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Please note: This grant proposal narrative has been modified in order to eliminate references to certain confidential information.

NATIONAL IMPACT The increasing use of pictures as a means of communication and enrichment in modern culture resulted from the explosive growth of the printing arts, including advancements in photography and photolithography, at the turn of the 20th century. Within two years of the opening of its central building in 1911, The New York Public Library (NYPL) found itself overwhelmed with requests for prints from a subject point of view. Most of the requests came from artists and illustrators in the burgeoning graphic arts industries and cultural enterprises, including movie studios and vaudeville theatres, publishing companies, advertising agencies, and fashion houses, as well as city history clubs and schools. In 1914, the Library’s Circulation Department began saving plates, posters, postcards, and photographs for lending to the new type of “reader.” Donations poured in, and by 1915, nearly 18,000 pictures had been prepared for circulation. Today, the Picture Collection, housed on the third floor of the Mid-Manhattan Library, a central library in NYPL’s branch library system, is a magnificent and unique circulating and reference archive of approximately one million images— illustrations clipped from books, magazines, newspapers, and catalogues, as well as postcards, prints, and photographs— organized under nearly 12,000 subject headings. One of the most expansive, publicly accessible picture collections in the world, it is a treasure trove of information for an estimated 60,000 visitors annually from all over the world, who come to use, free of charge, the eclectic, topic-oriented collection for research and inspiration. Materials in the Picture Collection circulate 380,000 times annually. Major categories in the collection include advertising, architecture, decorative arts and other forms of design, costumes and fashion, flora and fauna, personalities, and places. The Picture Collection staff built and organized so diverse and comprehensive a collection that other libraries, corporations, and governments from around the world have studied its structure and consulted its librarians in order to apply its lessons to their own picture libraries. The Reference File of the Picture Collection developed when wear and tear on circulating items became detrimental to the images. Some of the images in the Reference File were published as early as the 1600s, while other items are just recently out of copyright— only 75 years old. In addition to illustrations, postcards, and photographs, the Collection includes linecuts, steel engravings, chromolithographs, and images produced by many different processes, both in black-and-white and in color— all selected for the informational value of the image. Materials in the Reference File are located in closed stacks and are not accessible to the public without staff assistance. Unlike other picture archives, the Picture Collection compiles images not for use by a collector or an institution, but for use by the general public. Therefore, although some of the materials in the collection exist in various, disparate archives, the Picture Collection’s images have been united and organized in a comprehensive and contextually significant way. Librarians have selected and cross-indexed this compilation of pictures in a manner that facilitates its use by many different user groups. A single image can prove useful to many, yielding information on, for instance, geography, nature, customs, architecture, social conditions, and dress during a specific period. Integral to the construction of the collection was the recognition that pictures are powerful tools with which to document and make accessible information about contemporary culture. In addition to serving as a resource to the public and to other picture archives, the Picture Collection has contributed its materials to help other major divisions within The New York Public Library develop. For example, the Picture Collection culled important prints, photographs, and plates on African American

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subjects, including duplicate photographs donated by the Farm Security Administration, and provided them to the Library’s Division of Negro History, Literature and Prints. Today, those materials are a vital part of the collections at the Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The Picture Collection continues to thrive as an essential resource for New York City’s creative communities and for visitors who come from around the world. The items in the collection constitute invaluable resources for knowledge, understanding, and scholarship. As the world moves toward becoming an increasingly visually oriented and singular global society, people at every intellectual level have come to read visual images in ways that are as sophisticated as the manner in which text is read. Images provide information that cannot be perceived through any other means. They substantiate a perception of reality fixed in time, and reflect the focus of the individual photographer, illustrator, or artist. The Picture Collection’s Reference File holds approximately two hundred thousand out-of-copyright images. The Library proposes to select and digitize a total of 30,000 pictures from this archive, primarily prints, photographs, and clippings from books and magazines published from the 1700s to the early 20th century, and make them accessible to the public via the World Wide Web. Selections will be made from the most frequently sought-after subjects, among them: Costume, American History, New York City, African American History and African American Life, Pioneer Life, Exploration, and Slavery and Slaveships. Included in the project is the very popular Personalities collection of approximately 10,000 photographic and print portraits of historical personages. Within these categories are approximately 400 subcategories, organized primarily by subject, such as “Slavery-Ancient” and “Slavery-U.S.”. These materials are frequently used by researchers and are heavily handled. Approximately 85% of these selections have been carefully preserved on acid-free paper or sleeved in mylar. The other 15% require protection as well as digitization. Although a small minority of the materials slated for digitization may be located in other, disparate archives, and some may already exist in digital form, this project will digitize all images selected in order to preserve the unique groupings, juxtaposition, and organization of the image library. The Internet and the technology of digital imaging are revolutionizing how pictures are retrieved and utilized. Digitizing materials in the Picture Collection will open it to universal audiences, with varying interests, research needs, and usage patterns. The Library’s research, conducted for another digital project, shows that the potential audience for digital collections, including educators and students at the primary, secondary, and college levels, is most strongly interested in obtaining access to visual materials from the institution’s collections. The Library’s study, compiled by an independent marketing consultant in December 1997, showed that primary and secondary school educators considered graphic materials highly important in eliciting a strong degree of student response and interaction. College educators and scholars considered graphic materials very meaningful in many disciplines, citing the importance of iconographic research for social history and the history of the visual and performing arts. To address the needs of students and teachers, the project will also encourage the use of the digital Picture Collection in school curricula. Collection use guidelines, or user guides, produced in the project will illustrate how to navigate and utilize pictorial and primary source materials for study and instruction. The guides will be designed to correspond to curriculum guidelines used by schools (K-12) throughout New York State or those recommended for use in schools across the country. An advisory panel consisting of eight to ten representatives of current and potential user groups, e.g., school librarians, curators and librarians of special collections, historians, researchers, teachers, publishers, illustrators, designers, and artists, will assist the project by recommending selection criteria and critiquing methodology, as well as contributing to the content development of the guides. The participation of the advisory group will ensure that project activities are relevant to the needs of users.

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An evaluation undertaken during the project will examine how the project is meeting the needs of different user groups in interacting with image-based digital resources and other new information types. The assessment will provide information that enables the meaningful utilization of these resources. Its usership differentiates the Picture Collection from many other institutions that hold visual materials, including NYPL’s Research Libraries. The Picture Collection’s archives are housed within The Branch Libraries of The New York Public Library, a division that offers circulating and reference materials and library programming to mainstream users of all ages in the general public. As a result, the impact of this project reaches beyond the typical research audience. Digitization will further expand the range of users by delivering the materials to those outside the Picture Collection’s primary audience. The experience gained by implementing this project will help The Branch Libraries plan future digital efforts for a general audience.

ADAPTABILITY Along with the new technologies come challenges for today’s picture librarians and curators. With the advent of the global village via the Internet, picture librarians have to consider the notion of universal access and its cross-cultural, cross-linguistic implications. Users who access the collections electronically do not have the assistance of on-site librarians to help them locate items to meet specific needs. Instead, an on-line collection must accommodate a number of access points to a picture’s subject content. In the digital age, librarians are in a position to craft new standards for visual materials. In most early attempts at subject cataloging of visual materials, catalogers simply approached pictures as if they were books. As a result, they failed to tap the multiple uses and meanings of pictorial materials and to organize them into accessible subject headings. Changes in language and terminology, along with obscure subject arrangements, often diminished the potential of the images for use. Each user group has its own way of describing the materials needed, and different requirements and interests in accessing and using them. The Picture Collection staff addressed these issues by cross-indexing materials and incorporating subject terms that reflected the evolving nomenclature of various industries and user groups. Current technology permits images to be provided and indexed in multidimensional ways. Institutions may devise access methodologies that serve multiple groups and open access to a more diverse user base. The Library’s experience meeting these intellectual access requirements in an electronic environment can be shared with other picture libraries to inform not only digitization and access but also cataloging efforts. To expand the reach and relevance of the project, the Library will produce collection use guidelines, or user guides, that cover how to utilize visual materials for research within an electronic environment and how teachers, particularly those in elementary and secondary schools, can integrate them into instruction. The guides will address the use of pictorial and primary source material in the study of subject areas represented in the digital Picture Collection. Sections of the guides will be designed to correspond to the curriculum guidelines adopted by schools throughout New York State or those recommended for use in schools across the country. A subcommittee of the advisory panel, comprised of teachers and school and public librarians familiar with the requirements of the curricula and this user base, will explore the integration of electronic resources into teaching and learning and assist in the development of the guides. Input from teachers will be critical, particularly since, to date, much of this material is used by those studying history and art. The guides, which will be posted on the Library’s web site and made available for distribution to schools and other picture libraries, will be part of the Library’s model for expanding access to visual materials. By illustrating new ways of utilizing the pictorial materials, these guides will assist other picture libraries in their own digital efforts.

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DESIGN The Reference File of the Picture Collection holds approximately two hundred thousand images. The Picture Collection’s Supervising and Senior Librarians, with input from the advisory committee, will prioritize approximately 30,000 pictures from among the most popular categories in the Reference File: Costume, American History, New York City, African American History and African American Life, Pioneer Life, Exploration, Slavery and Slaveships, and Personalities. The images will be primarily print, photographs, and clippings from books and magazines published from the 1700s to the early 20th century. Of the 30,000 images, 85% have been mounted on acid-free paper or sleeved in mylar. The remaining 4,500 items will be sleeved in mylar to enable them to be safely handled for digitization. Although a small minority of the materials slated for digitization may be located in other, disparate archives, and some may already exist in digital form, this project will digitize all images selected in order to preserve the unique groupings, juxtaposition, and organization of the image library. Under the supervision of the Manager of Bibliographic Systems, collection-level catalog records will be created for groups of images, sorted by subject. The collection-level records will comply with national cataloging and library standards, i.e., Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition revised, Library of Congress MARC Name and Subject Authorities, and a file naming scheme to be determined by project staff. Cataloging will incorporate established terms from the Library of Congress Subject Headings, Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, and those developed by the Picture Collection librarians, which conform to the changing terminology employed by users over time. An Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) system label will be generated for each collection-level record created. The records will be entered into the Library Entrance Online (LEO), The Branch Libraries’ on-line catalog, and into the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) bibliographic utility. Additionally, metadata records will be created, containing three types of information: descriptive information relating to the image and its source, technical information (e.g., file size, pixel dimensions, bit depth) relating to the digital image that is created during capture and then integrated into the database, and administrative information such as copyright status and location. Metadata content will be defined, according to NYPL and national standards, prior to beginning the project to ensure that cataloging activities capture all relevant data, thereby providing the fullest possible access to the digitized images. Data will be manually entered into a Microsoft Access database. Together these descriptive, technical, and administrative fields form the base metadata element set that NYPL will use to record information on all digital resources it produces. Tables created using Microsoft Access will be transferred to Informix, which will act as a central data depository and will form the basis for the search, browse, and navigational tools on the project web site, the primary means of public access to the images and data. Microsoft Access has been chosen as a front end for data entry because of its ready availability, its graphical user interface, and its proven compatibility with Informix, a database management system used widely by NYPL and other institutions for sophisticated network applications. The Library will hire outside contractors to digitize all materials. Scanning specifications will be developed by the Associate Director for Technical and Computer Services in consultation with the Head of the Digital Imaging Unit in The Research Libraries and based on specifications for similar materials. Each original item will be reproduced as a set of three digital images. Once captured, a raw, uncompressed TIFF 6.0 file will be saved to CD-ROM in the ISO 9660 standard and will be archived as a master file. Complying with the Library of Congress’ RFP 97-9 specifications, these master files will have appropriate information placed in the TIFF tag headers. In order for the digital images to open in all software packages, the TIFF header tags will be sorted in ascending numerical order. Once the master

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files are written to CD-ROM disks, reference files will be created for the study of high-resolution details of the pictures. These files will be generated using wavelet-based image compressing software called Multi-Resolution Seamless Image Database (MrSID). This software integrates multiple resolutions of an image in a single file, enabling on-line viewers to zoom in for more and more detail. These images will be compressed at a ratio of 20-30:1 without experiencing any significant loss of information. The viewer may also download MrSID files and the MrSID image viewer for off-line use. A set of service files will also be generated from the master files at 3000 pixels for public service print orders for reference and reproduction purposes. These files will be rotated, sharpened, and optimized for writing onto separate CD-ROM disks. In addition to data preparation and maintenance, the database will also support dynamic web-based presentation of items. The Associate Director for Technical and Computer Services, working with the Branch Libraries Web Coordinator and the Information Technology Group at the Library, will oversee the loading of the digital images to the web server and the incorporation of records with Informix software. The metadata database will be linked to the web site to allow users to search for and retrieve the actual images along with image information. The digital images will be linked with the records. The Library will provide a local search interface on its web site. Web site design will involve both technical and public service staff to ensure that it reflects an understanding of how the public uses pictures, addresses the kinds of questions and search terms commonly used by researchers, and takes advantage of the visual nature of the material. The web user interface will work largely through the metadata, using a navigation bar and search options allowing users to do general or fielded searches or browse the collection by fields such as subject, source, medium, and artist/creator. The site will enable visitors to select multiple images for viewing, as well as order prints. The cataloging information and the supplementary metadata will make the images and information created in this project available and useful to a wide range of researchers, artistic professionals, students, and casual browsers. The Branch Libraries Web Coordinator and the Picture Collection’s Supervising Librarian will be responsible for the final design and functionality of the site. The digital Picture Collection web site will be mounted and accessible toward the end of the second year of the grant. The web site for the collection will be directly accessible from the Library’s Picture Collection homepage, Digital Library web site, and LEO, The Branch Libraries’ on-line catalog. LEO is accessed nearly 624,000 times each month, while the Digital Library web site logs more than 30,000 users each month. In addition to the access provided through the Library’s web page and on-line catalog, all catalog records will be loaded into OCLC. In the digitization process, the Library will adopt best practices for each activity. Project staff will establish quality control models at the onset of the project to ensure that exact standards and specifications are met at every stage. Records will be checked for completeness and accuracy. Digital images will be examined to ensure, for example, that the complete item has been captured, that proper cropping has been applied, that variations in the condition of the original material have been accounted for, and that images are visible and will open and display properly. The Library will also pursue activities that expand the reach of the project, as well as investigate how the project can best serve the Picture Collection’s users. Complementary guides developed during the project will demonstrate how users can navigate the new resources and how teachers can integrate pictorial materials into their curricula. The digital environment is challenging libraries to revise and rethink the kinds of materials they offer and the ways in which they present them. During the project, the Library will analyze user research needs in interacting with image-based resources in an electronic environment. The evaluation, discussed later in this proposal, will enable NYPL to develop a strategy for the delivery of digital images within its local network and beyond, and create a model for other institutions.

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Guided by an advisory panel, these project activities will yield significant new resources for researchers, teachers, students, artistic professionals, and the general public. In addition, the Library’s undertaking of this project will produce valuable lessons for the benefit of picture libraries around the world.

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE

The New York Public Library has an institutional commitment to digitize its extensive, outstanding resources to serve an increasingly broad audience. Digital efforts have so far focused on Research Libraries collections, which have enabled the Library to build an infrastructure for the digital collections and to develop staff experience. This project will be the first to digitize the unique and valuable collections in The Branch Libraries. The Branch Libraries will benefit from the experiences of The Research Libraries, which has placed NYPL at the forefront among libraries in using digital technology to expand access to its collections to a global audience. The Library launched its World Wide Web site in 1994, and it now receives 16 million hits per month, with visitors from every region of the United States and from more than 125 different countries. Among the most important parts of the site is the Digital Library Collection, managed by the NYPL Research Libraries, where digital reproductions from the Library’s expansive research holdings can be found (http://www.digital.nypl.org). NYPL has demonstrated an institutional commitment to preserving and expanding access to its collections through the use of digital technology. Over the next five years, The Research Libraries will continue to move in this direction, with plans to add 600,000 digital prints, engravings, photographs, maps, and other visual images from its collections to the web site. Project staff will draw upon the expertise of members of The Research Libraries’ Preservation Division and Digital Imaging Unit to plan and implement the project. NYPL is a founding member of Digital Library Federation (DLF) and a member of the Research Libraries Group (RLG). NYPL staff members are active participants in many of the committees established by DLF and RLG, examining issues of digital practice. A staff member of Digital Imaging Unit, for example, is in the subgroup for Locally Digitized Materials of the RLG/DLF Task Force on Policy & Practice for Long Term Retention of Digital Materials. The Branch Libraries will gain insight from the experience of The Research Libraries and move circulating materials for a general audience to an on-line environment. All work will adhere to nationally recognized standards for each activity. The national standard of Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition revised, and Library of Congress MARC Name and Subject Authorities will serve as the basis for cataloging. For access, existing Picture Collection subject headings, Library of Congress Subject Headings, Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, and established name headings, accessible via OCLC, will be utilized. When supplemental authority work is necessary, standard reference sources will be consulted. The digital imaging component of the project will use techniques that conform to current best practices for digital projects, following examples set by the Library of Congress’ American Memory Project, and other member institutions of the Digital Library Federation. The planned metadata elements are similar to those recommended in the Final Report of the RLG Working Group on Preservation Issues of Metadata (http://www.rlg.org/preserv/presmeta.html), to which NYPL preservation staff contributed. The Research Libraries’ experience with digital projects has created an infrastructure from which The Branch Libraries will benefit. However, The Branch Libraries will bring to the project its tradition of public service, which will contribute valuable insight into how to provide user access to the digital collection. The New York Public Library’s cultivation of unique collections, experience with digital

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projects, and partnerships established through programming and outreach make it the ideal institution to develop a digital Picture Collection.

MANAGEMENT PLAN The preliminary step in this initiative was accomplished when a preservation planning survey for the Picture Collection was carried out in December 1997. The survey identified a need to initiate preservation activities that protect popular materials, many of which were deteriorating from excessive use. It is the frequently sought, old materials in the Reference File that are the focus of this project. However, due to wear and tear, these materials are now housed in closed stacks, with access severely restricted. Digitization will make these materials available for ready access, even to on-site users of the Collection. The director of the grant project will be the Picture Collection’s Supervising Librarian, who will be assisted by a Senior Librarian. The Senior Librarian will be hired at the start of the project. The Project Director will coordinate the design of the project, timelines, payment procedures, and schedules; develop, with the assistance of Picture Collection and appropriate staff, performance standards; chair the advisory panel, calling meetings and documenting their decisions; coordinate with library personnel of various expertise regarding technical, cataloging, administrative, and web issues; oversee staff, vendor, and material selection; oversee productivity standards, performance issues, and budget expenditures; and report on the progress of the project to Library administration, funding sources, and other institutions. Picture Collection staff have received training, through outside workshops and working with Research Libraries staff members responsible for digitization, that will enable them to contribute to the oversight and implementation of the project. Oversight of the project will also be provided by the Associate Director of Central Library Services, who has more than twenty years of experience in library management, as well as extensive experience in grant project management. The advisory panel will provide guidance to the project on matters ranging from materials selection to content development for the user guides. Archival CD-ROMs of all digital files will be maintained in an Iron Mountain storage facility, a stable, environmentally controlled facility that meets all conservation standards and procedures described in ANSI’s American National Standard for Imaging Media-Processed Safety Photograph Film-Storage, its updates, and other relevant standards. NYPL has made a full commitment to meeting the long-term preservation needs of digitally stored information, and staff is charged with continuously monitoring the development of this and other new information technology. In order to ensure that the value, integrity, and quality of data are preserved, planning for the systematic maintenance, upgrade, and eventual migration to newer technologies is considered an ongoing process. The metadata will serve an important function in the preservation of the digital files. The technical data recorded in the metadata will permit the Library to systematically test, copy, and refresh the archival digital files and assist the orderly migration of data to new formats as they develop in the future.

BUDGET

Regular monitoring of the budget will be performed by the Project Director in consultation with The Branch Libraries’ Manager of Budget and Analysis. All purchases will be made according to set procedures through the Library’s Purchasing Office to ensure cost effectiveness. NYPL will contribute the salaries of its permanent staff. The attached Budget Notes provide additional detail.

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EVALUATION

The aim of the project is to create a substantial electronic collection to support research, scholarship, and teaching and to introduce these materials to new audiences globally. The program will include an evaluation component to investigate issues of concern to intended users and to picture libraries developing digital archives. A consulting firm, working with project staff and with the advisory committee, will analyze user needs in interacting with image-based resources, employing print and on-line surveys, focus groups, and interviews with user groups. Advisory panel of researchers, librarians, teachers, designers, publishers, artists, and historians will assist in identifying specific research issues. By producing a major digital collection of visual resources, the Library will create a valuable testbed for researching user needs and expectations in the organization, management, and display of image-based collections. Assessment will be designed based upon the Picture Collection’s wide usership, and will be expected to consider the needs of many user groups. Audiences to be addressed include those traditionally served by the Library’s Picture Collection and the vastly enlarged pool of “virtual visitors” who will make use of these resources through electronic media. One of the project’s challenges in making this collection available electronically is to transfer the Picture Collection’s unique access methodologies to an on-line environment. Although adept cataloging and metadata creation are the primary means of ensuring that users will be able to find what they need, the search mechanism and web site infrastructure must be designed in ways that produce or replicate the current collection’s innate groupings, making it useful to many kinds of researchers through many access points. The Picture Collection’s strength is as a compilation of images selected for their informational value, browsable by users to build knowledge about specific dates and events, customs and practices, or design and styles. Therefore, the evaluation may look at whether the project creates a true electronic library environment that meets the needs of its varied user groups. An examination of trends in multidisciplinary digital libraries reveals the challenge: “The very size of digital libraries begs the question of how average users will continue to find context and meaning. Skilled researchers are also affected. Researchers crave flexibility, multiple pathways… The image of the academic specialist, searching the shelves for a serendipitous connection may seem quaint, but it remains powerful. The challenge for the digital library is to preserve this opportunity in cyberspace.”[1] The Picture Collection has been organized and cross-indexed in a way that facilitates research and inspiration. One of the goals of the project is to preserve these methods of access, while further tailoring it to the new user demands contained within the digital environment. Evaluation conducted on the Making of America digital project developed by Cornell University and the University of Michigan indicated that librarians, educators, and students preferred power search tools, rapid access, and realistic viewing and navigation.[2] Once the web site is launched, print and on-line surveys will be used to determine the success of the user interface and web site infrastructure, investigating how a broad range of visual data for research and teaching is best delivered, how the availability of accompanying data may be signaled, and the ease of display, sorting, and retrieval. These instruments will solicit feedback and collect information on user preferences, such as navigational tools and buttons, links to complementary resources, and suggestions for additional subject terms. Since the Picture Collection is currently used on-site by tens of thousands of people, the Library has a rare opportunity to conduct user assessment not available to collections that are accessible only in digital form. Users who come to the Mid-Manhattan Library can be directed to the digital version of the materials they are seeking, and can immediately assess whether the format, structure, and accessibility of the materials meet their needs. The expectations, needs, and perspectives of new audiences are challenging libraries to revise and rethink the kinds of materials they offer and the ways in which they present them. On the web site, displaying single images in a serial fashion may be sufficient for some users, while others need to view images comparatively in groups. Publishers may wish to peruse groups of images and order prints directly via the

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World Wide Web. Art historians may wish to pan and zoom in on details of a larger image. By convening focus groups and conducting interviews with user groups to investigate research and access needs, the project will help users interact with visual resources in more meaningful ways and design systems to support new kinds of functionality, including overview and preview mechanisms designed to facilitate the exploration of blocks of images. Recent research identified the ability to “compare and contrast,” “move the pages around,” and “get a feel for the organization” as important for studying information in an electronic environment.[3] Interviews and focus groups attended by users will help determine how digital materials can facilitate lifelong learning, K-12 instruction, and independent research. Information will be collected from educators and students on how the materials and learning tools such as the user guides may support instruction in the classroom. Findings from the evaluation will be disseminated both to Library staff and to outside professional groups. These measures will enable the Library to develop a strategy for the delivery of digital images within its local network and beyond, and create a model for other institutions.

DISSEMINATION

The New York Public Library will disseminate information on the development of its digital library collections, so that other institutions may benefit from its experience. Research will be disseminated at meetings of teachers groups, educational forums, and professional and industry meetings— e.g., American Library Association (ALA), Special Libraries Association (SLA), New York Library Association (NYLA), Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO)— focusing on digital libraries, pictorial collections, technology, and the visual arts. The Library will include on its web site information that documents research questions and findings. The goal is to share lessons learned with the global library and museum community and help identify best practices for digital picture libraries. Another web site, on the Library’s Intranet, will keep all interested staff informed of the project’s progress, as well as make project documents, including the evaluation findings, available to involved staff. In this way, the Library will increase capacity and knowledge within NYPL and support staff development. The Library will also offer a half-day summer or fall orientation to reference staff of The Branch Libraries that covers the digitized images, their potential user groups, and access methodology. The Library will also take advantage of its already-established working relationships with local schools through the Connecting Schools and Libraries Program (CLASP) to communicate the increased availability and expand the usership of the digital collection.

SUSTAINABILITY The digital collection will be housed on the Library’s web site, making it available for access over the long term. The collection web site will be directly accessible from the Library’s Picture Collection home page, LEO catalog, and Digital Library web site. Assessment conducted during the project will enable the Library to identify and address the major research issues faced by the Picture Collection’s audience, with direct influence upon the design and structure of the site. In addition, this research will inform future Branch Libraries digital projects aimed at general audiences, as well as initiatives at other picture libraries. User guides developed under the project will also serve to expand the reach of the project beyond the funding period. They will be instrumental in helping users conduct research on pictorial material within an electronic environment. Artists, historians, students, and companies alike will find new methods of

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utilizing the images for research and inspiration. The guides will also enable teachers to learn about visual resources that can be integrated into instruction. Students will benefit from accessing the digital archive in order to study primary source material that can give dimension and life to a historical event. NYPL has an institutional commitment to preserving and expanding access to its collections through the use of digital technology. Over the next five years, The Research Libraries will continue to move in this direction, with plans to add 600,000 digital prints, engravings, photographs, maps, and other visual images from its collections to the web site. Staff is charged with continuously monitoring the development of this and other new information technology. In order to ensure that the value, integrity, and quality of data are preserved, planning for the systematic maintenance, upgrade, and eventual migration to newer technologies is considered an ongoing process. This grant will allow The Branch Libraries to initiate its first digital project, in consultation with the more experienced Research Libraries division. The staff expertise gained from this initiative will equip The Branch Libraries to pursue digitization for other unique and valuable collections, as well as for additional materials in the Picture Collection.

INFORMATION ACCESS The newly available digital Picture Collection will be publicized through a variety of venues. The user guides developed under this project will be distributed to schools and other picture libraries. The project’s advisory committee, comprised of school librarians, curators and librarians of special collections, historians, researchers, teachers, publishers, illustrators, designers, and artists, will assist in promoting the new resource for use in their respective fields. Furthermore, the Library’s already established working relationships with local schools, such as those formed through CLASP (Connecting Libraries and Schools Program), will enable it to easily communicate the new availability of the digital collection. Presentations about the digital collection will be made by Library staff at professional conferences. In addition, the digital collection will be housed on the Library’s web site and will be accessible from the Picture Collection and Digital Library home pages, as well as from Library Entrance Online, the on-line catalog of The Branch Libraries. The Library’s Public Relations Office will publicize the site through the use of press releases, targeting both general interest and industry publications. With the support of public and private funds, The New York Public Library has taken significant strides toward making its unique collections available in digital format to millions of scholars, writers, researchers, and students in their homes, schools, and libraries across the United States and the world. With a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Library will be able to create a digital Picture Collection, building upon its other outstanding digital collections, expertise in the digital arena, and a long tradition of public service. Once completed, the project will make globally accessible 30,000 frequently sought images for use by the general public for research and inspiration. The Library expects that the lessons learned through this project and the increased visibility for the Picture Collection, through the web site and the user guides, will help attract future funding for the digitization of additional materials in the Picture Collection and in other collections in The Branch Libraries. The collection created under this project will join important digital archives of the four research centers of The New York Public Library, making available an exhaustive resource that will be an important addition to students and researchers everywhere. [1] Huwe, Terence K. “New search tools for multidisciplinary digital libraries,” Online, Wilton 23(2), Mar/Apr 1999, 67-74. [2] Kilker and Gay, “The social construction of a digital library: A case study examining implications for evaluation,” Information Technology and Libraries 17(2), Chicago, June 1998, 60-70. [3] Ibid.