Project
Demonstrations Announced for 2010 WebWise Conference
Washington,
DC—The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
has announced the projects that will be demonstrated at the 2010 WebWise
Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World. Registration is
now closed for the free conference, to be held March 3–5 in Denver, CO.
The 2010 WebWise conference is sponsored by IMLS and co-hosted
by the University of Denver, the Denver Art Museum, and BCR, a multi-state library
cooperative. The theme for this year’s conference, “Imagining
the Digital Future,” will address the successes and innovations
of the past as well as the opportunities and challenges as museums and
libraries navigate the future. Topics will include digital content
creators and educators who are developing engaging learning spaces,
digital repository management, sustainability of collaborative
digitization programs, development and support of interactive
online environments, new tools and services for discovery and
access, and the professional development of a 21st century cultural
heritage information workforce.
Each year, IMLS selects a variety of its cutting-edge,
grant-funded projects to highlight at WebWise. This year, demonstrations
will include the following projects:
The Apiary Project: Framework and Workflow
for Extraction and Parsing of Herbarium Specimen Data: A Standards-Based
Approach to Tool Integration and Metadata
(http://www.apiaryproject.org/content/about-apiary-project)
William Moen, University of North Texas
Millions of specimens in museums and herbaria
worldwide need to be digitized to be accessible to scientists.
The Apiary Project combines human and machine processes to
facilitate the transformation of herbarium label data into
machine-processable parsed data. The workflow and framework
integrate a variety of existing technologies and the application
of standards, such as the recently approved Darwin Core metadata
standard. Participants will access a Web-based application with
interfaces focusing on four primary phases: layout analysis, text
extraction, text parsing, and quality control. The technology
platform is composed entirely of open source components; upon
completion, the workflow and framework will be released as an open
source project.
Art Conservation Database
Wynne Phelan, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
E-mail: wphelan@mfah.org
The Art Conservation Database (ACD) combines detailed text
and image records of works on paper, paintings, and three-dimensional art;
comprehensive condition reports; and collection care records into one
database system, in conjunction with an advisory committee of professionals
working in the field. The presentation will cover various standards and
how they have affected the system design. It will highlight other art
conservation documentation system projects and the commonalities and
differences among the three conservation disciplines being addressed,
as well as strategies to enhance communications among conservation
professionals and IT professionals, especially database developers.
It is hoped that these efforts will lead to an ACD that is a successful
communication platform among conservators and others who are responsible
for collection care.
Creativity Resource
http://creativity.denverartmuseum.org)
Ellen Spangler, Denver Art Museum
E-mail: espangler@denverartmuseum.org
Creativity Resource is a new Web site designed especially
for teachers and hosted by the Denver Art Museum (DAM). Its purpose is
to make the DAM collections useful in classrooms and to help educators
teach skills for creativity in visual arts and language arts. The site
features art and creative writing ideas and standards-based lesson plans
for early childhood through grade 12; high-quality images and art information;
and resources about creativity and divergent thinking. Development of the site
was funded by a grant from the Morgridge Family Foundation.
Enduring Communities: Japanese Americans in Arizona,
Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah – Web tools for K–12 Educators
(www.janm.org/projects/ec)
Allyson Nakamoto, Japanese American National Museum
E-mail: anakamoto@janm.org
This project focuses on the World War II–era experiences of
Japanese Americans in five states. It engages teachers, scholars,
community members, and educational/cultural institutions in developing
narratives that illuminate local, state, and national histories. Throughout
the project, the project team has discussed the use of primary sources in
teaching. Many teachers are interested in incorporating more primary sources
into the standards-based curriculum, but they need assistance in locating
them and incorporating them into their teaching. Working for more than four
years with educators and museum professionals, the demonstration team has
developed strategies museums and libraries can use to help K–12 teachers
locate and incorporate a wide variety of primary source materials into
their classes.
EthoSearch: The Ethogram Archive Project
(www.ethosearch.org)
Leah M. Melber, Lincoln Park Zoo
E-mail: lmelber@lpzoo.org
Modern zoological parks serve as valuable and unique resources
for multi-institutional collaborative behavioral research by scientists and
students at all levels, from elementary school through graduate school.
EthoSearch: The Ethogram Archive Project (EAP) is designed to provide a
tool of critical value to zoo managers, researchers, and students.
Ethograms—species-specific lists of observable behaviors—are a
fundamental underpinning of behavioral research, providing a standardized
approach to collecting animal behavioral data. As the volume of
multi-institutional research increases, the need for a searchable,
clearly defined, easily used database of ethograms becomes more critical.
EAP will fill a vital role for various constituencies and will ultimately
become the core tool for behavioral research and collaborative study.
Media MashUp
www.hclib.org/extranet/#mediamashup)
Jennifer Nelson, Hennepin County Public Library
Media MashUp is a demonstration project designed to
develop an approach to implementing technology-infused programs for
youth in public libraries. The software application that undergirds
the programs is Scratch, freely available, interactive digital media
programs developed by the LifeLong Kindergarten Lab at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Scratch is specially designed to teach 21st century
literacy skills to youth. Media MashUp is testing program delivery and
assessing critical factors that will determine the success or failure
of programs in these libraries, as well as establishing a set of best
practices for program implementation. The project is also identifying
the critical skills library staff will need, if they are to implement
high-quality technology-infused programs.
MIT FACADE Project
http://facade.mit.edu)
MacKenzie Smith, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The FACADE (Future-proofing Architectural Computer-Aided Design)
project at MIT Libraries and the MIT School of Architecture and Planning
has investigated how to archive the highly proprietary and complex
datasets of building construction projects donated by prominent
architecture firms. The project aims to prioritize metadata
application efforts for the prime materials (e.g., 3D CAD models,
presentations to clients, 2D design drawing sets) while preserving
the mass of other files so end users of the repository system can
access them. The project has also developed guidelines and best
practices for archiving 3D CAD models for long-term digital
preservation. The archive includes a catalog and a large
searchable archive of each building’s collection in its entirety.
Oral Histories of the American South
(http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp)
Natasha Smith, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Documenting the American South, a digital publishing
program at the Carolina Digital Library and Archives, involved a number
of constituencies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(the UNC Library, the Southern Oral Histories Program, the Center for the
Study of the American South, and the School of Education) to publish online
oral history interviews using open source technology. These Web-based oral
histories also underwent rigorous analysis by subject matter specialists,
which adds considerable value to the interviews by combining the perspectives
of historians and the firsthand experiences of southerners in a transitioning
American South. The project includes a Web interface that simultaneously
presents audio recordings and interview transcripts.
Rapid Imaging Project
Sam Quigley, Art Institute of Chicago
E-mail: squigley@artic.edu
The goal of the Rapid Imaging Project was to increase
public access to the Art Institute of Chicago’s permanent collection.
Collections specialists and technicians tested various applications and
workflow procedures to find the best solutions for issues related to image
quality, recording metadata, and archiving files. Using off-the-shelf
applications, studio and high-end consumer equipment, imaging workstations,
and workflows optimized for production, the team digitally captured nearly
35,000 images. The coordinator used the Extensis Portfolio and Adobe
applications to archive the images and handle technical metadata, and
to upload derivatives to the collection information management system,
the Chicago Imaging, Text, and Indexing system. The project dramatically
enhanced the Art Institute’s ability to provide public access to its collections.
Vireo
(http://etd.tdl.org)
Mark McFarland, University of Texas
The Texas Digital Library (TDL) has produced Vireo,
a statewide electronic submission and management system for theses
and dissertations. Vireo provides a workflow system that incorporates
all the steps in the thesis process, from student submission of the
manuscript to processing by graduate school personnel, publication,
and preservation. To create Vireo, the TDL developers reviewed the
workflows of five graduate schools in Texas and developed a meta-workflow
that can be adapted for use by any school. In addition to the student
and graduate school staff functions, the system enables institutions to
publish the documents in their institutional repositories and in the TDL Statewide ETD Repository, and to export documents
into TDL’s planned preservation network.
Vogel 50X50
(http://vogel5050.org)
John Gordy, National Gallery of Art
E-mail: j-gordy@nga.gov
The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for
Fifty States is distributing 2,500 works from the Vogels’ collection of
contemporary art throughout the nation, with fifty works going to an art
institution in each of the fifty states. The program Web site allows each
of the museums to upload images of the works and its own independent research,
essentially bringing the collection back together. The 2,500 works can be sorted
by artist, date, medium, or keywords. The project is a joint initiative of the
Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and the National Gallery of Art, with
additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute
of Museum and Library Services.
WGBH Media Library and Archives Vietnam Digital Library
(http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/digitalbridges/projects/vietnam_digital_library.html)
Karen Cariani, WGBH Boston
The Vietnam Digital Library is a collaboration among the WGBH
Media Library and Archives, the University of Massachusetts–Boston, and
the Columbia University Center for New Media Teaching and Learning. The
library contains material from the 1983 series Vietnam: A Television History,
including rare archival footage and hours of in-depth interviews with key
decision-makers and veterans. It enables scholars, academics, researchers,
and the general public to access this historic collection of key primary
source materials, and provides tools that allow user tagging, user annotations
for specific video clips or photos, citations, faceted search, and
video-transcript syncing. The demonstration will focus on the learning
environment Columbia University has built to enable faculty to use digital
media for classroom teaching.
A number of other projects funded by the MacArthur
and Morgridge Foundations will also be demonstrated at the WebWise Conference.
For more on WebWise 2010, go to the conference Web site
at www.bcr.org/webwise2010.
|
