[PADG:1208] Re: Queuing digital collections

[Paul Conway <paul.conway@xxxxxxxx>]

Colleagues,

The reply below from Irene rightfully raises the issue of digital project
registries.  We all know that this topic has been on and off the radar
screen for well over a decade.  Opinions differ about the value of project
directories in terms of the cost of building and maintaining them properly.

Joan, on the other hand, raises the issue of "registering" digital objects
at the item level.  I believe we need to consider carefully the value and
usefulness of declaring our intention to convert a given title.  Some of
the things that ought to concern us are the cost of queuing in relation to
both the risk of duplication of effort and the consequences of duplication.
 As we all know, queuing evolved from the principle that no item will be
preserved on microfilm more than once.  The desire to stretch limited
dollars certainly played a factor in the development of queuing; it is
certainly a factor in digital projects as well.  But at the time this
procedure evolved, preservation programs were working on multiple large
scale collaborative projects with potentially overlapping conceptual
content and duplicative titles.  I am not convinced yet that the threat of
duplication is particularly great, especially given the scale of our efforts.  

But there is another issue here.  With large scale microfilming projects,
we have all been working to the same product standards (preservation film)
governed by collaboratively developed procedural guidelines (RLG, LC,
etc.). Furthermore, we have been creating our "virtual collection" of
preservation microfilm masters by agreeing to share access information in
national databases.  Even if we could accurately and completely register
all digital conversion projects in the world, we are not today working to
the same product standard and are not today engaged with collaborative
access programs at a scale appropriate to the need.  

I wonder if there are digital project managers among us who would NOT
digitize a title (image or full text) selected using local project
criterial because they found the title in a registry, a national utility,
or linked from a web page. 

With these limitations in mind, I think we should risk duplication of
effort, perhaps even encourage it. Let's convert what we want to convert
when we want to convert it in whatever way we think is best. Then let's
compare our products and evolve our best practices from what really works.
This admonition is not intended to deny the need for very careful and very
consciencious selection strategies that are informed by what we know to be
happening in other organizations.  I just do not think that queuing is the
appropriate strategy for digital conversion projects.

I am sure there are other views of this matter.  It would be great to air
them in this forum. 

Best wishes, Paul...

At 01:11 PM 2/16/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Joan,
>
>I realize in my rush that I did not answer the question about digital
>collections.  To my knowledge, there is no one place which lists queued
>projects but there are two sites which serve as registries of what appear
>to be completed projects:  
>
>DLF:  http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/d/dlfcoll/dlfcoll-idx
>
>IFLA has a item "Resources and Projects under "Digital Libraries" -
>http://www.ifla.org/II/index.htm  which I have used to look for digitized
>items.  The link is broken right now, but presumably will be fixed.
>
>Irene
>
>On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Joan Gatewood wrote:
>
>> 
>> 
>> Dear Folks: I am working on a digital project that intends to digitize 1000 
>> monographs.  In discussing this project with Cataloging, I was asked if 
>> there were other ways to let the preservation community know of our 
>> intentions to digitize this material instead of title by title queuing.  At 
>> my library all cataloging is done on the local system and upload to the 
>> utilities as a single step.  Queuing (RLIN) or Prospective Cataloging 
>> (OCLC) requires two separate steps - one at the beginning and one at the 
>> end of the project.  This is costly and labor intense.  Has anyone come up 
>> with a less complicated system?   Is there a single web site being used to 
>> announce intentions to digitize a collection?
>> 
>> Thanks for your help.
>> 
>> Joan Gatewood
>> University of Michigan Library
>> Preservation Division
>> joangate@xxxxxxxxx
>> 
>> 
>
>Irene Schubert, Chief                   Telephone: (202) 707-5918
>Preservation Reformatting Division            FAX: (202) 707-6449
>Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20540    E-mail: isch@xxxxxxx
>
>Usual disclaimers apply


<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul Conway
Head, Preservation Department