 minutes)

1. Selection criteria
2. Appraisal
3. Authenticity

In-Class Activity

• The three following sites offer criteria used by the respective institution when selecting collections for digitization:

Library of Congress, Selection Criteria for Preservation Digital Reformatting

University of California, Selection Criteria for Digitization

Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, Digital Projects Plan

In addition, the Council on Library Resources publication Selecting Research Collections for Digitization provides general guidance for selecting collections and defining digital projects.

As an assignment before the class, ask students to examine the above sites and develop a list of criteria for digitization. During class, create a composite list. With the class, look at this site, “The Atkins Family in Cuba: A Photograph Exhibit.” Examine the selection criteria on the list in relation to this site. If students have their own workstations, this could be done by each student independently or working in small groups for about ten minutes and then each reports to the class as a whole.

Part III: Copyright (30 minutes)

Students will review basic copyright issues such as authors’ rights and fair use and discuss how these issues translate into a digital environment, as explained in the Levine chapter. The Web site “Copyright Bay” is suggested for presenting the major issue of copyright in an engaging and fun way.

In-Class Activity

• Students should then look at the Creative Commons site, which suggests an alternate way of approaching digital intellectual property. This site has an excellent short video that explains the concepts. Students should view the video. Time permitting, they could compare these two different approaches.

Part IV: Metadata — Standards and Best Practices (30 minutes)

1. Types of metadata
2. Best practices in applying metadata elements

In-Class Activity

• The class briefly reviews the essentials of metadata as discussed in Murtha Baca, ed., Introduction to Metadata, as well as in The NINCH Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials, 2002. Use the section on “Digitization and Encoding of Text” to point students to information about preservation metadata and guides to particular metadata structures and how these structures might be used. The instructor should briefly point students to several key metadata sites that could include:

Text Encoding Initiative

Encoded Archival Description

Dublin Core

METS

Open Archives Initiative

Part V: Sustainable Resources (30 minutes)

As a summary, the instructor discusses the need for digital preservation and the problems inherent in sustainability in the context of Paul Conway’s article "Preservation in a Digital World."

Suggested Graded Assignments

• See Part I: Defining Digital Objects, In-Class Activities in this lesson. Whichever in-class activity is not done in class could be given as a graded assignment (e.g., analysis of the Hoagy Carmichael Web site, or of a university Web site).
• See Part III: Copyright, In-Class Activities in this lesson. If there is not enough time in class, ask students to look at the Creative Commons Web site and analyze its approach to copyright as a graded assignment.
• Evaluate two or more collections at the student’s workplace or a local institution of interest to determine whether they should be digitized. Students should provide specific reasons for their decisions.

Suggested Term Projects

• Prepare general guidelines for selecting collections for digital imaging at the student’s workplace or a local institution of interest. Identify specific collections that would be good candidates for digitization, and write a paper detailing the reasons why and the issues that would need to be considered in planning the project.