Hayley Brooks
Digital Libraries 17:610:553
Term Project – Final Report
04/27/2015
DIGITAL LIBRARIES [17:610:553] - Final Term Project
Group A Digital Library Design Proposal
Digital Library for Journey Museum - Minnilusa Pioneer Collection
Members: Hayley Brooks, Kaitlan Estes, Taran Gallagher, Christina Woodall
Purpose:
We plan to create a digital library that will compliment the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum,
which is located at The Journey Museum in Rapid City, South Dakota. The purpose of
our digital library is to provide children, parents, and educators of children child-friendly,
digital access where they can explore the historical and cultural information the museum
provides. This is an important museum collection because it plays a vital role in helping
the people of the area better understand their cultural history. The museum provides so
many artifacts and materials to teach children about this cultural history and by offering
a digital space online, we aim to showcase the museums information and provide
opportunities for children to build an appreciation for the past and discover how it relates
to their personal environment today.
The design of this digital library will focus on a highly interactive interface where children
will be able to discover what it was like for pioneer children to settle in the untamed
plains. The metadata and public access materials will provide information specific to the
local history of Rapid City, SD, focusing specifically on the pioneer days, and will follow
the museum’s scope of late 1880s to mid-1920s time frame.
Objectives:
In order for museums to keep up and continue to meet the needs of their patrons, it is
important for them to have a digital presence such as providing access to their
collections online. Digital access will allow children from other parts of the country to
“visit” and “explore” the collections and resources of the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum.
In efforts to enhance the Museum’s appeal to children and offer local schools and
families a place to ignite and nurture the interest in local history, our digital library has
focused on children in both its design and content. We believe the online presence will
also help draw visitors in during tourist season and create a growing interest from the
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local community. This will hopefully enhance the museum’s relationship with families
and schools in the area and extend relations nationally/globally.
Metadata Selection:
We know that the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum utilizes the software program PastPerfect
for organizing metadata of their collections (screenshot example shown below):
In order to better integrate our proposed collection with Minnilusa’s already established
collection and library, we will select the metadata information for fields that PastPerfect
includes in its database to allow the proposed Children’s Digital Library to be an
extension of this information. This will make our proposition a simple and easy addition,
as opposed to causing the library to adapt their entire collection to fit ours.
Below is one example of our proposed addition. Using information collected from the
physical objects, as well as working with staff to complete or update missing fields, the
record would be recorded as such:
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Selection & Search Strategy:
After viewing some of the resources the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum concurrently has in
their collection, we selected a few books whose scope specifically address the lives of
children growing up during the Pioneer era. The books we selected include a variety of
both children and young adult books so as to appeal to a wider audience, cementing the
worth and necessity of our proposition.
The digital library will be designed with children as the target audience, mainly from the
ages of 4-15 years. For this reason, we hope to make the searching process simple yet
effective. Through a web search of our own, we particularly liked the design of
http://www.childrenslibrary.org’s Simple Search section. The bright colors and visual
elements used within this library can be applied to our own, as they draw the attention
of younger patrons. It is simple and user-friendly, so users will be able to easily search
for items that they are interested in while also being presented with similar options.
There will be images of the cover art of the books that children can view before
selecting an item, thereby allowing them to rely on the visual aspect and not just a black
and white text description. In addition to this, key words will be attributed to each
resource in order to populate results if a keyword search is conducted. Wild Bill Hickock,
for example, is an infamous character from the Pioneer days. If a child wanted to look
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up “Wild Bill”, they could navigate visually through representative icons, or conduct a
keyword search. Based on the keyword search of “Wild Bill”, two of our currently
selected resources would be populated in the search results.
Example:
This design will serve as a start to creating a larger online presence for the Minnilusa
Pioneer Museum. Children are fascinated with stories about the “wild west” and our
digital library can help the museum connect with younger patrons. Not only this, but it
can also reach out to families visiting the area, enticing them to come discover more
about the lives of children on the frontier.
Services:
The Minnilusa Pioneer Museum has several children’s events that this digital library will
tie in to, almost symbiotically. Examples of this include their Discovery Expedition
Series, geared towards children ages 9-13, or Family Fun Day, where families and
children of all ages come and enjoy a film and participate in activities related to the topic
of the month. By providing access to this digital library, the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum
will now have a way to interact with their youngest patrons outside of these special
events, even from the comfort of their own home. In the future, they could add YouTube
videos or other unique materials to help bring the museum and its rich experience into
the homes of children all across the area and beyond.
By providing these services to be accessed at home and on the go, we enable The
Journey Museum Learning Center to reach more children and better achieve the goals
on their mission statement: “The Journey Museum and Learning Center is the education
venue that serves as a forum to preserve and explore the heritage of the cultures of the
Black Hills region and the knowledge of its natural environment to understand and value
our past, enrich our present, and meet the challenges of the future.”
Management and Preservation:
From our understanding, there is not currently an information specialist at the Minnilusa
Pioneer Museum with the technical skills in operating a digital library. If this design is
something they wish to pursue, they would need to either hire or train an information
specialist who has the training and ability to maintain such a database. The Digital
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Library for the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum would need to be monitored and updated by
an information specialist with both the technical skills required and familiarity with the
museum’s operations. This would mean an initial course for them to obtain the
necessary skills to begin this process, as well as potential updates along the way to
keep up with relevant updates and adaptations that are inevitable with any digital
technology. Not only this, but it would be worth having at least one other librarian versed
in the upkeep of this library as a backup (perhaps more if the digital aspect were to grow
in size and content). It would also be beneficial to train the current staff on the basic
essentials for the Digital Library operations.
The Minnilusa Digital Library is based on their current collections. The information
regarding items and content available on the Digital Library will be edited and monitored
via the PastPerfect cataloging system they currently have in place. In other words, as
they update their own system, we would like it to become common practice for the
digital library(ies) to become an automatic part of this continuous update as new
materials come in. This could be done manually, or could be integrated into an
automatically updated program (using possibly SQL or PHP). If the latter were used,
this would still require a regular monitor to check that this system was still working
smoothly and effectively.
The information available through the digital library will be backed up in the PastPerfect
museum software cataloging system. For this reason, we feel it is important to store the
information in the Digital Library on a separate secured server, in order to maintain
accessibility and not directly rely solely on the institutions equipment. This is something
that is important with all digital collections and libraries, since where possible, all
digitization should be backed up in at least one (if not more than one) format.
As with any new aspect, it would be worth it for the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum to keep
up-to-date on innovations in the field (with particular note to those that would be best
suited to the expenditure of their particular budget), as well as making their resources
known in as many avenues as possible. This can range from advertising or promoting
their own collections in local advertisements, to reaching out to more wide-ranging
publications or websites. For example, they could work together with multiple other
libraries and institutions to create a geographically diverse map that covered historical
sites across the United States. For example, they could work with other state libraries
that were involved in any kind of migration or settlement to form a more comprehensive
map of the United States during its early years of settlement. This could be used as an
addition to, or example aside from, more commonly known migration trails such as the
Oregon Trail.
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Resources:
The information that will be fully accessible / available from home for users will only be
the items that are owned solely by the Museum. This can include, but is not limited to,
physical artifacts and descriptions. This will include photographical, provincial, historical,
and other available information relating to the item. For text resources, the library will
have general metadata on the text resource documents, including books, magazines,
reports, and other in house collection materials. The users will be able to learn a little bit
about each of these items; however, because of copyright issues, the full text will NOT
be made available online in the beginning. Once the Digital Library is up and running,
the Journey Museum may wish to consider collaborating with other databases as an
institution in order to provide more content to their users (such as ProQuest).
Evaluation and Future Repercussions:
Initially, evaluation of The Digital Library for the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum can be
measured with simple web analytics that look at how many visitors the site has, how
long they are on the website, and what documents draw the most attention. After time,
they may want to consider looking into more substantial data, such as usability, user
satisfaction, reliability, etc.
A legal action that Minnilusa needs to take into consideration is making intellectual
property rights of the materials clear to users (if the aforementioned is not owned by
Minnilusa). This might have to be done in conjunction with a legal team, depending on
the status of the materials.
Future Development
With regards to the future development of this library, we would put forth the following
suggestions:
1. The Minnilusa Pioneer Museum should add a contact/suggestions page to allow
users to easily and quickly suggest changes that can then be monitored and
taken into account by the authorities in charge. Additionally, creating a Facebook,
Twitter, and/or Instagram account would allow Minnilusa to interact with the
public on platforms that they frequently utilize, at no cost to the Museum. These
pages can advertise events, new materials, and provide a quick link to the main
library page.
2. The library, and site in particular, should make themselves known to the
American Library Association in order to add verifiable credentials to their
recommendations. This will give this digital library a more wide-spread range, as
well as affording it more credence within the library community. This can also
lead to being maintained by library volunteers, students, etc. (perhaps as a way
to further their own development as well as that of the library’s).
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3.
4.
Those involved with the development of the library should keep abreast of the
developments and evolutions occurring within the digital library community as a
whole in order to effectively utilize these developments with regards to the
Minnilusa library’s specific needs.
Finally, outside input should be welcomed and used to the library’s advantage where appropriate, and possible, this library should allow for outside articles,
“contributor of the week” input, and perhaps even advertise other library’s
websites/collections. This could lead to a reciprocal relationship which would be
beneficial for all sides, and would allow for easier access between library’s for the
users themselves.
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Appendix A
Interview/Discussion with Minnilusa Pioneer Museum curator Reid Reiner
(Date 4/22/2015 Session: 4:15-4:45 / Hayley Brooks and Reid Reiner, Reid’s Office at
the Journey, Minnilusa Pioneer Museum to discuss digital library interest and
opportunity.)
Q1: Has the Minnilusa Pioneer museum discussed plans for a Digital Library?
A: Yes – there is a high interest in creating a digital library.
Q2: Why would it be beneficial?
A: Further education and awareness of collection. It would be really good for regional
heritage and tourism of the Black Hills as well. Not many people think of the Black Hills
region when they think of history, so it would help educate and spread word of our rich
history. We would also use it for self-promotion, becoming more known, and also would
like to have an online presence to help promote memberships, an area where I know we
are currently lacking.
Q3(a): What would you think the positive / negative impact be of implementing a
Digital Library?
A: Positive is that it would spread awareness and open up access for lots of content.
We receive lots of requests from people asking if we have any photographs of family
members, or any information on specific people. Having a searchable online Digital
library with open access we could connect people with this content.
This was important because it helps us with the content description for our DL
Proposal.
Q3(b): What kind of content would you like to see available in the DL?
A: Photographs/images, documents (scanned), pictures of our artifacts, perhaps stories
to go with them. There are a lot of requests that are genealogy centered, people
wondering if we have pictures of their family members. There is also a popular request
for information on specific items or information we have if someone is doing a specific
research paper. But one thing that I think we have that many people may not think
about is the way to meet some Business needs too. Due diligence for realty agent or
land sales for example. We could have a picture of an area of land that used to have a
gas station on it, which would be useful and important to know in case there is any
issues or leftovers.
Facets for searching the digital library that I think would be important:
Geographic (example, a request was made that someone is researching ghost towns
and does the Minnilusa have any information on Dewy, South Dakota. I would like to be
able to see that a search can be narrowed down by provenance (geographically) as well
as by date, so that a search for “Dewy, South Dakota” does not have to search through
the full records from 1870 to 1930. We would have images and documents scanned
with description to help with this information need. One document that we have for
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example is a letter from Wild Bill Hickock to John Brennan (one of the founders of Rapid
City, when he was an agent for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation) saying that he was
in need of some Indians for his show and did he have any volunteers or anyone down in
the Reservation willing to do it.
** This would also mean that part of the project of creating a DL would be to have
whoever processing it, create key word or associated index terms for
documenting in the system.
Q4: Other than overhead cost (trained / experienced person who has the ability
and know-how to create and maintain a digital library and the systems/equipment
required to implement it) what “red tape” or other issues do you think you might
run into?
A: Unlike the Sioux Indian Museum (also housed at the Journey) we do not handle
sacred objects in our artifact collection, so we don’t have to worry about that. I think one
obstacle that has crossed my mind is some privacy issues. Privacy issues because we
have collections donated from families that are their family items with their family
information associated with them. I would think perhaps we would wish to ask them if
they would mind for that information to be publicly available in that way.
Also, the cost of maintenance and legacy funding to keep the DL
maintained/current/revolving. We would need someone with the technical know how on
how to do It, especially the web portion.
We use Past Perfect but currently only use the basic version. We can purchase the
multimedia version which has tools implemented for web publishing that could be useful
in the creation of an online catalog record, but would be a cost, and although I’ve seen
other institutions use this, I am not sure what or how it would work.
Q5(a): Systems / Interface Federal vs public/private non-for-profit organization –
what struggles do you have versus a federally funded institution for a project like
this?
A: We do not have the computer hardware or equipment to create a secured server for
the DL information. Federal agencies have more funding, but also have more
regulations. We don’t have to follow the same regulations they do, which is nice, but we
don’t have the resources they would. We can only count on the money that we go out
to get to survive (donations, memberships, etc).
Q5(b): Are there grants for this kind of project?
A: When they exist or come around. We have worked before with IMLS state grants for
collection care which we used for our disaster preparedness, but when the economy
took a dive, that was the first part of funding or available funding, to be cut, was in
humanities.
Q6: Is there currently technology available to start a project like this at the
facility?
A: No
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Appendix B
Minnilusa Digital Library Collection Metadata Example
Author
Additional
Authors
Title:
Publication
Date
ISBN
Illustrated?
F/ NF
Western
Publishers,
1952 Inc.
NA
B&W / Maps
Non-Fiction History
Deadwood City
Bantam
1978 Books
0-55313994
None
Non-Fiction History
Tousey,
Sanford
Wild Bill Hickok:
Frontier
Marshall
Albert
Whitman &
1952 Company
NA
COLOR
Non-Fiction History
Stone,
Ethel B.
Wild Bill Hickock
and the Indians
Rand McNally
1956 & Company
NA
COLOR
Non-Fiction History
Laskin,
David
The Children's
Blizzard
HarperCollins
Publishers,
2004 Inc.
0-06052075-2
B&W / Maps
Non-Fiction History
Riney,
Scott
The Rapid City
Indian School
University of
1999 OK Press
0-80613762-6
B&W
Photographs Non-Fiction History
Lewis,
Faye
Cashatt
Nothing to Make
a Shadow
Iowa State
University
1971 Press
NA
None
Non-Fiction History
Lobdell,
Clara
Bangs
Life on the
Mizpah: A
Memoir
2001 Clara Lobdell
NA
None
Memoir /
Non-Fiction History
Kegly,
Alice
Alphonsine
2007 Authorhouse
978-1-42592032-6
None
Non-Fiction History
Wilder,
Laura
The First Four
Years
Harper & Row
1971 Publishers
NA
B&W
Fiction
Froehlich,
Hugo B.
Text Books of
Art Education
Book IV. Fourth
Year
The Prang
Educational
1904 Company
NA
None
Non-Fiction Textbook
Cassie's
Journey Going
West in the
1860s
Holiday
1995 House
823411729
COLOR
Fiction
Price, S.
Goodale
Ghosts of
Golconda: Black
Hills Historical
Guide Book
Packard,
Edward
Harvey,
Brett
Snow,
Bonnie E.
Publisher
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Category
Historical
Fiction
Historical
Fiction