An intensive four days of instruction and dialogue
for professionals involved in creating, sharing, and preserving electronic
information in museums, libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage
institutions. Through lectures, group discussions, and exercises,
participants will be immersed in the issues and decision points that
institutions face in the acquisition, management, dissemination and
preservation of digital collections. Special attention will be paid
to the increasing convergence between museum, library, and archive
practices and perspectives in the digital environment. Invited
are information specialists, registrars, librarians, archivists, curators,
researchers, and educators with responsibility for digital collections.
Experienced and knowledgeable instructors from across the country lead
attendees from around the United States and abroad. This year's Summer
Institute will feature a program of informative workshops and sessions
on the following topics:
Introduction to Collections Digitization Projects: Re-Engineering
for 21st -Century Collections. Features the key issues
and decision points that institutions face in the acquisition,
management, and preservation of digitized collections. A
general introduction and consideration of case studies will open
subjects to be considered more deeply throughout the week. These
include articulating a vision, identifying the needs, identifying
and nurturing professional expertise, workflow re-engineering,
collection development and evaluation, metadata creation and management,
re-conceptualizing collection delivery and user interaction, integrating
end-to-end preservation, and building economic models. Special
attention will be paid to the increasing convergence between, and
contribution of, museum, library, and archive perspectives in the
digital environment.
Funding Challenges, Strategies and Opportunities will
cover the fundamentals of institutional development and creative
funding strategies in support of digitized collections and projects.
Emphasis will be placed on the importance of proposal development
in the grant seeking process.
Thinking Through Digitization Projects. Moving deeper,
these sessions will explore critical issues to consider and important
decisions to make in planning for digitized collections and their
preservation. Topics include: making a business case,
workflow and staffing, criteria for selection and appraisal for digitization,
motivations for building collections and content, packaging content
and developing presentations on the basis of core data, and creating
preservable digital objects.
Creating Digital Resources in Museums, Libraries, and Archives:
Tools and Methods for How We Work Today, Metadata, Vocabularies,
Users and Usability. An all-day session that goes
to the most fundamental level, covering the "nuts and bolts" of
creating integrated access to diverse resources, and understanding
the implications of such creation on the institution and the collection.
Session leaders and speakers will lead participants through lectures
and breakout group discussions to consider "invisible" elements,
such as:
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• Metadata as infrastructure, and delivering primary
sources online: Evidence-based systems of design, role of metadata
in establishing context, and user considerations related to
incorporating primary sources into digital information systems.
• Metadata schemas, crosswalks, and interoperability.
• Vocabularies, cataloguing, tagging, and indexing.
• Putting theory into practice: vocabularies, cataloging
issues, metatags, and subject access.
• Assessing the capabilities, understanding, and
activities of your information users; how best to measure what
users are doing on your Web site, what the data means, and
how to apply the data to feature enhancements. Both
high-tech and no-tech data gathering will be covered.
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Managing Collections Digitization Projects: Workflow, Asset
Management, and Preservation. After participants have
a deeper understanding of the primary issues, tools, and management
strategies for successful digitized collections and projects, these
sessions will turn toward "getting it done" and ensuring longevity.
The instruction team will guide participants in the fundamentals
of workflow, asset management, preservation, and migration issues
associated with digital and other resources. Standards,
storage systems, and planning for long-term asset management and
preservation will be addressed.
Usability and Audience Metrics. An overview of usability
and audience metrics will introduce participants to the measuring,
quantitatively and qualitatively, the effectiveness of digital offerings.
A more in-depth workshop on how to conduct one's own qualitative
analyses will focus on usability and focus groups, detailing resources,
third party training facilities, costs, and in general how to conduct
your own usability test and focus group. To do effective quantitative
analysis can require large initial investments in hardware and software,
and ongoing maintenance costs, that might be too high for non-profit
institutions with small information technology departments and budgets.
But, quantitative analysis in the form of usability studies and focus
groups can be done inexpensively and still produce valuable results.
Digital Longevity and Preservation. This
session will immerse participants in the fundamentals of digital
longevity and preservation in order to help them become advocates
for ensuring the longevity of their institution's digital collections.
Major topics include: an overview of digital longevity: What
does it take in terms of institutional policies, economic commitments,
technical infrastructure, and metadata? Scoping digital preservation:
creating preservable digital objects, institutional and economic
commitment. Preservation
metadata: what is it, what role does it play in long-term preservation?
Current and future activities addressing preservation and technical
metadata. Auditing
institutional infrastructure: what is infrastructure and how
can my institution get it? Do we have to build our own repository
or can we work with others? Open source options for some types
of materials. Building a bridge following short-term preservation
practices while infrastructure comes together. Advocacy vs.
practice.
Putting it all Together and Conclusion. In a capstone exercise
participants will work in teams to apply the lessons of the week to challenging
cases, and in conclusion, reflect on what they have learned and how they will
apply it to their work back home.
In addition to course work, participants will take part in events
designed to complement their instruction including luncheons, and
a visit to and reception at the beautifully restored Massachusetts
Historical Society (http://www.masshist.org/welcome/).
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