2020 UMDCC+ MDL Annual Meeting

From Process to Product: Inclusion and Accessibility in Digital Collections  
Hear from two different Academic Libraries as they discuss various workflows and strategies they've implemented to build a more inclusive team and more accessible digital collections.

Presentation 1: Compassionate Computing: Building from Digital Collections to Build Together  
University of Florida
In January 2020, the Libraries at the University of Florida created a new division, Library Technology and Digital Strategies, which brought together the Library Technology Services and Digital Partnerships and Strategies Departments. The new group connects technologies and socio-technical practices that understand and embrace maintenance, minimal computing, ethics of care, mutual aid, collaborative practices, generous thinking, shine theory, and many other names that speak to our ability to be better together. For example, the Digital Development Team that supports digital library operations follows agile/scrum to ensure the project stakeholders are positioned to be fully engaged. The work is deeply technical and rooted in collaboration and equality (following procedural and informational justice, and powering the triangle of satisfaction for all involved).

In this presentation, I discuss how we have utilized agile principles and scrum methodologies to support full stakeholder engagement and to enable a culture of compassion and collaboration for our digital library work, and for our related partners. In doing so, I explain how, for technology, following the principle of “to each according to their needs” means that our frameworks and systems have to be designed so that those with the greatest needs and most affected are positioned for input and ownership, and agile/scrum practices are a way to do this. Agile/scrum is project/process for programming/development that works based on iterative development, focusing first on a minimum viable product, recognizing that work is not simply technical and that a framework is needed for engaging across technical/programming with the project stakeholders.

Presentation 2: Principles and Practice for Accessible Digitization  
University of Cincinnati
The diversity of a digital collection is often assessed by considering the diversity of its content. In order for collections to be truly inclusive, however, they need to emphasize usability alongside broad representation. The University of Cincinnati Libraries discusses how diversity and accessibility are intersectional considerations of digital collections, and introduces newly implemented workflows and standards designed to create accessible, inclusive digital collections that broaden usability for all.

Join the Minnesota Digital Library’s Metadata Librarian and Outreach Coordinator for a sampling of the current projects, services, and digital resources offered by the Minnesota Digital Library. The Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) is a leading force in digital project development in the upper Midwest. MDL served as one of the original six services hubs to the Digital Public Library of America; and continues to provide innovative leadership related to digital initiatives and metadata efforts. MDL serves as a leader in the development of the Rights Statements Standardization project and is consistently recognized for our metadata standards work.

The MDL staff members will provide an overview of new collections and projects, such as the Minnesota Reflections Primary Source Set project, and the MDL Rights Statements Standardization Project - including development and implementation. The overview will be combined with an analysis of how our work has changed and evolved during our recent experience working remotely. We will discuss our changing expectations and workflows - including online training and workshops.

There will be time for live demonstrations of some of our projects and resources, as well as information on how the digital community can get involved. We also plan time for questions.

Join other Minnesota Digital Library Contributors for a fun, informal event to mark the end of the first day of the conference.

While we can’t provide delicious appetizers and drinks this year, you can bring your own! The planning committee has even created a list of fall-themed cocktails/mocktails and snacks, including a few older recipes from digital collections, to give you some ideas to get started.

One week after Governor Walz issued a statewide stay-at-home order, the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) launched History is Now: COVID-19 Health Crisis, a digital collecting initiative to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Minnesota. The project aimed to collect digital submissions of text stories, digital media, and web links, and to make select content available in real-time on the MNHS blog https://www.mnhs.org/blog/historyisnow.

Six weeks after launching the initiative, the entire project team was furloughed due to COVID-19. Unrest would erupt throughout the Twin Cities just one week later in response to the murder of George Floyd, leaving the institution bereft of curatorial and archival insight and response.

This session examines contemporary collecting during unprecedented times through a candid exploration of the challenges experienced by MNHS staff when faced with a global pandemic and civil uprising. Presenters will discuss:

• technological and ethical considerations for building digital collections that document traumatic experiences;
• developing processes and collaborative workflows while working from home, including developing collecting tools and outreach methods;
• successes and challenges in attempts to collaborate with external stakeholders and communities; 
• re-examining collecting practices in response to current trends and changes in capacity.

This room provides an informal opportunity to connect with other conference attendees and discuss collection management and/or working with small digital collections.

Fortepan Iowa (fortepan.us) is a nonprofit public digital photo archive established in 2015 at the University of Northern Iowa that features curated, high resolution photos taken by ordinary Iowans over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The archive is the first of its kind in the U.S., and the first sister site to the well-known Fortepan archive in Hungary (fortepan.hu), which is now considered a cultural institution with over 100,000 photographs. The Fortepan Concept, founded on the idea of openness, chronological display, and a mission to preserve and share region-based vernacular photography, is a disruption to the typical photo archive paradigm in both display, accessibility, and community engagement, and offers the archiving community an open source alternative to Omeka and ContentDM. We are at the beginning stages of planning a Fortepan archive for indigenous people across the U.S., as well as Fortepan archives in other states like Minnesota and Ohio.

Our panel will discuss the Fortepan Concept and highlight many of our initiatives and experiences with community building through the archive. These include Fortepan’s crowd-sourced tagging and public forum capabilities; our public lecture series initiative to interpret the archive; a proliferation of public library scanning hubs; public library photo exhibitions; billboard-sized public wheat paste art (taking the archival photos to the streets); creative digital projects; and a new initiative, “Mainstreet 360º,” where we’ll work with community members and K-12 schools to geo-reference historical photos of mainstreets and display them on a decade-to-decade, 360º street view display through Fortepan Iowa’s digital interface. Our overall mission is to use our archive of family snapshots to create dynamic intergenerational conversations within our local communities about culture, history, and identity.

Digitization and online publication of collections held by libraries and archives increases exposure and facilitates access to unique materials. Significant challenges for digitization projects are the transcription of content and the creation of descriptive metadata. These time-consuming processes can require specialized knowledge and benefit from unique approaches. This session will present examples of collaborative workflows employed at both Carleton College and Ohio University.

The Carleton Archives digitized photographs documenting Carleton’s association with evangelical, medical, and educational work in China from 1903-1950. Staff sought collaborative assistance in the creation of descriptive metadata from several different sources. They experimented with crowdsourcing by using FromThePage and other methods to enhance descriptive metadata, and explored options to connect with potential Chinese audiences and collaborators through social media in China to assist with both transcription and metadata creation. They also worked with Carleton’s GIS Lab to map the location of photographers’ images.

In response to the sudden transition to remote work, Ohio University Libraries' digitization efforts adapted with tools that support virtual engagement and collaboration. Having launched several transcription projects, Digital Initiatives staff assessed the use of both Google Forms for data collection and the collaborative transcription tool, FromThePage. The lessons learned about facilitating collaboration with subject experts and internal staff and student workers are applicable to more open crowdsourcing endeavors. Current and future projects include metadata for a modern dance collection and transcription of World War II accounts and local scrapbooks.

This presentation will:

1.  increase awareness of tools available for collaborative metadata and transcription.
2. provide workflows detailing the process of sharing content and exporting the resulting data. 
3. explore opportunities for community engagement and metadata collection within remote work and research environments.