Visual Materials: Metadata, Standards, and Best Practices for Digital Libraries

Information Studies 208, UCLA Spring 2000

Monday 17:00-20:00, 111 GSE&IS Bldg

taught by Howard Besser

Libraries have standards like AACR2 and MARC that allow the sharing of bibliographic records, copy cataloging, and union catalogs. Digital libraries are just beginning to develop the standards that they will need to allow users to smoothly search across multiple repositories, and to view and use works from different digital collections within a single workstation application. This course will examine interoperability issues posed by visual materials in digital libraries. The focus will be on emerging standards for structural and administrative metadata (as opposed to descriptive and discovery metadata). The course will also cover basic architectural strategies for helping maximize performance and longevity. As case studies, students will have the opportunity to examine the most recent (yet unpublished) projects from the Digital Library Federation and the California Digital Library.

General course information

Weekly class topics and schedule

Grading

a few underlying ideas and background theories and concepts

Office Hours Monday 4-5 in 241 GSE&IS Bldg and by appointment

NOTE: If you want to get email about the class (which you will need to do if you are taking the class), at the beginning of the term you will need to send an email message to requests@lists.gseis.ucla.edu . Make sure that the return address for this message is your own personal email account. In this message you need to put the words "subscribe IS-208 yourname" in either the subject or the body of the message. (Put your own name in place of yourname.)

Grading

40% final project/presentation (written projects due June 5)
45% class participation (including MOA2 scanning project)
15% short assignment and presentations (due May 1)

Write a short (approximately 3 pages) paper that describes and critically places some aspect of standards in digital libraries. For example, you could analyze one or more of the DL1 or DL2 projects from the standpoint of standards.

Possible Readings

General Readings

D-Lib Magazine
Serge Abiteboul and Anne-Marie Vercoustre (eds.) Research and advanced technology for digital libraries: third European conference, ECDL '99, Paris, France, September 22-24, 1999: (proceedings), Berlin: Springer, 1999
Michael Lesk. Practical digital libraries: books, bytes, and bucks, San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1997 (Z 692 C65 L47)

Events to Check out:

Design Department Lecture series (Monday evenings plus other events)
net.net.net lecture series at MOCA--

Tentative Weekly Schedule

Apr 3 | Apr 10 | Apr 17 | Apr 24 | May 1 | May 8 | May 15 | May 22 | Jun 1 | Jun 5

Apr 3--Interoperable Digital Libraries & importance of Metadata & Standards

Introduction--what is this class about?

selection of a late May/early June make-up class

Apr 10--The Museum Educational Site Licensing Project and what we've learned

Before class read:

In preparation for your hands-on scanning project, read Part IV (Best Practices) from the Making of America II White Paper
Christie Stephenson, The Evolution of the MESL Project, in Christie Stephenson and Particia McClung (eds.), Delivering Digital Images: Cultural Heritage Resources for Education, Los Angeles: Getty Information Institute, 1998, pages 1-8
The Museum Educational Site Licensing Project: Technical Issues in the Distribution of Museum Images and Textual Data to Universities by Howard Besser and Christie Stephenson in James Hemsley (ed.) E.V.A. '96 London (Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts), Thursday 25th July 1996 (vol 2), Hampshire, UK: Vasari Ltd, 1996, pages 5-1 - 5-15
and read 2 of the following:

MESL Implementation at the Universities by Howard Besser, from Christie Stephenson and Patricia McClung (eds.), Delivering Digital Images: Cultural Heritage Resources for Education, volume 1, Los Angeles: Getty Information Institute, 1998, pages 70-84
Comparing Five Implementations of the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project: 'If the museum data's the same, why's it look so different?' by Howard Besser, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums, (Paris France, 3-5 September 1997), Pittsburgh: Archives and Museum Informatics, pages 317-325
the Executive Summary (front matter) and conclusion (Part V) from The Social and Economic Implications of the Production, Distribution, and Useage of Image Data (final report to the Mellon Foundation, 1999)

Apr 17--Making of America II

Discussion of the MESL Project & implications

Standards & Best Practices

Before class read the remainder of:

Hurley, Price-Wilken, Proffitt, and Besser. The Making of America II Testbed Project: A Digital Library Service Model, Digital Library Federation, Washington: Council on Library and Information Resources, December 1999.

Apr 24--California Digital Library Architecture & Standards-1

Finish discussion of Standards & Best Practices, MOA2

Making Thumbnails and derivative images

Before class read:

Imaging Digitization & Metadata Standards Document , California Digital Library Architecture & Standards Workgroup (1999)
California Digital Library Technical Architecture and Standards working draft, California Digital Library Architecture & Standards Workgroup (2000)

Discuss short assignment (have a proposed idea ready)

May 1--California Digital Library Architecture & Standards-2

Examining Image Headers, Creation of Thumbnail Images
Due date for all Master Images scanned from film rolls
Discuss final project (have a proposed idea ready)

May 8 -- Instructor gone

May 15--Digital Longevity-1

Short assignment due
Begin Assignment for creation of MOA2 Metadata
Brian's Case Study of his workplace

Before Class read:

Lyman, Peter and Howard Besser (1998). Defining the Problem of our Vanishing Memory: Background, Current Status, Models for Resoltuion, in Margaret MacLean and Ben H. Davis (eds.) Time and Bits: Managing Digital Continuity Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute
Howard's latest article on digital longevity
review Howard's Longevity website

May 22--Digital Longevity-2

Discussion of Persistent Identifiers, Journal Archiving, and Longevity of complex material
Important talk this Thurs 5/25, 3-5, 111 GSEIS Bldg-- Extracting the Evidence: Moving Images as Complex Historical and Cultural Records by Rick Prelinger

Before Class read:

internal CDL discussion on Persistent IDs
Spring 1999 UCLA/Berkeley course on preservation of various art forms
Electronic Café International website
UCLA/Electronic Café project

May 29 -- Holiday; no class; make-up class on Thurs June 1, 5-8 PM

Thurs Jun 1 (make-up class)--National Information Standards Organization Technical Imaging Metadata

Before class review:

National Standards Organization Invitational Meeting on Technical Metadata Elements for Image Files

Jun 5--Final Presentations

class 5-9 PM
Note: Final short Assignment: Look at the Peru images you scanned, and check to make sure that all your thumbnail images are there, and that they link to derivative jpeg images (and that all the links work). Then email Rose that you've finished checking.

To see ongoing activities and course taught by this instructor click here. To send email to the entire class, write to IS-208@lists.gseis.ucla.edu .

Last updated
6/5/00