Category Archives: Announcements

Announcements, Behind the Scenes, Digital Collections, New Collections

2.5 Years in the Life of Digital Collections

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Admit it, you have been wondering what your favorite digital collections team has been up to. Well after 2.5 years, the wait is over.

So. Many. Digitization. Requests.

When I last shared a digital collections update, it was the end of 2020, and the digital collections team was focusing on managing and refining our folder level patron request digitization workflow. This workflow has two main goals:

  • simplify the patron request process in the Rubenstein Library;
  • preserve and make accessible files from patron requests in the Duke Digital Repository (DDR).

Note that in this context, our patrons are generally folks that want to access Rubenstein Library materials without making the trip to Durham. Anyone, regardless of their researcher or academic status, can request digital copies of Rubenstein collections.

Moving digitization requests through this workflow continues to be the major focus for the digital collections team and the Digital Production Center (DPC). Given the folder level nature of the process (whole folders of manuscript material at preservation quality), more requests are digitized by the DPC than under our previous workflow. Additionally, the new request process became an essential tool to serving remote researchers during the pandemic. It continues to be a valuable service, and we have not seen demand lessen significantly since the peak of the pandemic. Below is a chart showing the number of patron requests managed by the DPC since before the pandemic (note that we track our statistics by fiscal year or FY, which in Duke’s case is July – June).

FY18 FY19 FY20 FY21 FY22 FY23
# of requests 81 77 39 394 438 469
Files produced 1,323 676 1092 79,519 74,517 73,705

Patron requests received and files produced from said requests by the DPC.

As a result of the new patron request workflow, the digital collections team has made portions of hundreds of collections accessible in the digital repository. We also see new materials from the existing collections requested periodically, so individual digital collections grow over time. Our statistics for new digital collections are in the chart below.

FY21 FY22 FY23
New digital collections from patron requests 36 154 119
Additions to existing collections from patron requests 4 12 6
Print items digitized for patron requests 16 21 30
Non-patron based new digital collections 131 15 80
Additions to digital collections (not patron request oriented) 4 4 5

Numbers of collections launched in the Duke Digital Repository since 2020.

The patron request workflow, like all other digital collections projects, is carried out by the cross-departmental Duke Libraries Digital Collections Implementation Team (DCIT). DCIT members include representatives from Conservation Services, Digital Curation Services, the Digital Production Center, a Digital Projects Developer (from the Assessment and User Experience Strategy department), Rubenstein Library Research Services, and Rubenstein Library Technical Services. The group’s membership shows how varied the needs are to develop and sustain digital collections. 

Not Just Patron Requests

Although the digital collections team shelved strategic projects when the pandemic began, we have still managed to complete some project work. One of our highest priorities in this area has been the Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South: Digital Access to the Behind the Veil Project Archive project (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities). Work on this project was just featured on Bitstreams, so I won’t share too many details here. Stay tuned for more news about this incredible effort.

We have also been making slow progress on the “Section A” mass digitization project. This project is named for an old Rubenstein Library shelving location, and contains over 3000 small manuscript collections.  Many of the collections document life in the South in the 19th Century. Since 2020, we have been able to make 210 Section A collections accessible online. Many of these were scanned before the pandemic began, however the DPC continues to scan Section A when time permits. We have also seen at least 25 Section A collections come all the way through the patron request workflow, and there are more in progress.  I’ve included embedded links to 3 Section A collections below.

 

 

Here are a few other project highlights from the past 2.5 years.

Deed of manumission freeing Sue, an enslaved woman, and her daughter Margaret, Georgetown, South Carolina, 1815 October 6
Deed of Manumission from the American Slavery Digital collection
Migrants and refugees walk to a waiting bus after arriving on a rubber dinghy on a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos, January 29, 2016.
Image from the Darrin Zammit Lupi digital collection

Looking ahead

Digital Collections has a lot to look forward to in 2023-2024. Along with the John Hope Franklin Research Center we expect to wrap up the Behind the Veil grant in 2024 (lots more news to come on that). The digital collections team also plans to continue refining the patron request workflow. We are hoping to find a new balance in our portfolio that allows us to continue serving the needs of remote researchers while also completing more project based digitization. How will we actually do that without significantly changing our staffing? When we figure it out, we will be happy to share.

In the meantime, all digital collections are available through the Duke Digital Repository.
Happy Browsing!

 

Announcements, Behind the Scenes, Collections, Conferences, Digital Collections

Two Years In: The Finish Line Approaches for Digitizing Behind the Veil

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Behind the Veil Digitization intern Sarah Waugh and Digital Collections intern Kristina Zapfe’s efforts over the past year have focused on quality control of interviews transcribed by Rev.com. This post was authored by Sarah Waugh and Kristina Zapfe.

Introduction

The Digital Production Center (DPC) is proud to announce that we have reached a milestone in our work on Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South: Digital Access to the Behind the Veil Project Archive. We have completed digitization and are over halfway through our quality control of the audio transcripts! The project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, will expand the Behind the Veil (BTV) digital collection, currently 410 audio files, to include the newly digitized copies of the original master recordings, photographic materials, and supplementary project files.

The collection derives from Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South. This was an oral history project headed by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies from 1993 to 1995 and is currently housed in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library and curated by the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture. The BTV collection documented and preserved the memory of African Americans who lived in the South from the 1890s to the 1950s, resulting in a culturally-significant and extensive multimedia collection. 

As interns, our work focused on ordering transcripts from Rev.com and performing quality control on transcripts for the digitized oral histories. July 2023 marked our arrival at the halfway point of completing the oral history transcript quality control process. At the time of writing, we’ve checked 1727 of 2876 files after a year of initial planning and hard work. With over 1,666 hours worth of audio files to complete, 3 interns and 7 student workers in the DPC contributed 849 combined hours to oral history transcript quality control so far. Because of their scope, transcription and quality control are the last pieces of the digitization puzzle before the collection moves on to be ingested and published in the Duke Digital Repository. 

We are approaching the home stretch with the deadline for transcript quality control coming in December 2023, and the collection scheduled to launch in 2024. With that goal approaching, here is what we’ve completed and what remains to be done.

Digitization Progress

A graphic showing the statistics of the Behind the Veil project alongside a tablet device of the Duke Libraries Behind the Veil webpage. Under Audio, the text reads: 1,577 tapes, 2.876 audio files, and 2,709 files transcribed. Under the word Admin Files, it reads: 27,737 image files, under the Prints and Negatives heading it reads, 1,294 image files. On the right side of the graphic, headings for Video, Project Records, and Photo Slides are here and under Video it reads 14 tapes, 14 video files, under Project Records, it reads 9,328 image files, and under Photo Slides, it reads 2,920 image files.

As the graphic above indicates, the BTV digitization project consists of many different media like audio, video, prints, negatives, slides, administrative and project related documents that tell a fuller story of this endeavor. With these formats digitized, we look forward to finishing quality control and preparing the files for handoff to members of the Digital Collections and Curation Services department for ingest, metadata application, and launch for public access in 2024. We plan to send all 2876 audio files to Rev.com service by the end of August and to perform quality control on all those transcripts by December 2023.

Developing the Transcription Quality Control Process

With 2876 files to check within 19 months, the cross-departmental BTV team developed a process to perform quality control as efficiently as possible without sacrificing accuracy, accessibility, and our commitment to our stakeholders. We made our decisions based on how we thought BTV interviewers and narrators would want their speech represented as text. Our choices in creating our quality control workflow began with Columbia University’s Oral History Transcription Style Guide and from that resource, we developed a workflow that made sense for our team and the project. 

Some voices were difficult to transcribe due to issues with the original recording, such as a microphone being placed too far away from a speaker, the interference of background noise, or mistakes with the tape. Since we did not have the resources to listen to entire interviews and check for every single mistake, we developed what we called the “spot-check” process of checking these interviews. Given the BTV project’s original ethos and the history of marginalized people in archives, the team decided to prioritize making sure race-related language met our standards across every single interview.

A few decisions on standards were quick and unanimous—such as not transcribing speech phonetically. With that, we avoided pitfalls from older oral histories of African Americans, like the WPA’s famous “Slave Narratives” project, that interviewed formerly-enslaved people, but often transcribed their words in non-standard phonetic spellings. Some narrators in the BTV project who may have been familiar with the WPA transcripts specifically requested the BTV project team not to use phonetic spelling. 

Other choices took more discussion: we agreed on capitalizing “Black” when describing race, but we had to decide whether to capitalize other racial terms, including “White” and antiquated designations like “Colored.” Ultimately, we decided to capitalize all racial terms (with the exception of slurs). The team did not want users to make distinctions between lower and uppercase terms if we did not choose to capitalize them all. Maintaining consistency with capitalization would provide clarity and align with BTV values of equality between all races.

Using a spot-check process where we use Rev’s find-and-replace feature to standardize our top priorities saved us time to improve the transcripts in other ways. For instance, we also try to find and correct proper nouns like street names or names of important people in our narrators’ communities, allowing users to make connections in their research. We corrected mistakes with phrases used mainly in the past or that are very specific to certain regions, such as calling a dance hall a “Piccolo joint” from an early jukebox brand name. We also listened to instances where the transcriptionist could not hear or understand a phrase and marked it as “indistinct,” so we can add in the dialogue later (assuming we are able to decipher what was said). 

While we developed these methods to increase the pace of our quality control process, one of the biggest improvements came from working with Rev. If we were able to attain more accurate transcripts, our quality control process would be more efficient. Luckily, Rev’s suite of services provided us this option without straying too far from our transcription budget.

Improving Accuracy with Southern Accents Specialists

When deciding on what would be the best speech-to-text option for our project’s needs, we elected to order Transcript Services from Rev, rather than their Caption Services. This decision hinged on the fact that the Transcript Services option is their only service that allows us to request Rev transcriptionists who specialize in Southern accents. Many people who were interviewed for Behind the Veil spoke with Southern accents that varied in strength and dialect. We found that the Southern accent expertise of the specialists had a significant impact on the accuracy of the transcripts we received from Rev. 

This improvement in transcript quality has made a substantial difference in the time we spend on quality control for each interview: on average, it only takes us about 48 seconds of work for every 60 seconds of audio we check. We appreciated Rev’s offering of Southern accent specialists enough that we chose that service, even though it meant that we had to then convert their text file format output to the WebVTT file format for enhanced accessibility in the Duke Digital Repository.   

Optimizing Accessibility with WebVTT File Format

The WebVTT file format provides visual tracking that coordinates the audio with the written transcript. This improvement in user experience and accessibility justified converting the interview transcripts to WebVTT format. Below is a visual of the WebVTT format in our existing BTV collection in the DDR. Click here to listen to the audio recording.

We have been collaborating with developer Sean Aery to convert transcript text files to WebVTT files so they will display properly in the Duke Digital Repository. He explained the conversion process that occurs after we hand off the transcripts in text file format.

“The .txt transcripts we received from the vendor are primarily formatted to be easy for people to read. However, they are structured well enough to be machine-readable as well. I created a script to batch-convert the files into standard WebVTT captions with long text cues. In WebVTT form, the caption files play nicely with our existing audiovisual features in the Duke Digital Repository, including an interactive transcript viewer, and PDF exports.”  – Sean Aery, Digital Projects Developer, Duke University Libraries

Before conversion, we complete one more round of quality control using the spot-checking process. We have even referred to other components of the Behind the Veil collection (Administrative and Project Files Administrative Files) to cross-reference any alterations to metadata for accuracy.

Connecting the Local and Larger Community

Throughout the project, team members have been working on outreach. One big accomplishment by project PI John Gartrell and former BTV outreach intern Brianna McGruder was “Behind the Veil at 30: Reflections on Chronicling African American Life in the Jim Crow South.” This 2-day virtual conference convened former BTV interviewers and current scholars of the BTV collection to discuss their work and the impact that this collection had on their research. 

We also recently presented at the Triangle Research Libraries Network annual meeting, where our presentation overlapped with some of what you’ve just read in this post. It was exciting to share our work publicly for the first time and answer questions from library staff across the region. We will also be presenting a poster about our BTV experience at the upcoming North Carolina Library Association conference in Winston-Salem in October.

A image of two people standing a podium with a screen behind them. Four people in the front row look out at them.
Sarah Waugh and Kristina Zapfe presenting at the 2023 TRLN Annual Conference.

As we’ve hoped to convey, this project heavily relies on collaboration from many library departments and external vendors, and there are more contributors than we can thoroughly include in this post. Behind the Veil is a large-scale and high-profile project that has impacted many people over its 30-year history, and this newest iteration of digital accessibility seeks to expand the reach of this collection. Two years on, we’ve built on the work of the many professionals who have come before us to create and develop Behind the Veil. We are honored to be part of this rewarding process. Look for more BTV stories when we cross the finish line in 2024. 

Announcements, Behind the Scenes, Collections, Digital Collections, Duke Digital Repository, New Collections, spotlight

Respectfully Yours: A Deep Dive into Digitizing the Booker T. Washington Collection

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Post authored by Jen Jordan, Digital Collections Intern.

Hello, readers. This marks my third and final blog as the Digital Collections intern, a position that I began in June of last year.* Over the course of this internship I have been fortunate to gain experience in nearly every step of the digitization and digital collections processes. One of the things I’ve come to appreciate most about the different workflows I’ve learned about is how well they accommodate the variety of collection materials that pass through. This means that when unique cases arise, there is space to consider them. I’d like to describe one such case, involving a pretty remarkable collection. 

Cheyne, C.E. “Booker T. Washington sitting and holding books,” 1903. 2 photographs on 1 mount : gelatin silver print ; sheets 14 x 10 cm. In Washington, D.C., Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

In early October I arrived to work in the Digital Production Center (DPC) and was excited to see the Booker T. Washington correspondence, 1903-1916, 1933 and undated was next up in the queue for digitization. The collection is small, containing mostly letters exchanged between Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and a host of other prominent leaders in the Black community during the early 1900s. A 2003 article published in Duke Magazine shortly after the Washington collection was donated to the John Hope Franklin Research Center provides a summary of the collection and the events it covers. 

Arranged chronologically, the papers were stacked neatly in a small box. Having undergone undergone extensive conservation treatments to remediate water and mildew damage, each letter was sealed in a protective sleeve. As I scanned the pages, I made a note to learn more about the relationship between Washington and DuBois, as well as the events the collection is centered around—the Carnegie Hall Conference and the formation of the short-lived Committee of Twelve for the Advancement of the Interests of the Negro Race. When I did follow up, I was surprised to find that remarkably little has been written about either.

As I’ve mentioned before, there is little time to actually look at materials when we scan them, but the process can reveal broad themes and tone. Many of the names in the letters were unfamiliar to me, but I observed extensive discussion between DuBois and Washington regarding who would be invited to the conference and included in the Committee of Twelve. I later learned that this collection documents what would be the final attempt at collaboration between DuBois and Washington.

Washington to Browne, 21 July 1904, South Weymouth, Massachusetts

Once scanned, the digital surrogates pass through several stages in the DPC before they are prepared for ingest into the Duke Digital Repository (DDR); you can read a comprehensive overview of the DPC digitization workflow here. Fulfilling patron requests is top priority, so after patrons receive the requested materials, it might be some time before the files are submitted for ingest to the DDR. Because of this, I was fortunate to be on the receiving end of the BTW collection in late January. By then I was gaining experience in the actual creation of digital collections—basically everything that happens with the files once the DPC signals that they are ready to move into long term storage. 

There are a few different ways that new digital collections are created. Thus far, most of my experience has been with the files produced through patron requests handled by the DPC. These tend to be smaller in size and have a simple file structure. The files are migrated into the DDR, into either a new or existing collection, after which file counts are checked, and identifiers assigned. The collection is then reviewed by one of a few different folks with RL Technical Services. Noah Huffman conducted the review in this case, after which he asked if we might consider itemizing the collection, given the letter-level descriptive metadata available in the collection guide. 

I’d like to pause for a moment to discuss the tricky nature of “itemness,” and how the meaning can shift between RL and DCCS. If you reference the collection guide linked in the second paragraph, you will see that the BTW collection received item-level description during processing—with each letter constituting an item in the collection. The physical arrangement of the papers does not reflect the itemized intellectual arrangement, as the letters are grouped together in the box they are housed in. When fulfilling patron reproduction requests, itemness is generally dictated by physical arrangement, in what is called the folder-level model; materials housed together are treated as a single unit. So in this case, because the letters were grouped together inside of the box, the box was treated as the folder, or item. If, however, each letter in the box was housed within its own folder, then each folder would be considered an item. To be clear, the papers were housed according to best practices; my intent is simply to describe how the processes between the two departments sometimes diverge.  

Processing archival collections is labor intensive, so it’s increasingly uncommon to see item-level description. Collections can sit unprocessed in “backlog” for many years, and though the depth of that backlog varies by institution, even well-resourced archives confront the problem of backlog. Enter: More Product, Less Process (MPLP), introduced by Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner in a 2005 article as a means to address the growing problem. They called on archivists to prioritize access over meticulous arrangement and description.  

The spirit of folder-level digitization is quite similar to MPLP, as it enables the DPC to provide access to a broader selection of collection materials digitized through patron requests, and it also simplifies the process of putting the materials online for public access. Most of the time, the DPC’s approach to itemness aligns closely with the level of description given during processing of the collection, but the inevitable variance found between archival collections requires a degree of flexibility from those working to provide access to them. Numerous examples of digital collections that received item-level description can be found in the DDR, but those are generally tied to planned efforts to digitize specific collections. 

Because the BTW collection was digitized as an item, the digital files were grouped together in a single folder, which translated to a single landing page in the DDR’s public user interface. Itemizing the collection would give each item/letter its own landing page, with the potential to add unique metadata. Similarly, when users navigate the RL collection guide, embedded digital surrogates appear for each item. A moment ago I described the utility of More Product Less Process. There are times, however, when it seems right to do more. Given the research value of this collection, as well as its relatively small size, the decision to proceed with itemization was unanimous. 

Itemizing the collection was fairly straightforward. Noah shared a spreadsheet with metadata from the collection guide. There were 108 items, with each item’s title containing the sender and recipient of a correspondence, as well as the location and date sent. Given the collection’s chronological physical arrangement, it was fairly simple to work through the files and assign them to new folders. Once that was finished, I selected additional descriptive metadata terms to add to the spreadsheet, in accordance with the DDR Metadata Application Profile. Because there was a known sender and recipient for almost every letter, my goal was to identify any additional name authority records not included in the collection guide. This would provide an additional access point by which to navigate the collection. It would also help me to identify death dates for the creators, which determines copyright status. I think the added time and effort was well worth it.

This isn’t the space for analysis, but I do hope you’re inspired to spend some time with this fascinating collection. Primary source materials offer an important path to understanding history, and this particular collection captures the planning and aftermath of an event that hasn’t received much analysis. There is more coverage of what came after; Washington and DuBois parted ways, after which DuBois became a founding member of the Niagara Movement. Though also short lived, it is considered a precursor to the NAACP, which many members of the Niagara Movement would go on to join. A significant portion of W. E. B. DuBois’s correspondence has been digitized and made available to view through UMass Amherst. It contains many additional letters concerning the Carnegie Conference and Committee of Twelve, offering additional context and perspective, particularly in certain correspondence that were surely not intended for Washington’s eyes. What I found most fascinating, though, was the evidence of less public (and less adversarial) collaboration between the two men. 

The additional review and research required by the itemization and metadata creation was such a fascinating and valuable experience. This is true on a professional level as it offered the opportunity to do something new, but I also felt moved to understand more about the cast of characters who appear in this important collection. That endeavor extended far beyond the hours of my internship, and I found myself wondering if this is what the obsessive pursuit of a historian’s work is like. In any case, I am grateful to have learned more, and also reminded that there is so much more work to do.

Click here to view the Booker T. Washington correspondence in the Duke Digital Repository.

*Indeed, this marks my final post in this role, as my internship concludes at the end of April, after which I will move on to a permanent position. Happily, I won’t be going far, as I’ve been selected to remain with DCCS as one of the next Repository Services Analysts!    

Sources

Cheyne, C.E. “Booker T. Washington sitting and holding books,” 1903. 2 photographs on 1 mount : gelatin silver print ; sheets 14 x 10 cm. In Washington, D.C., Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Accessed April 5, 2022. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004672766/

 

Announcements, Duke Digital Repository, Projects, Technology

We are Hiring: 2 Repository Services Analysts

Duke University Libraries (DUL) is recruiting two (2) Repository Services Analysts to ingest and help collaboratively manage content in their digital preservation systems and platforms. These positions will partner with the Research Data Curation, Digital Collections, and Scholarly Communications Programs, as well as other library and campus partners to provide digital curation and preservation services. The Repository Services Analyst role is an excellent early career opportunity for anyone who enjoys managing large sets of data and/or files, working with colleagues across an organization, preserving unique data and library collections, and learning new skills.

DUL will hold an open zoom session where prospective candidates can join anonymously and ask questions. This session will take place on Wednesday January 12 at 1pm EST; the link to join is posted on the libraries’ job advertisement.

The Research Data Curation Program has grown significantly in recent years, and DUL is seeking candidates who want to grow their skills in this area. DUL is a member of the Data Curation Network (DCN), which provides opportunities for cross-institutional collaboration, curation training, and hands-on data curation practice. These skills are essential for anyone who wants to pursue a career in research data curation. 

Ideal Repository Services Analyst applicants have been exposed to digital asset management tools and techniques such as command line scripting. They can communicate functional system requirements between groups with varying types of expertise, enjoy working with varied kinds of data and collections, and love solving problems. Applicants should also be comfortable collaboratively managing a shared portfolio of digital curation services and projects, as the two positions work closely together. The successful candidates will join the Digital Collections and Curation Services department (within the Digital Strategies and Technology Division).

Please refer to the DUL’s job posting for position requirements and application instructions.

Announcements, Uncategorized

Introducing DUL’s “Statement on Potentially Harmful Language in Library Descriptions”

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Over the past couple of years I’ve written on this blog about the kinds of initiatives libraries are engaging in these days in order to try to wrestle with our past (and sometimes, current) problematic practices when creating the descriptive metadata patrons use to discover and identify library resources. And last spring we hosted an intern in the Digital Collections and Curation Services department, Laurier Cress, who wrote an excellent piece describing her research and investigation into the issues present in library and archival description as well as actions that can be taken to address them.  

One of the first steps that institutions can take is to publicly acknowledge that we are aware of the biases in our cataloging practices and the resulting harmful or otherwise problematic metadata in our catalogs and on our websites, and to make a commitment to remediation. These public acknowledgements often take the form of what is typically referred to as a ‘harmful language statement’ on the library’s website (The Cataloging Lab has created what looks to be a pretty comprehensive list of statements on bias in library and archives description). Last spring, our Executive Group convened a working group to develop such a statement for the Duke University Libraries and charged us with: Using harmful language statements drafted by other cultural heritage groups as a reference, draft statements acknowledging harmful language and content within our collections (digital and analog) and metadata.

The working group started by reviewing the Harmful Statement Research Log Laurier had compiled as part of her research, in which she analyzed the content and presentation of harmful language statements from GLAM institutions. This was extremely helpful to us in determining what we wanted to prioritize and emphasize as we developed our own statement. We met biweekly over the course of a few months, while also working asynchronously on verbiage in between meetings. Ultimately, we decided that we wanted our statement to be straightforward, communicating that we know library description is not a neutral space, that we are aware that harmful language exists on our website, and that we are committed to repairing such language as it is identified. We also wanted our statement to be short – no one likes a wall of text! – and we were able to accomplish this by linking from the statement to lengthier, more detailed statements on inclusive description prepared by our Technical Services division and the Rubenstein Libraries Technical Services department.

We also felt it was important that our statement include a mechanism for soliciting feedback from users, and so we created a Qualtrics form, linked from the statement, that allows people who have encountered harmful or otherwise problematic language on our website to report it to us. Responses may be anonymous, if desired, although it is also possible to share contact information in order to be updated about any actions taken to remediate the language. Both the statement and the form were published this week:

Read DUL’s Statement on Potentially Harmful Language in Library Descriptions.

And we’re not done here! A third priority of the working group’s, in addition to the creation of the statement and the feedback form, was to ensure that this work be visible. (E.g., ‘if a tree falls in a forest, but no one is there to hear it fall, did it make a sound?’ is not dissimilar to ‘if a Drupal page gets plopped into a vast academic research library website, but nobody can find it, will it make an impact?’) To that end, now that the statement and form are publicly accessible, we will work to add links to the statement throughout our discovery layer (including our catalog, our digital collections, and archival collection guides) so that users will be able to find it at the point at which they are potentially encountering harmful language. This work will be a bit more complicated than creating Drupal pages and Qualtrics forms, however, so please stay tuned!

Announcements, Behind the Scenes, Collaborations, Collections, Digital Collections, New Collections, Projects

Good News from the DPC: Digitization of Behind the Veil Tapes is Underway

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This post was written by Jen Jordan, a graduate student at Simmons University studying Library Science with a concentration in Archives Management. She is the Digital Collections intern with the Digital Collections and Curation Services Department.  Jen will complete her masters degree in December 2021. 

The Digital Production Center (DPC) is thrilled to announce that work is underway on a 3-year long National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant-funded project to digitize the entirety of Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South, an oral history project that produced 1,260 interviews spanning more than 1,800 audio cassette tapes. Accompanying the 2,000 plus hours of audio is a sizable collection of visual materials (e.g.- photographic prints and slides) that form a connection with the recorded voices.

We are here to summarize the logistical details relating to the digitization of this incredible collection. To learn more about its historical significance and the grant that is funding this project, titled “Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South: Digital Access to the Behind the Veil Project Archive,” please take some time to read the July announcement written by John Gartrell, Director of the John Hope Franklin Research Center and Principal Investigator for this project. Co-Principal Investigator of this grant is Giao Luong Baker, Digital Production Services Manager.

Digitizing Behind the Veil (BTV) will require, in part, the services of outside vendors to handle the audio digitization and subsequent captioning of the recordings. While the DPC regularly digitizes audio recordings, we are not equipped to do so at this scale (while balancing other existing priorities). The folks at Rubenstein Library have already been hard at work double checking the inventory to ensure that each cassette tape and case are labeled with identifiers. The DPC then received the tapes, filling 48 archival boxes, along with a digitization guide (i.e. – an Excel spreadsheet) containing detailed metadata for each tape in the collection. Upon receiving the tapes, DPC staff set to boxing them for shipment to the vendor. As of this writing, the boxes are snugly wrapped on a pallet in Perkins Shipping & Receiving, where they will soon begin their journey to a digital format.

The wait has begun! In eight to twelve weeks we anticipate receiving the digital files, at which point we will perform quality control (QC) on each one before sending them off for captioning. As the captions are returned, we will run through a second round of QC. From there, the files will be ingested into the Duke Digital Repository, at which point our job is complete. Of course, we still have the visual materials to contend with, but we’ll save that for another blog! 

As we creep closer to the two-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic and the varying degrees of restrictions that have come with it, the DPC will continue to focus on fulfilling patron reproduction requests, which have comprised the bulk of our work for some time now. We are proud to support researchers by facilitating digital access to materials, and we are equally excited to have begun work on a project of the scale and cultural impact that is Behind the Veil. When finished, this collection will be accessible for all to learn from and meditate on—and that’s what it’s all about. 

 

Announcements, Digital Collections, Digitization Expertise

We’re hiring!

The Digital Production Center (DPC) is looking to hire a Digitization Specialist to join our team! The DPC team is on the forefront of enabling students, teachers, and researchers to continue their research by digitizing materials from our library collections.  We get to work with a variety of unique and rare materials (in a multitude of formats), and we use professional equipment to get the work done. Imagine working on digitizing papyri and comic books – the spectrum is far and wide! Get a glimpse of the collections that have been digitized by DPC staff by checking out our Duke Digital Collections.

Also, the people are really nice (and right now, we’re working in a socially distanced manner)!

More information about the job description can be found here. The successful candidate should be detailed-oriented, possess excellent organizational, project management skills, have scanning experience, and be able to work independently and effectively in a team environment. This position is part of the Digital Collections and Curation Services department and will report to the Digital Production Services manager.

More information about Duke’s benefit package can be found at https://hr.duke.edu/benefits. For more information and to apply, please submit an electronic resume, cover letter, and a list of 3 references to https://library.duke.edu/about/jobs/digitizationspecialist. Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled.

Announcements, Behind the Scenes, Collections

2020 Highlights from Digital Collections

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Welcome to the 2020 digital collections round up!

In spite of the dumpster fire of 2020, Duke Digital Collections had a productive and action packed year (maybe too action packed at times). 

Per usual we launched new and added content to existing digital collections (full list below). We are also wrapping up our mega-migration from our old digital collections system (Tripod2) to the Duke Digital Repository! This migration has been in process for 5 years, yes 5 years. We plan to celebrate this exciting milestone more in January so stay tuned. 

A classroom and auditorium blueprint, digitized for a patron and launched this month.

The Digital Production Center, in collaboration with the Rubenstein Library, shifted to a new folder level workflow for patron and instruction requests. This workflow was introduced just in time for the pandemic and the resulting unprecedented number of digitization requests.  As a result of the demand for digital images, all project work has been put aside and the DPC is focusing on patron and instruction requests only. Since late June, the DPC has produced over 40,000 images!  

Another digital collections highlight from 2020 is the development of new features for our preservation and access interface, the Duke Digital Repository.  We have wasted no time using these new features especially “metadata only”  and the DDR to CONTENTdm connection. 

Looking ahead to 2021, our priorities will be the folder level digitization workflow for researcher and instruction requests. The DPC received 200+ requests since June, and we need to get all those digitized folders moved into the repository. We are also experimenting with preserving scans created outside of the DPC. For example Rubenstein Library staff created a huge number of access copies using reading room scanners, and we would like to make them available to others.  Lastly, we have a few bigger digital collections to ingest and launch as well. 

Thanks to everyone associated with Digital Collections for their incredible work this year!!  Whew, it has been…a year. 

One of our newest digital collections features postcards from Greece: Salonica / Selanik / Thessaloniki
One of the Radio Haiti photographs launched recently.

Laundry list of 2020 Digital Collections

New Collections

Digital Collections Additions

Migrated Collections

Announcements, Behind the Scenes, Collaborations, Collections, Digital Collections, New Collections, Uncategorized

Access for One, Access for All: DPC’s Approach towards Folder Level Digitization

Earlier this year and prior to the pandemic, Digital Production Center (DPC) staff piloted an alternative approach to digitize patron requests with the Rubenstein Library’s Research Services (RLRS) team. The previous approach was focused on digitizing specific items that instruction librarians and patrons requested, and these items were delivered directly to that person. The alternative strategy, the Folder Level digitization approach, involves digitizing the contents of the entire folder that the item is contained in, ingesting these materials to the Duke Digital Repository (to enable Duke Library staff to retrieve these items), and when possible, publishing these materials so that they are available to anyone with internet access. This soft launch prepared us for what is now an all-hands-on-deck-but-in-a-socially-distant-manner digitization workflow.

Giao Luong Baker assessing folders in the DPC.

Since returning to campus for onsite digitization in late June, the DPC’s primary focus has been to perfect and ramp up this new workflow. It is important to note that the term “folder” in this case is more of a concept and that its contents and their conditions vary widely. Some folders may have 2 pages, other folders have over 300 pages. Some folders consists of pamphlets, notebooks, maps, papyri, and bound items. All this to say that a “folder” is a relatively loose term.

Like many initiatives at Duke Libraries, Folder Level Digitization is not just a DPC operation, it is a collaborative effort. This effort includes RLRS working with instructors and patrons to identify and retrieve the materials. RLRS also works with Rubenstein Library Technical Services (RLTS) to create starter digitization guides, which are the building blocks for our digitization guide. Lastly, RLRS vets the materials and determines their level of access. When necessary, Duke Library’s Conservation team steps in to prepare materials for digitization. After the materials are digitized, ingest and metadata work by the Digital Collections and Curation Services as well as the RLTS teams ensure that the materials are preserved and available in our systems.

Kristin Phelps captures a color target.

Doing this work in the midst of a pandemic requires that DPC work closely with the Rubenstein Library Access Services Reproduction Team (a section of RLRS) to track our workflow using a Google Doc. We track the point where the materials are identified by RLRS, through multiple quarantine periods, scanning, post processing, file delivery, to ingest. Also, DPC staff are digitizing in a manner that is consistent with COVID-19 guidelines. Materials are quarantined before and after they arrive at the DPC, machines and workspaces are cleaned before and after use, capture is done in separate rooms, and quality control is done off site with specialized calibrated monitors.

Since we started Folder Level digitization, the DPC has received close to 200 unique Instruction and Patron requests from RLRS. As of the publication of this post, 207 individual folders (an individual request may contain several folders) have been digitized. In total, we’ve scanned and quality controlled over 26,000 images since we returned to campus!

By digitizing entire folders, we hope this will allow for increased access to the materials without risking damage through their physical handling. So far we anticipate that 80 new digital collections will be ingested to the Duke Digital Repository. This number will only grow as we receive more requests. Folder Level Digitization is an exciting approach towards digital collection development, as it is directly responsive to instruction and researcher needs. With this approach, it is access for one, access for all!

Announcements, Duke Digital Repository, Technology

Announcing New Features in the Duke Digital Repository

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Last week the Duke University Libraries (DUL) development team released a new version of the Duke Digital Repository (DDR), which is the preservation and access platform for digitized, born digital, and purchased library collections. DDR is developed and maintained by DUL staff and it is built using Samvera, Valkyrie and Blacklight components (read all about our migration to Valkyrie which concluded in early 2020).

Look at that beautiful technical metadata!

The primary goal of our new repository features are to provide better support for and access to born digital records. The planning for this work began more than 2 years ago, when the Rubenstein Libraries’ Digital Records Archivist joined the Digital Collections Implementation Team (DCIT) to help us envision how DDR and our workflows could better support born digital collections. Conversations on this topic began between the Rubenstein Library and Digital Strategies and Technology well before that.

Back in 2018, DCIT developed a list of user stories to address born digital records as well as some other longstanding needs. At the time we evaluated each need based on its difficult and impact and then developed a list of high, medium and low priority features.  Fast forward to late 2019, and we designated 3 folks from DCIT to act as product owners during development.  Those folks are our Metadata Architect (Maggie Dickson), Digital Records Archivist ([Matthew] farrell), and me (Head of Digital Collections and Curation Services). Development work began in earnest in Jan/February and now after many meetings, user story refinements, more meetings, and actual development work here we are!

Notable new features include:

  • Metadata only view of objects: restrict the object but allow the public to search and discover its metadata
  • Expose technical metadata for components in the public interface
  • Better access to full text search in CONTENTdm from DDR

As you can see above we were able to fit in a few non-born digital records related features. This is because one of our big priorities is finishing the migration from our legacy Tripod 2 platform to DDR in 2020. One of the impediments to doing so (in addition migrating the actual content) is that Tripod 2 connects with our CONTENTdm instance, which is where we provide access to digitized primary sources that require full text search (newspapers and publications primarily). The new DDR features therefor include enhanced links to our collections in CONTENTdm.

We hope these new features provide a better experience for our users as well as a safe and happy home for our born digital records!

Search full text link on a collection landing page.
Example of the search within an item interface