www.wdl.org
Jason Yasner
Operations Manager, World Digital Library
Library of Congress
jyas@loc.gov
www.twitter.com/WDLorg
WDL Partner Meeting
“Content Milestones and
Proposed Workflow Changes”
Washington, DC
December 5, 2012
Agenda
• Content Milestones in 2012
• Brief Overview of WDL Operations
• High-Level Production Workflow
• WDL Production Workflow Chart
• Proposed Workflow Changes and
Improvements
• Partner Questionnaire for New Partners Only
• Content Proposal Form and WDL response
• Transfer: Availability of Online Drop Box for Content Deliveries
• Quarterly Review of Content Deliveries
• Partner Review of Descriptions/Metadata
• Questions?
Content Milestones
• Currently at 6,588 items, comprising 319,340 images
• 2,508 items were added since the last partner meeting,
an increase of 50.3 percent
• An additional 134 items are scheduled to be added by
the end of the year
• Continuous focus on Quality and Quantity
• Significant progress in building critical mass in a number
of high-visibility areas:
• Arabic scientific manuscripts
• Chinese rare books and manuscripts
• Treasures from Medieval and Renaissance Europe
• Mesoamerican codices
• Next milestone for 2013: 10,000 items
High-Level Production Workflow
• Content Selection
• Content Transfer
• Content Processing
• Cataloging (consistent metadata, descriptions)
• Translation
• Publishing
WDL Workflow
Partner Questionnaire for New
Partners Only
(Existing Process, mostly unchanged)
•
When a Partner first joins the WDL, we ask that they complete a
Questionnaire
• This document asks questions about technical contacts,
technical infrastructure, the preferred name of the institution, etc.
The current version of this document also asks for information
about the content the Partner would like to contribute
• In the revised version, we will remove the content-related
information from the Questionnaire and limit this document to
basic information about the Partner
• Partners only need to complete this document one time. If you
have already completed this document, you don't need to do it
again
Content Proposal Form
(New Process)
• When a partner has selected content to contribute, we
would ask you to first briefly describe that content in
writing in a Content Proposal Form
• This will help us to ensure the continued quality of the
WDL site and to minimize the amount of time spent
investigating content that ultimately does not meet the
WDL selection criteria or that may duplicate content
already offered by another partner
Content Proposal Form (cont’d)
(New Process)
• Knowing more about the content you are proposing will
also help us to
• better address underrepresented countries, languages,
formats, etc.,
• give due regard to priority areas such as the UNESCO
Memory of the World Register, and
• better relate individual submissions to broader categories
recommended by the Content Selection Committee and
the specialized content subcommittees that already exist
or that may be established in the future (Chinese language
content, Arabic scientific manuscripts, Mesoamerican
codices)
Content Proposal Form (cont’d)
(New Process)
• This Content Proposal Form will also help to
make the production process more efficient. The
more the WDL team learns about the content
early on in the process, the better we can plan
for curatorial and translation needs
• The Content Proposal Form would be a new
form that precedes every content delivery
Content Proposal Form (cont’d)
(New Process)
• This form would ask for:
• a Contact Person
• a General Description of the content to be contributed in
one delivery
• the Type of item or items (e.g., books, maps)
• the Number of items
• the Total Size of the files to be delivered (e.g., 600 MB)
• How the files will be delivered (online, via the process
described later, or offline), and
• the Expected Date of delivery (described in more detail
later)
Content Proposal Form (cont’d)
(New Process)
• The Contact Person provided on the form will
receive a response within two (2) weeks
indicating whether additional information is
needed, if any problems are anticipated, or, if
there are no problems, instructions for delivery
• A separate Content Proposal Form would be
required for each batch of content that you plan
to contribute
• The Content Proposal Form can be submitted at
any time
Transfer: Availability of Online Drop
Box for Content Deliveries
(New Process)
•
•
•
•
•
In the interest of simplifying the online content transfer process, we
would like to offer this preferred method for online content delivery
The Online Drop Box would be established using Amazon's Simple
Storage Service (Amazon S3). (We are already using Amazon S3 to
satisfy other storage needs)
Partners would have access to a space on Amazon S3 where files
can be dropped
We would still accept physical deliveries (DVDs, hard drives, etc.)
from Partners who are unable to transfer their content online via this
method
We would like to discuss the parameters of the Amazon S3 setup
(access, security, retention, etc.) on the WDL Technical Committee
listserv
Quarterly Review of Content Deliveries
(New Process)
•
•
•
•
•
•
In order to make the production process more transparent, we would like to
review content deliveries on a scheduled, quarterly basis
Once Content Proposals have been accepted, deliveries can be made at
any time, but deliveries won't be reviewed by the WDL team until the next
scheduled review date
Those dates could be regarded as delivery deadlines, which many Partners
have asked that we set. Partners would choose from the available review
dates on the Content Proposal Form
The review process includes determining whether or not we have received
all of the expected metadata and object files in good condition
One of our objectives will be to estimate how long the review process will
take each quarter, and to then inform Partners when they can expect
feedback on their delivery
Quarterly-only review of deliveries will allow the WDL team to focus on
content that is already in the production workflow without being repeatedly
required to manage and review content transfers.
Partner Review of Descriptions /
Metadata
(Existing Process, but proposed improvements)
•
•
In order to make the Partner Review of Descriptions and Metadata
more useful, we propose to move this process further down the line
in the workflow and provide a website so the Partner can see/review
the items exactly as they will appear on the WDL website
In the Current process, the WDL Description Coordinator (Kaleena
Black) emails edited descriptions to the WDL contact at the Partner
institution. We request that descriptions be briefly reviewed with
three issues in mind:
• Questions our researchers, language specialists, or editors
might have about an item
• Corrections regarding accuracy or clarity, paying particular
attention to transliteration of names or place names (if
applicable)
• Preference in the wording of the partner institution name or
descriptions of the donating division, collection, or department
Partner Review of Descriptions /
Metadata (cont’d)
(Existing Process, but proposed improvements)
• Generally, we provide a window of one (1) week or more,
depending on number of items, for the Partner institution to
look over the descriptions. The descriptions are moved
forward for cataloging after the allotted amount of time
• However, this can create problems when the metadata or
translation team has additional inquires, requiring returning to
the Partner for more information, or when a Partner provides
changes to the descriptions after the items have passed
through metadata and into translation
• While we are always happy to make alterations, the process
of doing so after an item has been sent to translation can be
laborious
Partner Review of Descriptions /
Metadata (cont’d)
(Existing Process, but proposed improvements)
•
•
•
•
•
Proposal: Upon completion and editing, descriptions will be moved
immediately forward for cataloging
When the initial cataloging process is complete and the metadata
team have assembled any questions they might have, the Partner
institution will be sent a link via email
This link will lead to our new Partner Review site, where Partners
can see draft records (which are not “live” but reproduce the look
and feel of the website) for their items. These records are not final
and only the English record will be available
The Partner will review the records on the Partner Review site,
address any questions we might have regarding the content, and
note any changes or corrections in an attached document
This new review process allows Partners to have a better sense of
the final product, and ultimately helps ensure that we are
representing their content more accurately
Questions?
www.wdl.org