Beginnings and Endings

Before I dedicate the rest of my blog entries to my work with CONTENTdm, I have one more exciting piece of news regarding the manuscript collection I processed... the finding aid for MS-118 Wikoff has been digitized and is now available on the Special Collections website! Here's the link! The photo to the right serves as the cover page to my completed finding aid. The three images in the center of my finding aid are photocopies of the three articles Mr. Wikoff published in the Gettysburg magazine based on the alumni letters that comprise the manuscript collection.

Now back to my current work at Special Collections! As I mentioned in my last post, I am in the midst of working with a collection of William H. Tipton's photographs that appear in the GettDigital collections. In addition to modifying the creator name and date of each photo, I am also adding a digitized image of the backs of many photos. As it stands now, only the fronts of the photos taken by Tipton are viewable online via the GettDigital Collection. Although I only want to add another view to a photograph already a part of the GettDigital collection, I cannot simply upload an image of the reverse side of the photo and be done. Rather, I have to copy already-existing information that describes the photograph (aka metadata) from an old excel spreadsheet into a new one. I then have to make other changes to the new spreadsheet, photocopy the reverse side of the photo, and save a copy of this image and the image of the front of the photo in a special folder.

The most fascinating facet of this project thus far has been to learn more about the work that goes into digitizing a photograph. All too often we take for granted the ability to keyword search a digitized collection without reflecting on the preparations that make the search possible. It's been really awesome to learn more about CONTENTdm and how it transforms excel spreadsheets and jpeg images into a digitized collection. As I hope can be seen in this entry, I have learned so much about the digitization process over this past week! However, as I am also sure is evident in this entry, I still have so much more to learn about the digitization process! In light of this, I am so thankful for the knowledgeable people that surround me and their kind willingness to answer all of my questions! :)