Back to work… (Practicum Final Project)

I’ve returned to my practicum this week, after taking several weeks off to attend to some urgent deadlines at work.  I also got a new job, which I am excited to start next week.  So I am working as fast as possible to wrap up my final practicum project.

The plan is to take a series of 17 digital oral history interviews about the Shaker Lakes Nature Center (a subset of a rather large and diverse collection held by the History Department at Cleveland State University) and publish them to the Ohio Link Digital Resource Commons (DRC).  The challenge is to shape up the materials and documentation, and in the process, create a standardized and streamlined method for publishing the remainder of the collection (which consists of nearly 500 interviews in all).

At the present, I am working with scattered documentation for each of these interviews, so part of the process is to create a baseline of information that can be included across the collection.  On the most basic level, I need to be able to describe the actual interviews as discreet items (where are they located in all their formats and versions? what are the characteristics of those formats and versions? and so on…); next, I need to describe the context of the items (who contributed to the content and its creation and dissemination?  what can I tell the user about these contributors?  what is the series and how does it fit into the greater collection? what is the nature of the item? et cetera); finally, I must describe the intellectual content of the items (what is it about?).

Each of these tasks provide their own challenges – even when documentation is strong and consistent.  In this case however – due in part to the lower level of documentation, but also due to the nature of oral histories – the challenge is somewhat greater.  For example, with each of the interviews involved, I must listen to the audio files (ranging in length from 30 minutes to 2.5 hours), gain as much information as possible, and note topics of discussion in a minute by minute log.  These audio logs, which will be the basis for the abstract and table of contents for each item, will alone account for roughly 20 hours of work. That is just for 17 items, or about 4% of the total collection (providing a clear illustration of why these interviews, completed in 2006, have yet to be published in any form).

The Ohio Link DRC is built on Dspace and uses Dublin Core metadata fields.  Thus, I have started by establishing which metadata fields will be used, and which standards and controlled vocabularies will be employed to ensure consistency as this process continues (well beyond my practicum, and in all likelihood, with considerable work being done by non-LIS graduate assistants).  Once I have completed preparing all the metadata, I will transfer the fields into a DRC batch upload spreadsheet to upload the files and records onto Dspace.  I will have more to say about that process when the time comes.

Metadata fields for Shaker Lakes Nature Center oral history project: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p5XI6iRq54sEAWTOCmPN-fQ (Live Google Doc)

Metadata spreadsheet for items in Shaker Lakes Nature Center oral history project: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p5XI6iRq54sF8w7Uf4iEJdw (Live Google Doc)

Monday, 10am-6pm

Tuesday, 10am-6pm (with a 30 minute break to vote, of course…)

Wednesday, 10am-6pm

Thursday, 10am-6pm

Friday, 10am-6pm