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There are many ways to present your yearbook series with CONTENTdm. This tutorial explains a

simple way to create a yearbook volume that will be fully searchable. If you already have your digital

scans, you can do the entire process on your desktop using the CONTENTdm Project Client and the

JPEG2000 format with the optional OCR Extension.

This is a multi-part tutorial:

• Section I covers planning

• Section II outlines preparation and processing

• Section III explains how to configure a collection

• Section IV shows how to create a yearbook

• Section V shows how to add items

• Section VI covers an alternative structure for presenting a yearbook

Note that this tutorial describes the simplest method for creating one yearbook using the (single)

Compound Object method. If you intend to build multiple yearbooks in one operation, there are

special requirements for folder naming and organization for the (multiple) Directory Structure and the

Object List methods. Please see the tutorial entitled Using the Add Compound Objects Wizard, especially page 29 on Setting up Directories.

Section I: Plan

You can easily create searchable digital versions of your print (or film) yearbooks by building CONTENTdm

compound objects. When creating digital yearbooks, consider what will be the important access points

for searching. Besides metadata or cataloging elements, your end users will expect to search on the text

content of your yearbooks, for example, students, events, teachers/faculty, organizations and more.

If your original yearbook is structured with chapters (or sections), and if you want to preserve the

structure in the digital version, you will build a monograph compound object. If you wish to present the

yearbook as a discrete set of sequential pages without chapters, you will build a document compound

object. These decisions impact how the digital scans should be named and organized.

Note: The CONTENTdm Responsive Website does not offer specific viewing support for monographs. Monographs are displayed as standard compound objects without hierarchy in the Responsive end-user interface.

Decide whether you will present continuous tone (grayscale) or color pages. Historically school

yearbooks were not widely printed in color until the 1970‟s. Based on the quality of the originals, the

CONTENTdm OCR Extension can be used effectively to deliver searchable text from the images; the

bit-depth and resolution impact the accuracy of the OCR (optical character recognition).

The following digitization specifications work well in many circumstances. Every project should be

prototyped first with a small sample.

• TIFF Images

• 8-bit grayscale (24-bit if full-color)

CONTENTdm Yearbook Guide

Creating a yearbook collection using CONTENTdm

CONTENTdm enables you to add school yearbooks, or “annuals,” and their associated

metadata to your digital library. You may build a separate collection for yearbooks, or you

may simply add them to your existing collections. End users can then search, retrieve and

view the yearbooks with Web browsers. This multi-part tutorial explains how to create a

yearbook collection using CONTENTdm.

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• 300 dpi

• Uncompressed

Section II: Prepare and Process—File and Folder Naming and Organization

File (Page) names: During the import process, you will be able to choose among several ways to label

the individual pages of your yearbook for display. You may choose to label them in a sequence (e.g.,

Page 1, Page 2, etc.), disregarding their file names for display purposes.

On the other hand, you may choose to use the digital file name in page display. If so, in deciding your

file-naming scheme, you will want to consider the rules for sorting and display (i.e., name your

scanned files so that they start with a machine-friendly sort prefix and include a descriptive portion

for display). The sorting prefix and the file extension will be ignored for display purposes. For

example, 0010_Tennis Team.tif will sort before 0011_Gymnastics Team.tif and in the compound

object navigation window, their page names will display as:

Tennis Team

Gymnastics Team

Sections and their names: You will need one folder (directory) for each compound object you will

import. You may choose to display the folder names as section titles if you are creating a monograph; if

so, they follow the same sorting and display conventions described above for files. Files and folders are

organized according to whether you wish to build Documents or Monographs.

Documents: All pages comprising a single yearbook are placed into the same folder (e.g., the screen

shot below shows a folder with scanned files only; i.e., there are no chapter breakouts).

Monographs: All pages comprising a single yearbook are placed into the same parent folder, each in its

appropriate sub-folder. For example, the screen shot below shows subfolders indicating chapter

breakouts.

Note also that the “cover” page is numbered such that it will display first, before the first chapter is

opened.

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The following screen emphasizes that folders and individual pages can be named and ordered to provide

a detailed display—the folder names will become the section/chapter display name and each page will be

named for its file name.

Section III: Configure the Collection

Follow these step-by-step instructions:

1. Go to the CONTENTdm Administration > Collections tab.

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2. Under Profile, scroll down to find the Optional collection settings summary.

3. Edit the Display image settings to make sure that you will generate the display images in JPEG2000

format from full-resolution images.

4. Under fields, we suggest a minimum shown in the following screenshot, though you may use up to 125

fields:

To achieve fully searchable dates, you must set the Date field to data type date, make it

searchable and map it to a Dublin Core date field such as DC.Date.Issued. In this example we have

named the field Year Published.

To achieve fully-searchable text, you must configure one searchable field of data type Full text

search. This is the field where you will store the results of the OCR process during import.

o Yearbook Title—as published

o Organization—yearbook chronicles a year at this institution

o Location—the geographic place of the organization

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o Transcript—this field holds the searchable text, captions, titles, etc.

o Tag—an internal „notes‟ field for use by the cataloger for maintenance purposes

o Source—save the digital filename in some field; here, we chose “Source”

You may decide to make any or all fields Required. (The DC.Title field is always required to create a

CONTENTdm record.)

Section IV: Configure a Project to Build a Yearbook

You will want to take advantage of the Project Client‟s power before you begin to add your digitized

items. Setting consistent project options and metadata templates are efficient ways to control the

accurate and automatic generation of metadata. Regardless of the file-types of your source images, you

can configure a template to extract technical metadata, such as the name or size of the digital file, or

replicate descriptive metadata, such as your organization‟s name. Using templates, you will streamline

data entry while ensuring high-quality, consistent metadata records.

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1. Create a New Project on the Project Client.

2. From the left task pane, choose Edit Metadata Templates

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For each type of source file that you will use to build your yearbook,

Edit the template and fill in these values: a) Populate all incoming records with any text constant

(e.g., store your organization‟s name or location in its appropriate field.) b) Automatically generate

variable metadata values to record individual page file names, file sizes and file formats. c) After

saving each, check the box next to each template file type to apply it to your yearbook images. Note

that each template must be configured and applied in order to take effect, and that multiple file

types can be in use at any time

This shows the metadata

template configured for use with

full resolution TIF images.

TIPS: Store a unique textual string in some hidden, searchable field so that you can later retrieve every

page of the yearbook for editing purposes; here we used the Tag field. Always store the digital file name

in a metadata field; here we used the Source field.

3. If you have not yet used your OCR Extension on your Project Client, activate the OCR license in the

Project Settings Manager. Click Edit Project Settings from the left task pane and select OCR.

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4. From the left task pane choose Add Compound Objects. When the dialog box opens, choose thedefault Compound Object and click Add

Section V: Add Items to Build a Yearbook

Choose Document (or Monograph)

Assuming your files are in proper folder order, and you are not using the more advanced

tab-delimited method, answer No to the question in the bottom of the screen.

[Note: To create a yearbook with chapter structures, select Monograph. See Sections and their

names on page 2, above, to review how to name and organize your files for chapter break-outs.)

a) Use digital scans that have been organized and named appropriately for the document or

monograph compound object.

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b) You may accept or override the collection-level configuration choice regarding display

images at this point.

c) You will choose how you wish to name the

individual pages of the yearbook. Here we

take advantage of the fact that each

digital file bears the full name and page

number of the yearbook.

d) Click Finish to add the yearbook to the

project spreadsheet. You may open it to

its own tab for further reviewing and

editing, or upload it to the collection.

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e) Load the yearbook to

the collection

pending queue for

approval.

f) Go to CONTENTdm

Administration to

approve and index

the yearbook into

your collection.

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Section VI: Creating a Yearbook as a Monograph

The steps required to build a yearbook as a Monograph—i.e., with hierarchical chapters and sections—are

the same as those described above for a Document, with one exception.

When you select “monograph” in the Import compound object wizard, it expects the files to be

arranged in folders and subfolders as described above in Section II: Prepare and process—File and

folder naming and organization.

When viewed in its Item tab in the Project Client, the Crestview Yearbook for 1967 would be

structured as a monograph. That is, it would display the original yearbook‟s organization (preserved

in the proper folders and subfolders) with chapters, sections and pages named accordingly: