“Cornucopia, an online database of information about more than 6,000 collections in the UK’s museums, galleries, archives and libraries. Whether you are interested in painters or politicians, dinosaurs or space travel, the Romans or the Victorians, Cornucopia can tell you what is available and where to see it.”

This web service provider gives you collection metadata from your searches from many United Kingdom locations. It even lets you include other service providers; Cecilia, Darwin Country, and Google in a federated key word search, but it does not give you easily linked information about them. Then your search results are linked to the original collection site or information about visiting the traditional collection. It is interesting how I mislead my self. I assumed that all service providers had information about digital collections. Wrong assumption! Cornicopia consists of many traditional collections and you are searching the collection information and then from there you determine if you will visit the holding institution with the hours and location information the service provider lists. (Now I see to look for the Service Description. It did not have one) Another reminder — don’t make assumptions! Cornucopia is still a useful federated collection because it is centered around a geographic and cultural center – the UK. “The REGNET service provider is European based. REGNET aims to set up a functional Network of Cultural Service Centres through Europe which will provide IT-services dedicated to cultural heritage organisations. It is to be an enabler of eBusiness activities for cultural heritage organizations. Multi media industries enabling the production of electronic publications will be integrated.” It consists of 8 major cultural institutions representing 7 cultures/languages in 6 countries.
I’ve learned that it has many components one of which is the OAI harvestor. Other components are auction, other initiatives, etc. So it is a very complex project. Many parts of which are still being developed. The default search is full text – interesting. This is useful but not for scholarly searches. It looks like more to be developed there soon, like subject and author searches. Their business model seems to be very functional for the members also in that they will have centralized services like licensing, copyright, maybe even printing and merchandizing. The services in this model are useful for the users also. Individuals, researchers, and larger entities like news, movie, and other media companies will have comprehensive ‘one stopshopping for digital content that they need to create better products.

Overall there are many international service providers. This is a natural progression of digital aggregation across international borders and demonstrates that is easier in the digital Internet world than it was in the traditional.

My learning would benefit from concentrating on the management parameters of why, when, and how a repository works rather than building it. I think that configuring it is still a good exercise even if that takes command line work. Populating a repository with a collection is the most valuable and working with configuring GUI modules. There would be more learning opportunities to try different types of items in varied collections with this approach.

My computer skills are from a users perspective not a systems set-up one. I have struggled with this class more than any other graduate course in my art and MBA career. The possibility of less frustration in coursework would be a big factor in allowing me to recommend the program to others!

Subject listings in my last digital collection prep were too general and not relevant enough to very helpful to a user. Expanding the subject listing controlled vocabulary would have been best but time consuming, which adds to the cost of creating a record. Key words and tags get very inconsistent especially a similar entry occurred 11 items previous. It is not easy to click back to see that similar previous record.

It is key that records be as consistent as possible for best retrieval and comparison by the users. I found in my last entries for an ePrint trial that it was way to easy to be inconsistent and human nature to forget some keywords and tags that were used in a similar entry. I feel that the repository software could help more in allowing easy comparisons, but I did not see that in Drupal, DSpace, or ePrints, where I have worked lately.

The best way I have found for quality metadata is the plan that we use in the WMU library: make a metadata plan so it is thought through and fits the collections needs; do a spreadsheet of the plan and then assemble the metadata in a spreadsheet – easily see where consistency needs to be strengthened; finally, upload as a group load for efficiency as in a tab-delimited text file with a folder full of documents to correspond. That is one way to be consistent, good and cost effective.

Images can be sorted by ownership or other fields and just made more flexible to work with.

Part of their promotion if the module is that: “Image Assist is especially useful when using a client-side editor/WYSIWYG editor. Currently, it can be used with TinyMCE via Wysiwyg API – support for other editors is right on the way.”

What do others think? I would do better at focusing and more indepth learning with less busy work. Thanks for asking. Lou Ann

The article is “Building a collection development CMS on a shoe-string” Regina Beach; Miqueas Dial; Library Hi Tech; 2006; 24, 1; p115.

Their goals were many but modest: increase faculty participation, better support building of physical and digital collections, not lose accreditation because of collection deficiencies, deliver distance ed. resources better, integrate with course management software, better serve outlying locations, make ordering more efficient by doing it electronically, save time and money in invoicing, and reduce cataloging costs. They were able to meet most of these goals in their pilot projects. Not all systems could be integrated and there were challenges of negotiating security issues within the library.

The description of their processes confirms that in most technology changes the people involved have the most difficulty changing and that takes as much planning for as the technology.

I enjoyed this article much more than I thought I would because it applies to so many other libraries, other issues, and projects than just this small Texas group. They are yet to do full implementation, but will share more lessons learned from their shoe string.

I would like promote that it is one involved in making things digital. Also one that thoroughly immerses themselves in digital items and finds ways to share them with one and all.

A good example is getting Civil War Diaries out of a basement Archives and on the Internet for millions of people to access, read, even search and research with categories for better discovery. http://digitalcollections-wmich.cdmhost.com/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/p124301coll6

Yeah. . .  .   .