American Journeys: Exploring Undocumented ContentDM Territory

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American JourneysExploring Undocumented
ContentDM Territory

• Paul Hedges
• Wisconsin Historical Society

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Scope of the Project

• Exploration of North America
• Partnership with National History Day on 2004
  theme of exploration and discovery
• Primary target of middle high school students
• Provide teacher training resources
• A digital collection of national scope
• Use resources in the Societys collections
• Pre and post-project evaluations

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Timeline

• Initial Idea Summer 2001
• Submit grant to IMLS early 2002
• Funding granted September 2002
• Planning and Development Oct. 2002 to February
  2003
• Construction March to September 2003
• Rollout October 13, 2003
• Promotion and Training October through December
  2003

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Project Stages

• Material Selection - Advisory group
• User/Interface design - Advisory group
• Metadata and Scanning standards
• Identify delivery software
• Site design
• Build/Rollout
• Promotion and education

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User Interface Needs

• Guided approach to finding books
• Provide monographs as browse-able, online content
• Full text and complex searching
• Single, static document page that could be
  Googled
• Page level indexing using common vocabulary
• Print versions of material

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Metadata

• 54 fields in ContentDM
• 28 Bibliographic (title, author, series, etc.)
• 18 Subject (ethnicity, life stages, climate, etc)
• 7 Functional (search type, purchase url)
• 1 Full Text
• 39 fields mapped to 17 Dublin Core fields

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Image Capture

• 40 outsourced to Northern Micrographics
• Rare materials scanned in-house (Minolta)
• Color images scanned in Visual Materials (Creo)
• 400-600 dpi bitonal, greyscale and color
• TIF Master, JPG and PDF derivatives
• OCR output problematic
• 17,891 page images in collection

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Why ContentDM?

• A single application for digital collections
• Is stable, flexible, extensible and supports
  professional standards
• Able to create custom search interfaces
• Handles a variety of media
• Provides searchable, browse-able, structured
  monograph texts
• Less expensive and less complex than other
  products

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Concerns about ContentDM

• Initial development was for images, not complex
  documents
• Compound object capability was new, cumbersome,
  and lacked some abilities
• Not able to create static document page

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Components of ContentDM
Acquisition Station
ContentDM Server
Compound Object Editor
Custom Queries and Results Editor
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Acquisition Station
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ContentDM Server

• Can be installed locally or hosted
• Windows or Unix platform
• Integrates with existing web server
• Web-based administration
• Acquisition Station uploads images and record
  data using FTP or Network drive

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Server Administration
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Single Image Record
Acquisition Station Local PC
ContentDM Server Local Server or Hosted
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Compound Object - Monograph
Acquisition Station Local PC
ContentDM Server Local Server or Hosted
Compound Object Editor
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Compound Object Editor
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Compound Objects

• Create new intellectual construct using existing
  images in the collection
• Compound Object record uses same metadata as
  individual images
• Can create very complex structures
• Information stored in XML file

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Custom Queries and Results

• Creation of custom search page on separate Web
  site
• Wizard
• Query syntax easy to understand
• Single results page

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Creating a Custom Query
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Creating a Custom Query
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Creating a Custom Query
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Creating a Custom Query
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Creating a Custom Query
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Development Stages
Acquisition Station
Excel
Page-Level Indexing
Upload after review
Macro
ContentDM Server

• Image filename
• Repeating data
• Full text

Compound Object
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Site Structure
Document List
Images
Advanced Search
Highlights
Teachers
About
Help
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Site Structure - Documents
Document List
Images
Advanced Search
Highlights
Teachers
About
Help
ContentDM
Database
Document Page (AJ-XXX)
Search Results
Document Search
Print
About
Document Viewer
Read the Document
How to Cite
Reference Map
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Site Structure - Search
Document List
Images
Advanced Search
Highlights
Teachers
About
Help
ContentDM
Search Results
Custom Queries
Document Viewer
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Last Minute Issues

• Major change between 3.4 and 3.5
• Incorporated many of the changes we wanted
• Search results not consistent
• Change in full text display
• Interface moves to heavy use of Javascript
• Staff changes

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Site Statistics(Oct 03 July 04)

• 131,000 unique visits
• 30,000 pdf book downloads
• 14 International Visitors
• Most Visited Works
• Lewis and Clark
• Eric the Red
• Christopher Columbus
• Jean Nicolet
• Juan Ponce de Leon

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www.americanjourneys.org