Author Archives: Laura Braunstein

DLP Staff Interview: Anthony Helm, Head of Digital Media and Library Technologies

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Next in our series of interviews with Digital Library Program staff. Today, Anthony Helm, Head of Digital Media and Library Technologies, answers questions about his work.

What does the Head of Digital Media and Library Technologies do?
I manage two departments within the Library, the Jones Media Center and the Digital Library Technologies Group. While both have a technology focus, they are almost like yin and yang. The JMC is a patron-focused service location where creative output is consumed and produced. The DLTG is responsible for managing the Library’s information technology infrastructure, including our integrated library system (Innovative Interfaces’s Sierra product) and the myriad applications that deliver our content online. (We do, also, use some services provided by campus ITS, including their virtual machine hardware to host our servers and OmniUpdate for many static web pages).

How did you get here? That is, what was your path to becoming the Head of Digital Media and Library Technologies here at Dartmouth?
I used to describe it as a dervish of a dance, constantly changing partners between teaching positions and technology positions until I gradually learned how to find them both in a single place. My educational background is in television and radio production (undergrad) and Japanese language, literature, and culture (master’s). I’ve been an English teacher, a BBS operator, a visiting Japanese instructor, an escaped Buddhist novitiate, a computer lab manager, a small campus IT director, and an academic technologist. In 2008, I eventually arrived at Dartmouth to head the Arts & Humanities Resource Center, before landing in my present position three years after that.

What’s a notable (interesting, challenging, unusual) project that you’ve worked on recently?
In the JMC, last year we completed a major renovation of the Center, which was the culmination of years of planning, and it has turned out incredibly well. We are, however, still learning and exploring what we can do in the new space and discovering new opportunities for faculty and students to be creative. We may even try to produce a small multimedia play in our “Innovation Studio” space.

On the DLTG side, we are actively working to build an academic repository of scholarly content as well as to enhance the capabilities of our library digital collections repository infrastructure. I’m very excited about both of these. That said, there seems to be no end to what we learn about other people’s workflows.

What do you wish that more people knew about digital media and library technologies (in relation to the Digital Library Program or not)?
In the Jones Media Center, we provide access to the creative output of thousands, if not millions, of people in the form of an audio and video collection of over 30,000 DVD, videos, videogames, CDs, CD-ROMs, as well as board and card games. We also enable people to become creators of their own multimedia-based essays and stories, by loaning a wide array of video cameras, still cameras, audio recorders, microphones, lights, projectors, and much more.

At the same time, we are fighting an uphill battle to make sure that all of this content will remain accessible for future generations. That’s where the work of DLTG and our entire Digital Library Program team comes into play. There is a neverending amount of work to be done. Though budgets in higher ed are constrained, this is a vital growth area, and it is endlessly fascinating to be a part of it.

Who are you when you’re not being the Head of Digital Media and Library Technologies?
I am an a capella singer, an actor and director of community theater, and a (casual these days) video gamer.

What has been a notable challenge with a DLP project? (question from Lizzie)
With a book, when it is published, that’s pretty much it. It is self-contained and can sit on a shelf for years. A contemporary DLP project is not as simple as scanning the pages of a book and putting up a PDF or JPEG images online. A really good DLP project feels more like a film by comparison. There is so much that so many people have to plan and develop and do to deliver the final output. But more than that, the final output must be continually monitored and evaluated to ensure that it continues to be accessible. An operating system update or a browser update can change everything. A good amount of the effort put into creating a DLP project is spent designing a system that can be accessed and adapted by future developers and librarians. That’s one reason we tend to favor open standards and open source development tools.

What question would you like another member of the Digital Library Program staff to answer?
Is there a Library collection or a period of Dartmouth history you’d like to see digitized and available to the world?

DLP Staff Interview: Lizzie Curran, Assistant Conservator

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Next in our series of interviews with Digital Library Program staff. Today, Lizzie Curran, Assistant Conservator, answers questions about her work. Follow Lizzie and her colleagues at the Dartmouth College Library’s Preservation Lab on Instagram.

What does an Assistant Conservator do?
As the assistant conservator, I repair both the special collections in Rauner Library as well as the general circulating collection, fixing what needs to be fixed and beyond! Which is to say: I put covers back on, stick split spines back together, and flatten or mend where needed. I also build custom boxes and other enclosures for objects that come in to the lab. I am also the liaison to the Digital Library Program, so we can keep communication open between departments as objects come in to be digitized and need conservation.

How did you get here? That is, what was your path to becoming an Assistant Conservator here at Dartmouth?
I attended the North Bennet Street School in Boston and studied bookbinding there, full time for two years. During that time, I had an internship at Dartmouth (!) and a fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle working with their special collections. I was most recently a conservation technician at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, where I was doing something similar to what I’m doing here at Dartmouth, but in a private library setting. I moved back east in April, and the rest is history.

What’s a notable (interesting, challenging, unusual) project that you’ve worked on recently?
Lately I’ve been mending maps of cities and towns in New Hampshire to be digitized in the Evans Map Room. They span the entire twentieth century, so it’s interesting to see the evolution of the materials they’re printed on and purposes of the maps. For example, the earlier in the century the map is, the more information on land plots and land owners is given—later on, there are tourist destinations and historical landmarks noted instead. The things that haven’t changed in the last hundred years are also interesting; Route 4A in Enfield has been exactly where it is…for a long time.

What do you wish that more people knew about preservation and conservation (in relation to digital libraries or not)?
I wish people knew you should never “fix” a book yourself and put tape on it! Really though, I think what preservation addresses is how we think about accessing our information in the future. Though the future may lie in the digital world, print will certainly be around and we’re handling the print objects of the future right now. It’s not modern-day tape that drives me nuts, it’s tape from 1950. I’m just trying to help out Preservation Services in 2050, who will undoubtedly be chipping off tape from 2016 unless we alert the public now!

Who are you when you’re not being an Assistant Conservator?
I’m always keeping my hands busy somehow—I love baking, sewing, knitting, drawing, and making things in general. I like birdwatching while meandering around my neck of the woods in Vermont. Currently I’m in the throes of being a new homeowner and all the challenges that brings, ie: how to use a wood stove.

What’s the most unusual item that you’ve come across in your work so far with the DLP? (question from Bill)
The most unusual item I’ve seen here so far is a large project we’re doing with some albums from the Marcus Jewelry Company, which was based out of New York City around the turn of the last century. The little painted jewelry designs pasted in to the albums told us a lot about life and aesthetics in 1910, and the artistry of the tiny paintings was amazing. There were even little mockups of glitzy belt buckles with a velvet ribbon tacked in to the book. Some had moveable overlays to show you how a pin could transform to a necklace… really neat stuff like that.

What question would you like another member of the Digital Library Program staff to answer?
What has been a notable challenge with a DLP project?

DLP Staff Interview: Bill Ghezzi, Digital Production and Metadata Librarian

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Next in our series of interviews with Digital Library Program staff. Today, William (Bill) Ghezzi, Digital Production & Metadata Librarian, answers questions about his work.

What does a Digital Production & Metadata Librarian do?
As Digital Production Manager I work closely with the Digital Library Program and staff in the Digital Production Unit to plan and execute scanning and photographic projects for the Library. A large part of the digital production aspect of my work is project management. I convene the DLP Production Group where we design workflows, troubleshoot problems, share information, and generally shepherd projects through the DLP process. As Metadata Librarian, I work in Cataloging & Metadata Services to design and implement workflows for the creation of metadata for print and digital content. Our primary task in Metadata Services is to create a metadata database of record for all of our digital collections and publications.

How did you get here? That is, what was your path to becoming a Digital Production & Metadata Librarian here at Dartmouth?
I am in my twentieth year in the Library. I began as a Librarian in the Catalog Department. I worked with Cataloging staff on original cataloging of books, music scores, sound recordings, serials, and electronic resources. My work entirely focused on the Dartmouth College Library Catalog. Over the years, as we began to license more electronic resources, the focus of my work became more closely connected with digital resources and electronic resource management. In 2012, my position changed to half time as Metadata Librarian and half time as Digital Production Manager.

What’s a notable (interesting, challenging, unusual) project that you’ve worked on recently?
I would have to say the Stone Family Papers was one of the more interesting recent projects, mainly because it demonstrates the collaborative nature of the Digital Program. The Digital Production Unit worked closely with the Library Conservator to prepare and photograph the manuscripts. The DLP Production Group worked with the Digital Library Technologies Group and Cataloging & Metadata Services to develop a new local image viewing software to deliver the images online. We like to describe the work of the Digital Program as distributed across departments, and the Stone Family Papers project exemplifies that collaborative process.

What do you wish that most people knew about digital production?
The Digital Production Unit is in a secured area in the Library. This is to protect some of the valuable materials that we work with. I wish more people were able to just walk into the department and see what we are up to. Certainly, I welcome anyone who would like to learn more about what we do to come and visit. Just email me and I can set something up.

Who are you when you’re not being a Digital Production & Metadata Librarian?
For almost fifty years now, I have been performing and teaching the classical guitar. There is more about that at my website.

Are there innovative or transformative digital projects that other institutions have done that make you think “why don’t we try something like that here at Dartmouth?” (question from Mina)
There is a small interest group in the Library investigating linked open data. We spent some time looking at Linked Jazz, a site that considers jazz history through the many connections and relationships between jazz musicians. It’s a great site to learn about jazz, jazz musicians, and linked data at the same time.

What question would you like another member of the Digital Library Program staff to answer?
What’s the most unusual item that you’ve come across in your work with the DLP?

Image of the Week

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First in our series examining an Image of the Week from the photographic files, by Kevin Warstadt, Edward Connery Lathem ’51 Digital Library Fellow.

This photo comes from the Dartmouth photographic file entitled “Dartmouth in China“. A candid shot, it seems to capture the feel of life on a Chinese street in the early twentieth century with an eerie authenticity. It was likely taken sometime around 1920 in Zhili (now Hebei) province in North China.

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Man standing in front of street vendor (circa 1920)

Dartmouth has a long history in China dating back to the late nineteenth century, when missionaries associated with the College began moving there to convert the populace. Charles Daniel Tenney was Dartmouth’s most significant representative from this group. He became a confidant of Li Hongzhang, the influential politician and diplomat of the late Qing Dynasty, and later became the Commissioner of Education for the reformist government of Northern China. Tenney’s papers can be found in the the Dartmouth Digital Collections.

DLP Staff Interview: Mina Rakhra, Cataloging and Metadata Librarian

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Next in our series of interviews with Digital Library Program staff. Today, Mina Rakhra, Cataloging and Metadata Librarian, answers questions about her work.

What does a Cataloging and Metadata Librarian do?
A Cataloging and Metadata Librarian’s primary responsibility is to create and manage descriptive metadata for the Library collection in order to facilitate discovery of and access to those scholarly materials.  In addition to creating metadata, I’m also involved in the selection, creation, and implementation of appropriate metadata standards for the Library’s digital projects.

How did you get here? That is, what was your path to becoming a Cataloging and Metadata Librarian Dartmouth?
I’ve worked for the Library since 2000, starting in Acquisitions Services and then moving to Cataloging & Metadata Services in 2001.  At that time, I was also pursuing a master’s degree in library and information science at UIUC. Shortly before I graduated, I was fortunate enough to be offered a professional position in the Cataloging & Metadata Services department and I’ve been here ever since.

What’s a notable (interesting, challenging, unusual) project that you’ve worked on recently?
The most interesting and challenging project that I’ve worked on recently has to be the Occom Circle project.  This was a multi-year project to create a scholarly digital edition of the works of Samson Occom.  This was the first (and largest) digital project that I’ve worked on — it was an amazing experience to work collaboratively with such a large project group and to be so closely involved in the transcription, markup, and online delivery of over 500 handwritten eighteenth-century manuscripts.

What do you wish that most people knew about metadata?
Creating good metadata is a skill that anyone can learn — you don’t have to be a cataloger or a metadata librarian!

Who are you when you’re not being a Cataloging and Metadata Librarian?
When I’m not being a Cataloging & Metadata Librarian, I’m at home enjoying the peace and quiet of a small Vermont village.

What’s your favorite DLP project and why? (question from Jenny)
What I’ve really enjoyed about the text markup projects is the opportunity to read and interact with primary materials.  Both the Occom and the John McCoy Family papers projects involved handwritten letters from earlier centuries and it was fascinating to read them — there were times when a phrase would catch my eye and I would forget about the markup (temporarily!) and be completely immersed in the letter and the world that it described.

What question would you like another member of the Digital Library Program staff to answer?
Are there innovative or transformative digital projects that other institutions have done that make you think “why don’t we try something like that here at Dartmouth?”

Open Access Week

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The Digital Library Program is committed to making all of our projects free and open access. With our the rest of our colleagues from the Dartmouth College Library, we would like to invite you to celebrate the 2016 International Open Access Week, which will take place from Monday, October 24th- Friday, October 28th across Dartmouth’s campus.

Open Access Week is a global, community-driven celebration of open access to research, data, code, creative work, and ideas. This year, the Dartmouth’s Scholarly Communication Program and the Library’s Open Dartmouth Working Group will offer seminars, displays, exhibits, and presentations that address how Dartmouth can impact a broad scholarly community through open access.  See what’s happening at Dartmouth during Open Access Week 2016, and we hope you can join in this international celebration!

Did you know that Dartmouth has an open access publishing fund to help pay for author publication fees often associated with publishing in open access journals? Find more information here.

Would you like to learn more about scholarly communication initiatives and open access at Dartmouth?  Visit the Scholarly Communication Program blog.

Collections as Data

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Today some of us are following the Library of Congress’s symposium Collections as Data: Stewardship and Use Models to Enhance Access. As the Digital Library Program grows in scope and size, we are thinking about ways to make our digital collections accessible to scholars, students, and the public, in order “to create new models of scholarship and inquiry,” as the symposium’s organizers put it.

The symposium is being streamed live on the Library of Congress YouTube channel, where recordings will also be posted when the event is over. Tweets are hashtagged with #AsData.

DLP Staff Interview: Jenny Mullins, Digital Preservation Librarian

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With this post, we inaugurate a series of interviews with Digital Library Program staff. Today, Jenny Mullins, Digital Preservation Librarian, answers questions about her work.

What does a Digital Preservation Librarian do?

Fundamentally, a Digital Preservation Librarian ensures that digital materials created or acquired by the Library remain usable over time. And by “usable” I mean they must be accessible, understandable, and authentic. Our access to digital materials is mediated through software and hardware, which are constantly evolving and/or becoming obsolete. As Digital Preservation Librarian, I try to mitigate the risk posed by evolving technologies by instituting policies and workflows to actively manage files over time. I advocate for the use of open, well-supported file formats, monitor the viability of file formats in our collections, and check the fixity of files to protect against bit rot. I also work with metadata (and Metadata Librarians) quite a bit. If we have a file, but we can’t find it, identify it, or contextualize it, it’s not going to be very usable.

In addition to establishing best practices within the Library, I’ve also been trying to reach out to creators of digital content — which at this point is pretty much everyone — and help them understand how to best manage digital assets. Digital preservation starts at the beginning of a file’s life cycle, and requires ongoing active management. The more that researchers understand about how to care for their digital materials, the better, especially if these materials have a chance of ending up in library or archival collections.

How did you get here? That is, what was your path to becoming the Digital Preservation Librarian here at Dartmouth?

It was a long and winding path. I started my library career hoping to be a book conservator. I worked in conservation labs as a technician, and focused my MLIS in Preservation Management. My life took some twists and turns, and I randomly happened into (literally as a result of a conversation with a stranger on a bus) a three-month internship at the Bay Area Video Coalition helping to build a digital repository for dance video. I knew nothing about video, and almost nothing about digital preservation, but was able to apply the preservation fundamentals I had learned in school and through working with book and paper collections. As I started working with these new-to-me formats, I kept asking myself questions like “How is this video file different from a book? How is it the same? What does this say about the kinds of questions we should ask or decisions we should make?” Slowly, through lots of research, practice and the help of colleagues like Lauren Sorensen and Dave Rice, I developed a pretty good understanding of digital preservation fundamentals. I remember being at a Digital Preservation Interest Group meeting at ALA about a year after I started that internship (which turned into a full-time job) and realizing, “I finally understand what everyone is talking about!” I felt like I’d climbed up a pretty steep hill and could finally see the surrounding landscape. A month later, I submitted my application for the Digital Preservation Librarian position here at Dartmouth.

What’s a notable (interesting, challenging, favorite) project that you’ve worked on recently?

I’m working on developing a mini-workshop with Caitlin Birch on designing Oral History projects with long-term preservation and archiving in mind. I’ve been really trying to get into doing more outreach, but it’s not one of my natural strengths. Working with Caitlin has been a great learning experience — she’s great at engaging an audience and explaining complicated ideas in a way that’s easy to digest.

What do you wish that more people knew about digital preservation?

In the context of the Library, I’d like people to understand that preservation of digital materials is deeply collaborative — success relies on the expertise of many individuals from multiple departments. My role is often to get the right people in the room talking to one another.

Who are you when you’re not being the Digital Preservation Librarian?

For the next few months, I’m Interim Head of the Preservation Department, so I get to think more broadly about the preservation needs of the Library. After 5pm and on weekends, I head back to my house in the woods in small-town Vermont.

What question would you like another member of the Digital Library Program staff to answer?

“What’s your favorite DLP project and why?”

Celebrating The Occom Circle

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Hello World! This post inaugurates the Dartmouth Digital Library Program’s new blog, in which we’ll announce new digital collections, highlight interesting items, and explore the people and processes of our Digital Library Program. Please check back often to see what’s new and what’s cool.

This weekend, Dartmouth College will co-host with the Society of Early Americanists a symposium on Indigenous Archives in the Digital Age. The event celebrates The Occom Circle, a digital edition of the papers of Samson Occom (1723-1792), a Mohegan Indian who was instrumental in Dartmouth’s founding. The Occom Circle is one of the Dartmouth Digital Library Program’s largest projects to date, involving librarians, archivists, technologists, scholars, students, and members of the Mohegan tribe.

Over the past few years, I have been lucky to work with my colleagues on The Occom Circle. Doing document transcription, simplified “mark-down,” and TEI markup was a hands-on way to learn about a digital humanities project from the ground up. (For more details, see the chapter that several team members wrote for the collection Digital Humanities in the Library). I also found that I just liked Samson Occom. His words were fascinating, although alien to the extent that he was writing within a profoundly different historical, cultural, and religious context. His journal entries were comforting in their repetition; every morning, it seemed, began with him waking, breakfasting, and setting off on his horse (if he was fortunate to have one) or on foot (more often than not) to the next settlement to preach “to a large number of people.” And yet there were moments of epiphany, of joy and sorrow, that broke through the daily tedium: Occom officiated at a wedding, or comforted the sick and dying, or went fishing with his sons, or rejoiced in the kindness and compassion of his hosts.

For an exhibit at Dartmouth’s Rauner Special Collections Library in conjunction with the conference, we wanted to explore Occom’s role in a series of events related to the founding of Dartmouth College. In 1765, Eleazar Wheelock, wanting to raise funds for his project of converting Native Americans to Christianity at his school in Connecticut, sent Occom, who was already an ordained minister, to Great Britain. There, Occom became a celebrity, preaching to numerous congregations, meeting religious leaders like George Whitefield (one of the founders of Methodism) and political figures like William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth (for whom Wheelock would eventually name his fledgling institution). Occom’s return to the colonies, however, precipitated his break with Wheelock. He discovered that his family had been neglected, and that his mentor planned to move the school to the New Hampshire frontier.

Some years later, Occom wrote a scathing letter berating Wheelock for abandoning his intention to teach Indian youth in favor of creating a College. He felt like Wheelock’s “Gazing Stock, Yea Ever a Laughing Stock, in Strange Countries, to Promote your Cause.” Other mentors, such as Whitefield, Occom noted, had warned him that he was nothing but a tool that would be used and set aside. Even in the heat of passion, Occom did not forget his schooling. He threw the learning Wheelock had given him back in his face. He wrote:

I am very Jealous that instead of your Semenary Becoming alma Mater, She will be too alba mater to Suckle the Tawnees, for She is already a Dorn’d up too much like the Popish Virgin Mary She’ll be Naturally ashame’d to Suckle the Tawnees for She is already equal in Power, Honor, and Authority to and any College in Europe.

With alba mater (in Latin, “white mother”), Occom puns on alma mater (“foster mother”), a traditional metaphor for a college.

Occom to Wheelock 1771

Excerpt of letter from Occom to Wheelock, July 24, 1771

This was an extraordinary moment in the story of Dartmouth’s founding. Occom recognized the failure of the institutions and people who nurtured him to uphold the values which he had been taught. Archives have always contained marginalized voices; digital archives amplify those voices to help fill the silences of history, and to remind us of our communities’ ideals. During the celebration of its 250th anniversary, Dartmouth will certainly reflect on its struggle to embrace the original commitment to Native education for which Occom worked so hard, and which we can see evidence of in the documents of The Occom Circle.

The Occom Circle includes digital editions both of Occom’s journal of his trip to Great Britain and of his final letter to Wheelock. The journal and the letter themselves, along with many other related documents, are in the exhibit “Power, Honor, and Authority: Samson Occom and the Founding of Dartmouth College.” The exhibit was curated by Laura Braunstein and Peter Carini, and will be on view in Rauner Library’s Class of ‘65 Gallery until October 28, 2016.