Kowalczyk, Stacy, Jenn Riley, and Nikki Roberg. “IN Harmony Tools Redux.” Digital Library Program Brown Bag Presentation, January 31, 2007.

1. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
IN Harmony
Brownbag Series
January 31, 2007
Stacy Kowalczyk, Jenn Riley, Nikki Roberg

2. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
Agenda
– Project Overview
– Sheet Music Cataloging Tool
– User Studies and Public Interface Tool

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IN Harmony is
•An IMLS funded grant
•Awarded in Fall 2004
•To be competed in Fall 2007
•A partnership of
– Indiana University Digital Library Program
– Indiana University Lilly Library
– Indiana State Library
– Indiana State Museum
– Indiana Historical Society

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Why Sheet Music?
• Musicologists
– Musical practices, structures and meanings
• Historians
– Cover designs, lyrics, and advertisements
• General Public
– Playable copies of out of print music, connections to family
stories

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Project Goals
1. To provide a mode for fostering collaborative digital library
development by partnering with institutions with complementary
collections;
2. To digitize a portion of the sheet music from these collections and offer
access to these materials free of charge on the web;
3. To bring these materials and their attendant metadata together on a
single web site, offering both federated searching of the entire collection
and searching of one or more selected collections;
4. To explore copyright questions, specifically to test the hypothesis that
approximately 90 percent of copyrights have not been renewed for
materials published between 1923 and 1964.

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Fostering Collaboration
•Gaining a common understanding
•Negotiating conflicting requirements and priorities
•Developing Expertise
Final deliverable is a long-term working relationship
between all of the partners to participate in the Indiana
Digital Library

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Digitizing
Deliverable – 10,000 pieces of sheet music
– 4,000 Indiana University Lilly Library
– 2,000 Indiana State Library
– 2,000 Indiana State Museum
– 2,000 Indiana Historical Society

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Current Project Status
•Partner scanning began in January 2006
•Cataloging began in May 2006
IHS ISM ISL Lilly
Images
Scanned
1916 693 1358 4697
Cataloging
Records
1916 269 1358 1738

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Metadata needs
• Effective user access
• Work for diverse project partners
• Facilitate interoperability

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Designing the metadata model
• User studies
• Define fields
• Write cataloging guidelines with partner input
• Representation in MODS

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Types of fields
• Title elements
• Name elements
• Publication elements
• Subject elements
• Identification elements
• Note elements
• Cover information

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Deriving subjects from LCSH/MARC
• $a = ?
• $v = form/genre
• $x = ?
• $y = temporal
• $z = place name
• Many exceptions, e.g., Songs with piano

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Demos
• Cataloging tool
• Database reports

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User-driven Design Process
Usability studies conducted in 2005*
– card sort
– server query log analysis
– email content analysis
Functional requirements were drafted based on these
studies and other metadata requirements
* For more information, see: Verse Chorus Verse: Overview of Iterative
Usability Studies for the IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana Project
(Presented by Michelle Dalmau, December 14, 2005)
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/education/brownbags/archives.shtml#fall2005

15. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
Paper prototyping
• Additional user testing to answer outstanding questions
• At least four iterations of paper prototypes were created
and discussed among project team
• Over 15 prototypes created to illustrate browse, search,
results and other screens
– Multiple variations created for some screens
• Final iterations tested with Indianapolis and Bloomington
IN Harmony partners and IUB faculty and student
usability participants

16. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
Design Influences
• Charles W. Cushman Photograph
Collection (http://
www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/cushman/)
• New York Public Library Digital
Gallery (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/)
• Arago: People, Postage, and the Post—
Smithsonian National Postal Museum
(http://www.arago.si.edu/)

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Usability Testing
• Group walkthroughs (Oct/Dec 2006):
• 3 sessions conducted: 2 with IN Harmony partners
and 1 with usability participants from IU faculty and
student body
• Participants were walked through each
prototype and asked to respond to a series
of scripted questions.
• Overall feedback was positive

21. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
Usability Testing Aims
1. Determine if the overall structure and organization is
clear and adequate.
2. Determine how users would conduct efficient browsing
of over 10,000 pieces of sheet music from four different
institutions
3. Determine various means by which users can
successfully search
4. Determine how users would use and manipulate search
results
5. Determine means by which users would access sheet
music

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Prototypes
• Home

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Prototypes
• Browse
– By name
– By music title
– By year of publication
– By subject (?)
– By cover art (?)

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Findings
• Browsing
– A-Z anchor lists are intuitive
– Browse by Subject is important!
– Users may be more likely to search for names and titles
rather than browsing
– Viewing cover art while browsing adds to the experience
but doesn’t require its own section
– Unknown dates could be estimated and considered
“uncertain”

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Prototypes
• Search
– Basic
– Advanced
– No results
– Search history

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Findings
• Searching
– Readily visible search tips are useful
– Keyword search box in banner goes unnoticed
– Advanced search fields meet users’ needs
– Field labels such as “geographic topic” require more
explanation
– Participants prefer to see all advanced search fields instead
of open/collapse feature
– Result suggestions are helpful when advanced query
produces no results
– Search history is helpful

38. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
Prototypes
• Results
– Summary
– Record detail

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Findings
• Results
– Interest in being able to refine/broaden results, especially
after browsing
– Filtering “menu” evoked mixed feelings
– Functionality difficult to illustrate on paper
– Fields on result detail should be better prioritized on the
page
– Like ability to download a copy of sheet music

43. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
Prototypes
• My Selections

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45. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
Findings
• My Selections
– Participants like the functionality
– Want selections to be saved beyond session

46. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
Next Steps
Implement pertinent findings
Start to build site!

47. January 31, 2007 DLP Brownbag
Questions?
Thanks for attending!
IN Harmony Project Website