A River Runs Through It:
The Arizona v. California
Digitization Project
SWALL Annual Meeting
March 22, 2014
Erik Beck, Karen Selden & Jane Thompson
The Arizona v. California
Litigation (1952-1963)
Graphic by Caleb Trantow
Project: The Inspiration
• The serendipitous conversation at law
school commencement (May 2012)
CLYDE MARTZ SUMMER CONFERENCE, August 15-16, 2013
Arizona v. California at 50: The Legacy and Future of
Governance, Reserved Rights, and Water Transfers
Project: Revisiting the Stacks
• The Arizona v. California volumes (33 v.)
Project: Our Questions
• When and from whom did we acquire
these documents?
• What organizational scheme was employed
to group and bind them, and does it make
sense?
• Do we have a complete collection?
• Do our print holdings overlap significantly
with other libraries?
• Has another library digitized them and, if
not, who would be interested in them?
• How much time would it take to create a
digital archive?
Project: An Exciting Discovery
Project: The Team
•
Project: The Process
Due
Diligence
Electronic
Demo &
Publicity
Bookplate
Landing Page
& Interviews
Metadata
Scanning/
Ingestion
Project: Cover Sheets
Project: The Role of
Researchers (June/July 2013)
Professors Jason Robison & Larry MacDonnell
Jason A. Robison & Lawrence J. MacDonnell, Arizona v. California & the
Colorado River Compact: Fifty Years Ago, Fifty Years Ahead,
4 ARIZ. J. ENVTL. L. & POL’Y (forthcoming 2014).
Project: Identify Needed Content
and Place ILL Requests
Appendix 1
Special Master’s
Draft Report
May 5, 1960
Project: Identify Needed Content and
Place ILL Requests (cont’d)
•
Libraries who lent us materials or made scans:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library, James E. Rogers
College of Law, University of Arizona
Special Collections at the University of Arizona
Libraries
John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, California State
University, Los Angeles
Hugh & Hazel Darling Law Library, UCLA School of
Law
Special Collections & Archives, Water Resources
Collections, UCR Libraries, University of California,
Riverside
William M. Rains Library, Loyola Law School, Los
Angeles
Wyoming State Library
The Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia Law
School
United States Department of the Interior Library
Project: What Did We
Learn?
• Court documents: difficult to
manage, but available for digitizing
• Team projects: rewarding and
surprising
• Project management: old and new
methods work
• Involvement of researchers improves
the final product
• Conference tie-in boosted awareness
by expert group, but more publicity is
even better
Project: Publicity Plan (Asana.com)
Featured in The Water Report
COLORADO ARCHIVE
WEST
ARIZONA V. CALIFORNIA
COLLECTION - The William
A. Wise Law Library
Project: Hopes for the
Future
• Improve workflow and
processes for future projects
• Include our holdings in the
Western Water Digital Library http://www.westernwater.org/
• Identify and scan/collaborate re:
additional content held by other
libraries
• Create a hyperlinked finding aid
Metadata
Cataloging Decisions & Processes
Managing the Workflow
Metadata
Research & Retrieval
Needs
Hey girl.
You know I’m
not usually the
jealous type…
but, who is
MARC?
MARC Fields
•
520: Case summary
MARC Fields
•
524s: Citations to brief &
to landmark case
MARC Fields
•
730s: Uniform titles for:
the case;
the entire collection;
sub-collections
MARC Fields
•
•
856: Link to Digitool bib
record
970: Electronic Bookplate
The Template
Party
Copy
Cataloging
Original
Cataloging
Total
California
46
27
73
Arizona
25
6
31
Nevada
17
5
22
United States
11
3
14
New Mexico
8
2
10
Utah
7
Colorado
1
1
2
Total
121
47
168
7
Original Image by Julieta Felix
Digital Collections Workflow
• Step 1: Image Capture
• Step 2: Editing
• Step 3: Add to Repository
Image Capture
Bookdrive Pro from Atiz
•
•
•
•
•
Metal frame
LED lights and hood
Angled cradle on track
Glass guard
Cameras not included
Produced archival images between 4
and 5 megabytes in size.
Product details at http://pro.atiz.com
Irregular Artifacts
Editing
Editing Standards
Blk&wht, text only
Blk&wht, text and image
Color, image or text
Original type- text
Original type- text
Simplex/Duplex- 2 sided
Resolution– 200dpi
File type- PDF
Simplex/Duplex- 2 sided
Resolution – 300dpi
File type- PDF
Density- middle setting
Color- Black
Scan size - auto
Density- middle setting
Color- Grey scale
Scan size – auto
Original type- Photo/Printed Photo
or Text-Photo
Simplex/Duplex- 2 sided
Resolution – 300dpi
File type- PDF: multi-page,
JPEG: Single page
Density- middle setting
Color- Full Color
Scan size – auto
Metadata Conversion
MARC
MARCxml
The Repository
Digital Collections of Colorado: http://digitool.library.colostate.edu
The Repository
• Branding
• Unique
Access Point
• Specialized
Searching
Digital Collections of Colorado: http://digitool.library.colostate.edu
Collection “Landing Page”
•
Designed imagery for the
collection (Branding)
•
Hosted a page on library
website with unique
content about the
collection.
•
Special search
functionalities to augment
full-text searching offered
through the repository.
Using Drupal
Used Drupal CMS to create
additional search functionality.
Essentially had to create a
second database for metadata
to target specific fields for
searching.
Connecting Resources
Connected via Hyperlink
LawLibrary.Colorado.edu
Specialized searching of targeted
fields: Year, Author, Title
Digital Collections of Colorado
Searches full text of document
and more detailed metadata
record.
Quality Assurance Testing
After staff review, we added the
following design elements:
•
Instructional text.
•
Emphasis of unique text in
title.
•
List nodes in chronological
order.
•
Results Counter
•
Inclusion of clear button.
Collection Usage
Regular traffic to page after initial launch with intermittent spikes.
High average time on page.
Lessons Learned
• Adobe optical character recognition insufficient for
indexing documents for digital collections.
Alternative options: Abbyy FineReader, Tesseract
•
Creating dual interfaces produces extra work,
duplicates effort.
• Faster computers are worth the investment.
Project:
Searching the Collection
Project: Searching the
Collection
Project: Refining Search
in Repository
Project: Refining Search
in Repository (cont’d)