Digitization 101

I was talking to a colleague Monday, who mentioned Hydra. As the site says:

Hydra is not just a repository software solution.  Rather, we see it as having three complementary components:

• there is a vibrant, highly active community supporting the work of the project which shares an  underlying philosophy behind all that it does
• there are design (and other) principles involved in constructing a successful Hydra “head” for use with compatible digital objects, and of course,
• there are the software components, the Ruby gems, that the Hydra community has constructed which are combined together to provide a local installation

Hydra lists 12 partners on its web site, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Penn State and Stanford.  From his report, Hydra is easier than DSpace, etc.  He said that modules from Hydra are easy for another institution to implement.

If you've used Hydra, what do you think of it?  If you haven't used it, is it something you'd consider testing out?  Why? Why not?

Addendum (1/11/2013): I was asked on Twitter if Hydra is being used for institutional repositories and the answer is "yes".  It is also being used for images libraries, media collections and more.  See this page for more info.

Here is an interesting thought from Roy Tennant.

Before you put your digital assets into a content management system (of any kind), understand how you are going to get your stuff back out. Don't just assume that the software will be around forever. Don't assume that "of course" you can get your stuff out without any problems (and the metadata that does along with it). Test it. Using a small sample of your materials, go through the steps to ingest, etc., and then go through the steps to export everything using a format that could be used with another system.

And...test this before you buy/lease/license.

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Technorati tag: Content Management System

Ruth Kneale just finished a great presentation on CMS and how she decided what to use for her organization. She is blogging about her experience in selecting and installing CMS at:

http://desertlibrarian.blogspot.com/search/label/cms

This means that we can learn as she learns. We don't have to wait for her to publish a case study!

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Technorati tag: Content Management System, IL2007

In 2006, Marshall Breeding wrote an article entitled "How we funneled searchers from Google to our collections by catering to Web crawlers." As we know, not all software/databases can easily be crawled by Internet search engines. Some databases require extra ($) components, while you must kluge a solution for others. In Marshall's article, he talks about the solution they implemented for the Vanderbilt Television News Archive.

Question -- If your repository is not automatically being crawled by the Internet search engines, what solutions have you put in place to expose your content so that it is crawled? Please let us know. This is a topic that projects are talking about...and an area where we could all benefit from what others have done.

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Technorati tags: Google, Content Management System

Many organizations are working with audio and video, trying to make them more accessible for their users. Some organizations are using Transana to help with this effort. According to the web site:

"Transana is software for professional researchers who want to analyze digital video or audio data. Transana lets you analyze and manage your data in very sophisticated ways. Transcribe it, identify analytically interesting clips, assign keywords to clips, arrange and rearrange clips, create complex collections of interrelated clips, explore relationships between applied keywords, and share your analysis with colleagues. The result is a new way to focus on your data, and a new way to manage large collections of video and audio files and clips."

To use Transana, your audio or video must already be in a digital format. What formats does Transana support?

Transana 1.0 through 2.12 work with MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and most AVI video, as well as MP3 and WAV audio. Starting with Transana 2.20, QuickTime MOV and MP4 formats are supported on both Windows and OS X, and Windows Media Video, WMV, and Windows Media Audio, WMA, formats are supported on Windows only.

Transana does not work automatically, though. A person must sit and listen/watch the audio/video and make notes in Transana. The end result could be specific clips created from this digital content that is made available to end-users. To see a sample of the entire process, you can watch screencasts on the Transana web site.

Transana has been downloaded more than 40,000 times (and those are unique downloads) and it is used by organizations around the world. It seems to be well-known within specific groups of people (i.e., those dealing with audio and video).

Development of Transana, an open source product, has been funded primarily by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. The product was available for free, but starting this year, it is being sold (rather than being given away) in order to help continued development. The single-user version of Transana costs $50. The multi-user version of Transana costs $500.

I've not tried Transana, but have communicated with one group that has. I'd be interested in hearing from others who are using this. I'd especially like to hear what you're doing with the files you create with Tranana.

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Technorati tag: Analysis Software

LibraryLaw Blog asks that question in thinking about online databases and integrated library systems (ILS) that libraries use. But we have the same concern when it comes to searches run in our content management systems (or digital asset management systems or...). Mary Minow notes that you can write into a contact something about this, but that you also need to be sure that there is nothing that logs who has done what. I'm sure this is something we're not thinking about in a big way...

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Technorati tag: content management system

Someone left a comment on this post and also send me an e-mail message. Her message said in part:

I was very happy to find your blog and other resources about digitization and wondered if I could ask for some advice.

We are a public library in Australia wanting to purchase a digital archiving system. The initial use will be for Local History material and our Museum's collection. We are a longstanding customer of Dynix (nowSirsiDynix) so we would like to get ArchivalWare from PTFS. It looks very suitable for our needs and we can afford it. The vendor has told us that this product is much more feature-rich than Unicorn's Hyperion (Sirsi's product), but we have not evaluated any other products such as CONTENTdm or DigiTool.

I saw that you have been getting familar with these products at various conferences and demonstrations.

I suppose my questions are:

• It is easiest for us to just go with the Dynix-partnered product (at a very good price) as we liked it, we trust the vendor and their support but would you consider this a mistake?
• Would you consider that all 3 products have basically similar features and functions?

Here is my response. If anyone has additional advice or ideas, please leave a comment. Both she and I would appreciate it.

ArchivalWare and CONTENTdm are frequently the final two products a project will review before selecting one. ArchivalWare claims that it handle textual documents better than CONTENTdm. The reality is that any product will have its pluses and minuses. PTFS has said that in head-to-head comparisons, their product comes out better than CONTENTdm. That is their point of view. I've not seen an independent test of the two products.

I believe that SirsiDynix announced some changes in February/March, so first I would ask that you contact your SirsiDynix rep and find out the status of the products you're using. I don't want you to select ArchivalWare, if a change at SirsiDynix makes it then a bad decision.

Many of the organizations that I know who are selecting CONTENTdm do so because of (1) others around them are selecting it, (2) they know/assume it will work with other OCLC products, and (3) they believe/trust in OCLC. Of course, the features matter, but then you must look at the "other stuff." I think you're following the same logic. ArchivalWare should integrate with your other SirsiSynix products. You already are using SirsiDynix and trust them (hence you trust their partners).

Feature-wise, every product is similar yet different. Since it will be unreasonable for you to install and try the three products you mention, I would suggest that you look at projects that have used those products and perhaps speak to (e-mail) the people involved. For example, http://www.hrvh.org used CONTENTdm and http://soda.sou.edu/ used ArchivalWare. (I know there are many others, but those two came to my mind quickly.)

You might make some inquiries on library-related discussion lists to see what other opinions are out there. I'll post this notes in my blog and maybe some people will comment there.

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Technorati tags: Digitization, content management system