In 2011 the Lowcountry Digital Library at the College of Charleston decided to replace their CONTENTdm installation with an in-house built Drupal/Fedora/Hydra-Blacklight system. While building the system was difficult, the metadata migration has proved to be the most trying and time consuming aspect of the whole procedure. The DAMS conversion provided the impetus for an in-depth digital object and metadata analysis, and the results were not good. The existing CONTENTdm schema was a mix of qualified and unqualified Dublin Core and in desperate need of normalization. The open source ingestion method for the new system (Rutger's OpenWMS) was in beta and only accepted MODS and METS. After evaluating our options, it was decided that now was the time to fix all of LCDL's 50,000+ records and convert to MODS. LCDL's resources were limited. Conversion began in earnest in the summer of 2012. We have to date normalized, rectified and migrated over 40,000 items with only the use of un-paid interns and one part-time library student employee. In this presentation, I will discuss our metadata normalization problems, how we trained free/cheap student labor and what lessons were learned in the process.
3. Help Me OpenWMS
You’re My Only Hope
Only Ingestion Client We Could Find That Allowed
Batch Tab-delimited Text File Importation
Only Maps From Marc, Mods In-house Text
49,898 DC Records To Migrate
Correction:
49,898 Very Messy, Poorly Formed
DC Records To Migrate
5. “Chicago, Illinois. As each car goes by his window at an Illinois Central Railroad yard, the engine foreman checks it against his switch list.” Library of Congress
PPOC, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001013227/PP U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs
(http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/071_fsab.html)
Assessment
Documentation
Training
Communication
& Shared
Migration Plans
6. ASSESSMENT IS CRUCIAL
What Needs To Be Done?
Metadata Migration
Metadata Rectification
Training Materials & Workflows
What Resources Do You Already Have?
CONTENTdm Batch Edit
If You Don’t Have It, Can You Find It For Free?
No Excel? OpenOffice
Can’t Script Your Clean Up? OpenRefine
No BaseCamp?
TeamBox, GoogleDrive, DropBox
7. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING
Workflows
Graphics Help!
Make Your Own Manual
New Software?
Include Screen Shots
Is It Easy To Follow?
Have A Newbie Test It
Crosswalk It Out!
Not Just Schema To Schema
Make It Hyper Specific
Keep It Easy On The Workers
[Medieval scribe Jean Miélot, sitting at a desk, making a copy of another book], http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006680149/
Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
8. Have Training Packets &
Technology Ready
Be There For Your Workers
Prepare Yourself For The Worst
Flexibility Is Everything
Deal With What You’ve Got
9. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-0074493. Courtesy of Chicago History Museum.
IT’S ALL ABOUT COMMUNICATION
Project Management Software
Teambox
Google Spreadsheets
Color Coded
Use To Chart Progress
Shared To Do Lists
Trello
Keep Management Informed