Special Collections Department
Special Collections Department - Department Information - Mission and Collection Policy - Digital Collections
Mission and Collection Policy for Digital Collections
Policy for Digital Collections:
As part of the Librarys mission to select, organize, present, and preserve information resources, the Special Collections Department (ISU Library) will explore the various uses of digitization to preserve and provide access to primary items, collections, and resources. By its digitizing efforts, the Department will expand the use of these materials in teaching, discovery, research, and outreach efforts.
Goals in Terms of Collection Development:
The digitizing efforts of the Special Collections Department will directly reflect the Departments collection strengths and focus on our unique manuscript collections and Iowa State University records/visual materials, in the following areas:
Life Sciences
Chemistry
Environmental and Ecological Sciences
Agriculture and Rural Life
Veterinary Medicine
Food/Nutritional Sciences
Engineering
There will also be a special emphasis on collections that can be submitted to the Iowa Heritage Digital Collections: http://www.iowaheritage.org/
Selection of Materials:
The selection of Special Collections materials for digitization will be based on administrative requirements, preservation considerations, publication and reference use, and potential curriculum needs. The Special Collections faculty and staff have developed a preliminary listing of documents and collections that should be considered top priorities for any digitization efforts.
- Artifact collection
- Dreyfus Oral History Interviews and WISE Archives collections
- Alexander Lippisch Papers
- Warren Manning collection
- John V. Atanasoff
- George Washington Carver
- Campus plans and blueprints
- University Archives photograph collection, including campus buildings and selected departments (Botany, Ada Hayden collection)
- Fragile and oversized glass plate negatives (campus and manuscript collections such as Descartes Pascal), rare books, documents, photographs, maps, and other items
In the overall selection of materials for digitization, the Department relies on the guidelines provided by the Council on Library and Information Resources report, Selecting Research Collections for Digitization, (August 1998).
Material Formats:
The formats to be included for digitizing projects will include documents, photographic images, audio, video/film, and other media formats. While certain projects will be routed through Digital Services, scanning can also be completed in-house, utilizing the Departments scanner, the oversized scanner in Technical Services, and the digital camera.
Metadata:
The Special Collections staff will determine the method of providing metadata on a case-by-case basis. For in-house digital projects, metadata will be provided using Luna Inscribe and VRA fields. For materials for the IHDC project, metadata will be provided through Contentdm.
Equipment:
Currently, the Department utilizes Photoshop imaging software and an Epson Expression 10000 XL flatbed scanner. For oversized items and three-dimensional objects, the Minolta oversized scanner and Librarys digital camera are used.
Digitizing software for downloading digital audio and the ability to edit for the web, currently exists on the WISE computer, specifically purchased for the Dreyfus Oral History Project. If necessary, the Universitys ITC can be used for digitizing special formats such as audio, film, and video.
Access and Security:
Digital images from the Special Collections Dept. will be available on its website (72 and 150 dpi jpgs), sent via e-mail and disk to patrons, available to users via CD-Rom and zip disk, and through Luna. The Dept. will also participate in collaborative digital projects, such as the Iowa Heritage Project.
For reference requests submitted by patrons, jpgs/tifs of 150 and 300 dpi will be provided. Selected images will be stored on the Librarys dedicated hard drive (G drive), and the Extensis software program will be used to manage them and provide access for the staff.
For copyright and security purposes, the Special Collections staff will use the Digimarc watermarking program available in Photoshop to watermark images as belonging to ISU. This will include images available on the Dept.s website and those images sent to reference patrons.
Storage and Preservation:
Short-term, semi-permanent, and permanent Images created through Digital Services will be stored on the k drive.
In-house: short-term images will be created as jpgs of 150 and 300 dpi and the images will be stored on the Librarys dedicated hard drive on the G drive, which is dedicated to Special Collections. These will deleted after a selected time period.
Long-term images will be created as tifs or psds at 600 dpi and the images will be stored on the Special Collections portion of g drive. These will be images that are requested frequently, such as the photographs of George Washington Carver.
Technical Issues and Migration:
The Dept. staff will closely monitor (with IT assistance) the need for any upgrades due to new file formats and software. They will also analyze whether stored images need to be copied to new media, particularly as new versions of Photoshop (or other software) becomes available.
Evaluation:
Evaluation of the Departments digital projects will be accomplished utilizing the following methods:
Targeted interviews of project users
Transaction log analysis
Web surveys
An annual report (based on the fiscal year) regarding the Departments digital efforts, issues, and successes will be submitted to the Dean of the ISU Library and the Associate Director for Public Services.
Additional Sources:
IMLS: A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections.
Created: December 2002
Revised: March 2004