Digital Library Design Proposal

For the Margaret Chase Smith Library

By Hannah Luce

610:553 Digital Libraries Term Project – Spring 2016

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I. Proposal Summary

This proposal serves as a framework for the planning of a Digital Library, created through the digitization of documents, books, photos, video, audio, and memorabilia collected by the Margaret Chase Smith Library. Sections II through IX of this proposal outline the purpose of creating a digital library, the selection of content and its digitization, as well as how it will be presented and organized as a website; the management, preservation, and evaluation of the Digital Library are discussed in the final sections.

II. About

The purpose of this Digital Library Design is to propose and plan a digital library for the Margaret Chase Smith Library, physically located in Skowhegan, Maine. Mrs. Smith, a native of Skowhegan, served Maine in the United States House of Representatives for four terms, starting in 1940. In 1948 she was elected into the United States Senate, where she served until 1972. She was the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress. In 1964, Senator Smith, a Republican, became the first woman of either political party to be on a ballot for the Presidential nomination. Senator Smith’s groundbreaking and prominent career set the groundwork for her library, which opened in 1982. Senator Smith passed in 1995, and her Library stands now as a testament to her career. Today the Library serves as a Congressional research library, archive, and museum.

The users of the Margaret Chase Smith Library are “admirers, former constituents, politicians, policymakers, researchers, and school children” (Biography). The library frequently gets research inquiries for the primary documents they have in their collection. The collection contains (approximately) 300,000 documents, 540 scrapbooks, 6,000 photos, 2500 books, many datebooks and front office notes from Senator Smith’s offices in Washington, D.C., and Maine, audio and video recordings of Senator Smith’s public appearances and interviews, as well as the museum items which are not all currently cataloged, but contains about 5,000 articles. The Library is an addition built on to Senator Smith’s personal residence, and her former home serves to display many items significant to her career and personal life:

Senator Smith's residence and its furniture, ceramics, textiles, household items, clothing, and other personal belongings; memorabilia related to her congressional career and subsequent political campaigns; souvenirs and gifts from around the world, reflecting her activities with state, national, and world leaders; her awards and honorary degrees; and paintings and photographs. (Library & Museum, Margaret Chase Smith Library).

Some of the most commonly-requested library materials have been digitized, for example documents have been scanned as PDFs that can be emailed to researchers, but the great majority has not been digitized. The Library has, in recent years, shared photographs with the Maine Historical Society for its own digitization project. The Library has spent significant time over the last few years looking into digitization of its collection, including applying for

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grants and considering collaboration with other groups. While none of these endeavors has yet come to fruition, there is certainly cause for the Margaret Chase Smith (MCS) Library to move ahead to create a plan to establish an online library.

Before undertaking a digitization project, the Library must justify the incredible investment of time and money. Digital libraries are not short-term, one-off projects; they require continued management. Yes, a digital library provides backup and recovery, and it allows for access of content, but more importantly a digital library must have a goal of preserving its content for the long term (Corrado and Moulaison, 2014, p. 14); this is because, as Corrado and Moulaison state, “traditional information sources such as books, photos, and sculptures can easily survive for years, decades, or even centuries, but digital items are fragile and require special care to keep them useable” (2014, p. 7). So the question remains, why should the MCS Library make this investment? As a public figure, Senator Smith notably served the people of Maine and the United States Congress during a time of great change and extraordinary significance societally: World War II, the Cold War and McCarthy Era, and Vietnam. Additionally, as a woman, Senator Smith blazed an undeniable trail in US politics. The MCS Library holds the exceptional records of Senator Smith’s life and times. In their book Digital history: A guide to gathering, preserving, and presenting the past on the Web, Cohen and Rosenzweig remark that “Online accessibility means… that the documentary record of the past is open to people who rarely had entre before” (2005, Introduction, para. 13). And this is where the MCS Library has an opportunity to provide access to important primary sources that are not fully available from afar; interested individuals must visit the Library to fully experience and fully access the impressive collection, most of which is in the public domain, as Senator Smith was a public figure. Creating a digital library to reflect the importance of Senator Smith’s life would spark interest, cultivate awareness of her legacy, and could drive more patrons to visit the physical Library. The sections that follow will outline a plan to select and digitize the physical materials, then organize, present, and maintain them.

In the following sections, I will address the digital content, organization - with examples of how content will be presented in a website format, discuss the issues of representations, access, services, and management.

III. Digital Library Content

The Margaret Chase Smith Library’s collection, as mentioned above, is made up of many types of materials, and is quite extensive. The physical collection is arranged in ten categories:

1. Articles 2. Audio 3. Books 4. Cartoons 5. Front office notes 6. Photographs

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7. Reference 8. Scrapbooks 9. Statements and speeches 10. Washington and You (Library and Museum, Margaret Chase Smith Library)

More than 300,000 primary source documents make up these categories. Examples include: correspondence between Senator Smith and government officials and constituents; 43 volumes of Senator Smith’s speeches, press releases, and statements; 5400 historical photographs of state, national, and world leaders; 500+ scrapbooks of her career; 400 audio and video recordings of interviews, debates, and speeches, and more. Additionally, there is an abundance of items in the MCS Library Museum.

The criteria for selecting materials from this vast collection would be based upon the Case Studies developed by the library. The Case Studies are the Library’s 21 most frequently researched subjects, so including the documents related directly to those topics would be beneficial to the majority of researchers using the Digital Library. The Library currently has a list of its Case Studies on its website, as seen in Attachment A. Because there are so many types of formats related to each topic in the Case Studies, the approach to digitization would include scanning of books, individual pages of text, photographs, as well as the digitization of VHS tapes, and cassette tapes. Adherence to best practices and current standards for the digital files would be followed in the digitization process, for example those produced by Oviatt Library, Digital Collections Scanning Standards. This guide addresses the minimum standards when digitizing images and text. Another guide, developed by California Digital Library, the CDL Digital File Format Recommendations, gives standards for audio and video digitization. I have shown just a few brief examples of digital file standards and formats in the table below, Table 1. These are the types of standards that would be observed in digitizing content for the MCS Digital Library.

While the MCS Library’s museum artifacts are not included in the Case Studies addressed above, this Digital Library plan would include a selection of items from the Museum. In my discussions with the Library’s Director, Dr. Davis Richards, PhD. (March 10, 2016), he addressed the numerous objects of interest in the Museum. I believe capturing some of these items digitally for inclusion in the digital collection would give a more full experience of Senator Smith as a public and private figure, highlight some of the important milestones in her life and career, and create further interest in the physical Library and Museum. Examples of items to include in the Digital Library are the numerous portraits of Senator Smith; articles of clothing, such as her wedding dress; gifts from noted political figures, such as Chinese lotus blossom artwork Senator Smith received from Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. High-quality digital photographs of selected items would be taken and presented, and I have given examples in section IV of how this has been done by other libraries and archives.

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Image 1

Table 1

Images/Photographs (5x7” or smaller)

Images/Photographs (larger than 5x7”)

35mm slides and negatives

Digital Photos (taken with dig. camera)

Textual Materials

Audio Video

ARCHIVAL IMAGES Resolution/File Type

600 DPI/TIFF 300 DPI/TIFF 2400 DPI/TIFF Original DPI/TIFF

PDF-A with embedded full-text transcriptions

Broadcast WAVE Audio File Format [BWF or BWAV]

Audio Video Interleave [AVI] or QuickTime [MOV] container format

PRESENTATION IMAGES Resolution/File Type

300 DPI/JPEG 100 DPI/JPEG 440 DPI/JPEG 100 DPI/JPEG

IV. Organization

The major site configuration would be something similar to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (homepage shown below in Image 1). I found the JFK digital library to contain similar types of materials as the MCS Library, and a fitting example of how the digital library of a notable public figure could be organized effectively.

The homepage of the MCS Digital Library would have a top menu with several drop-down tabs for navigation. The top-header navigation would include tabs as shown in Image 2. The Digital Library and the current MCS Library website would combine to create one go-to website for all information related to the Library’s physical and digital presence. The current Library website

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(John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

has features such as a Biography, Timeline, Library Calendar of Events, Staff, and Awards that would each have a place in the Digital Library’s website; I have taken these elements and combined them with the digital library functions in the website outline below.

Image 2

Home M.C. Smith Research Education Awards Museum Visit About

The following outline details the contents of each of the pages that would be linked to the tabs shown above:

Digital Library Website Outline:

Home Margaret Chase Smith

o Biographyo Timelineo Speeches

Researcho Search Collection

Articles Audio Books Cartoons Front office notes Photographs Reference Scrapbooks Statements and speeches Washington and You

o Onsite Researcho Research Assistance & Aids

Case Studies Ask the Librarian

o Research Fellowshipso Policies

Educationo School Field Tripso National History Dayo Maine Town Meeting

Awardso Essay Contesto MCS Leadership Award

Museumo Digital Exhibits

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Portraits MCS Home Museum Artifacts

Gifts Clothing

o Exhibitso Past Exhibits

Abouto Staffo Locationo Contact

The images below are examples of how content similar to that of the Margaret Chase Smith Library has been effectively and fastidiously presented in other digital libraries. These high quality examples would serve to as a guide for how the MCS Digital Library would present its collection:

Image 3 is a scrapbook presented by the New York Public Library. Users can view individual pages, or view the entire book, laid out as a book.

Image 4 is an example of the digitization of handwritten correspondence from the New York Public Library collections.

Image 5 is an example of JFK Museum and Artifacts Collection’s presentation of gifts from heads of state. There is a photograph of the item, as well as a description of the dimensions, medium, place made, and details of the circumstances around the gift.

Image 6 is an example of a portrait of Robert Kennedy from the JFK Museum and Artifacts Collection.

Image 7 is an example of the presentation of an article of clothing belonging to Jaqueline Kennedy.

Image 8 is an example of the presentation of video from the JFK Library and Museum. Image 9 is an example of audio recording presentation from the JFK Library and

Museum.

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Image 3

Image 4

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(Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library)

(Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library)

Image 5

Image 6

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(Gifts from Heads of State, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

(Sculptures and Paintings, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

Image 7

Image 8

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(First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Clothing, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

(Universal Newsreels, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

Image 9

V. Representation

The MCS Library is in a challenging spot with their current cataloging software, an archaic (30+ year old) system that is not compatible with any others on the market today, and only available for use on the Library premises. While no new cataloging of items would be necessary for the project, a major part of the digitization process would be the migration of the records to a new cataloging software system with the Digital Library component in mind. In the process of digitizing, metadata would be updated or supplemented when necessary, such as determining the important keywords that should be in each catalog entry for optimal user search capability.

VI. Access

The Margaret Chase Smith Digital Library would have unrestricted, open access. Because of Senator Smith’s role as a public figure and government official, almost 100% of the Library’s collection is in the public domain, and copyright law is not applicable. Library Director, Dr. Richards did note that some photographs in their collection are from the Associated Press, and some audio and video recordings are, for example interviews on broadcast television and radio (personal communication, March 10, 2016). In these cases, permission must be sought from the copyright holder for inclusion in the MCS Digital Library.

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(Universal Newsreels, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

(White House Audio Recordings, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

VII. Preservation

The MCS Library rarely adds new items to its collection, as most of its content was created and collected during Senator Smith’s career. On the rare occasion that a new item related to the Senator is discovered and shared with the Library it is added to the collection and catalog.

Current literature warns “despite the increasing evidence documenting the fragility and ubiquity of digital content, cultural repositories have been slow to respond to the need to safeguard digital heritage materials,” (Digital Preservation Management) so preservation of the digital files created for the Digital Library would be an essential component of the long-term Library plan. There are many steps for preserving digital files to retain their “renderability (viewable by humans and processible by computers) and understandability (interpretable by humans)” (Digital Preservation Management). The MCS Digital Library must employ more strategies than simply backing-up files in multiple places. Backing-up files to a remote repository will protect against many threats, like hardware breakdown, natural disaster, or decay. But further steps are necessary to protect fragile digital files from obsolescence. These strategies include Refreshing storage media and Migration of files from older formats to newer. Preservation will require staff to stay up-to-date on standards and new file formats as they are developed.

VIII. Management

The MCS Digital Library would be managed by the Library’s Director, with the needed addition of staff. Preliminary thinking about whether the actual digitization (i.e. manual pulling of books/materials, and creation of images by scanning and photographing) would be done on site by staff members, or performed by a contracted group would be a decision based on the funding available to the Library. The chart below, Image 10, shows the basic workflow for a digitization project.

Image 10

(Beard, 2004, p. 12)

For this proposal, the administrator role would belong to the Library Director, with current archive and library staff selecting items and updating metadata when

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needed. The role of imaging would either be done by a contracted firm or in-house, and then systems staff would create a website and infrastructure for presentation. The only way to ensure proper continued operation of the Digital Library would be the addition of at least one additional staff member, as even if the digitization/imaging work was outsourced, there must be a go-to person to deal with the ongoing operations. Corrado and Moulaison, in their book Digital Preservation for Libraries, Archives, And Museums (2014) state that “Additional human resources or the restructuring of existing areas of the organization may be required to support digital preservation. In many cases both restructuring and new human resources will be required” (p. 56). Skills required to manage the Digital Library would include “IT skills to run a complex digital preservation system… and [may need] software application development skills” (Corrado & Moulaison, 2014, p. 56).

IX. Evaluation

Once the Digital Library is operational and available for use by online patrons, it will be useful to evaluate certain aspects of the library as an assessment of its performance. Initially, basic web analytics will be useful to know how many users have accessed the Library, what they’re searching for, what items and types of materials (photos, scrapbooks, etc) in the collection are accessed the most. After some time, creating more in-depth evaluation into the Digital Library would be beneficial. Criteria for future evaluation would study the Digital Library’s usability, its content (its completeness, quality, and clarity), technology (speed and compatibility, including functionality of processes and services), the interface (attractiveness, ease of use) and users (their satisfaction, effort, and success). Assessing these components will help guide future decisions and changes to the Digital Library.

X. Conclusion

This proposal outlines preliminary plans for creation and implementation of a Digital Library through the selection of materials from the Margaret Chase Smith Library’s collection. Further planning required would include a thorough study of funding requirements and sources, which would help guide decisions of whether the imaging and website production should be commissioned, or done in-house. What remains important is the goal of bringing the Library’s collection to a world of users, and presenting it as a testament to Senator Smith’s remarkable career serving Maine and the United States.

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References:

Beard, I. and Digital Architecture Working Group (2004). Digital imaging basics and standards: a guide for creating and archiving digital images. New Jersey Digital Highway Project. Retrieved from http://www.njdigitalhighway.org/documents/digital-imaging-basics-and-standards.pdf

Biography, Margaret Chase Smith Library. (n.d.). Senator, Representative, American. Retrieved from http://www.mcslibrary.org/bio/

California Digital Library. (2011). CDL Digital File Format Recommendations: Master Production Files. Regents of the University of California. Retrieved from: http://www.cdlib.org/gateways/docs/cdl_dffr.pdf

Corrado, E. M. and Moulaison, L. H. (2014). Digital preservation for libraries, archives, and museums. Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield.

Cohen, D. and Rosenzweig, R. (2005). Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Available from http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/

Digital Preservation Management. (n.d.) Introduction. Retrieved from http://www.dpworkshop.org/dpm-eng/introduction.html

Library & Museum, Margaret Chase Smith Library. (n.d.). Overview. Retrieved from: http://www.mcslibrary.org/library-museum/

Oviatt Library, California State University Northridge. (n.d.). Digital Collections Scanning Standards. Retrieved from http://digital-library.csun.edu/Guidelines/Scanning.html

Images:

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Clothing, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. (1960). Blue Checked Suit. Retrieved from http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/f2k6CQ8f9UCHVvH85LVKYA.aspx

Gifts from Heads of State, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. (1960). Filigree Bowl. Retrieved from http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/5s42Cjgl2U2dbEdKz7mxgw.aspx

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved from: http://www.jfklibrary.org/

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. (1790). Letter to the President of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/24bde9a0-9f40-0132-f5b6-58d385a7bbd0

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Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. (1917). Scrapbook page consisting of snapshots of George Brashear and acquaintances, and a newspaper article on the history of inter-collegiate football, circa 1917. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5bbd4900-265c-0132-c5c8-58d385a7b928

Sculptures and Paintings, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. (1962). Portrait of Robert F. Kennedy. Retrieved from http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/hmnCxXiHFUeQq-_MmbmKsg.aspx

Universal Newsreels, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. (1963). IFP:97A "Special Release: President Assassinated". Retrieved from http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/bOrSU3UlXUSLBCFawOXu1A.aspx

White House Audio Recordings, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. (1961). Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs, 25 May 1961. Retrieved from http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHA-032.aspx

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Attachment A – Case Studies

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