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Collaboration
CCC is a first attempt at collaborative, large-scale manuscript digitization by the TRLN consortium comprised of the university libraries at Duke, NCCU, NCSU, and UNC Chapel Hill. Collaboration among multiple institutions introduces complex challenges as well as opportunities not found in digitization projects managed at one institution. This page documents the development of collaborative workflows for an inter-institutional manuscript digitization project.
Important considerations during the initial organization of the project include:
Structural organization
The management and organizational structure for a collaborative, inter-institutional project are necessarily different from an in-house digitization operation. Although project staff run the day-to-day operations of the grant, CCC requires deep participation from the permanent staffs of the four university libraries and a representative decision-making body. TRLN has a governance structure that includes the Collections Council. The CCC Steering Committee reports to the TRLN Collections Council, and three working groups report to the CCC Steering Committee. The chair of each working group and representatives from each library serve on the Steering Committee. These representatives are responsible for communicating with their library administrators. In addition, members of the working groups consult with colleagues at their home libraries who have expertise in relevant areas such as archival description and web development. The libraries donate the staff time for participation in working groups and the Steering Committee, but only the principal investigator’s time is reflected as cost share in the grant.
The various groups were tasked as follows.
Steering Committee
The Steering Committee for "Content, Context, and Capacity: A Collaborative Digitization Project on the Long Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina" (CCC) will work with the principal investigator to oversee the successful completion of the grant. Reporting to the TRLN Collections Council and chaired by the principal investigator, the Steering Committee is comprised of digital library, research services, curatorial staff, the chairs of the CCC working groups, and a faculty liaison. The Committee will coordinate the work of the CCC working groups (composed of staff from the university libraries) in three key project areas: Metadata Practices, Shipping and Receiving [now Production & Materials Management], and Evaluation. The Committee will facilitate communications with project staff and TRLN, and will relay information back to home institutions.
Membership:
- Jenn Riley, Head, Carolina Digital Library & Archives, Principal Investigator July 1, 2012-June 30, 2013 (UNC)
- (Chair) Laura Clark Brown, CCC Principal Investigator July 1, 2011--June 30, 2012; July 1, 2013-June 30, 2014 (UNC)
- Lauren Menges, CCC Project Librarian (TRLN)
- Brian Dietz, Digital Program Librarian (NCSU)
- Andre D. Vann, Coordinator of University Archives/Instructor of Public History (NCCU)
- Naomi Nelson, Director of Rubenstein Library (Duke)
- (Faculty liaison) Kat Charron, Associate Professor of History, (NCSU)
Outreach & Promotion Working Group
This working group was formed at the beginning of year two (fall 2012). The Outreach & Promotion Working Group will develop a plan for promoting the CCC project locally at the four university libraries as well as to broader audiences across the state of North Carolina. This plan will be submitted to the Steering Committee for approval and executed by the Outreach & Promotion Working Group, with periodic reports on progress to the Steering Committee. The group will also plan and support outreach activities. Reporting to the CCC Steering Committee, the Outreach & Promotion Working Group is comprised of special collections public services staff from the university libraries.
Membership:
- (Chair) Suzanne Huffman, CCC Digital Production Manager (TRLN)
- David Pavelich, Head of Research Services, Rubenstein Library (Duke)
- Jennifer Baker, University Library Technician, Special Collections Research Center (NCSU)
- Matt Turi, Manuscripts Reference Librarian, Wilson Library (UNC)
- Andre D. Vann, Coordinator of University Archives/Instructor of Public History (NCCU)
Metadata Working Group
The Metadata Working Group for "Content, Context, and Capacity: A Collaborative Digitization Project on the Long Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina" (CCC) will define the project’s shared metadata practices and specifications for digital objects, MARC records, and finding aids. Reporting to the CCC Steering Committee, the Metadata Working Group is comprised of staff from the university libraries with expertise in metadata.
This group was charged in August 2011 and disbanded after work was complete in August 2012.
Membership:
- (Chair) Joyce Chapman, CCC Project Librarian (TRLN)
- Lynn Holdzkom, Head, Special Collections Technical Services (UNC) OR
Jenn Riley, Head, Carolina Digital Library & Archives (UNC) Alternating membership depending on group needs
- Noah Huffman, Archivist for Metadata and Encoding (Duke)
- Yan Wang, Systems Librarian (NCCU)
Production & Materials Management Working Group
The Production & Materials Management Working Group for "Content, Context, and Capacity: A Collaborative Digitization Project on the Long Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina" (CCC) will develop production guidelines, which will supplement practices already in place on the four campuses. The guidelines will address digital production workflows for CCC, including agreed-upon reformatting standards, quality control, and the safe handling, secure transportation, and temporary storage of external hard drives and collection materials, including manuscripts, audio recordings, and oversized materials. Reporting to the CCC Steering Committee, the Production & Materials Management Working Group is comprised of staff from the university libraries with expertise in digital production and analog and digital materials transfer.
Membership:
- (Chair) Brian Dietz, Digital Program Librarian (NCSU)
- Suzanne Huffman, CCC Digital Production Manager (TRLN)
- Vernice Faison, Music Librarian (NCCU)
- Paula Jeannet Mangiafico, Senior Processing Archivist (Duke)
- Andrea Knowlton, Assistant Conservator (UNC)
- Lauren Menges, CCC Project Librarian (TRLN)
- Mike Adamo, Digitization Production Developer (Duke)
Evaluation Working Group
In year one, the Evaluation Working Group for "Content, Context, and Capacity: A Collaborative Digitization Project on the Long Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina" (CCC) together with the CCC Steering Committee will determine quantitative assessment needs. The group will then establish procedures, standards, and templates for collecting and reporting production output, presentation data, and use statistics; and will regularly measure progress of these activities. Beginning in year two, the group will add members with expertise in qualitative assessment, draft a comprehensive plan and timeline for use studies of the TRLN delivery interface, and collaborate with faculty and students from NCCU’s library science and public history departments to develop scripts for user studies to assess CCC’s impact on target audiences. Reporting to the CCC Steering Committee, the Evaluation Working Group is comprised of staff members from the university libraries with expertise in quantitative and qualitative evaluation.
Membership (fall of year one, 2011):
- (Chair) Joyce Chapman, CCC Project Librarian (TRLN)
- Sean Aery, Digital Projects Developer (Duke)
- Jason Ronallo, Digital Collections Technology Librarian (NCSU)
Membership (spring of year one forward, 2012):
- (Co-chair) Andre D. Vann, Coordinator of University Archives/Instructor of Public History (NCCU)
- Lauren Menges, CCC Project Librarian (TRLN)
- Kim Vassiliadis, Instructional Design & Technology Librarian (UNC)
- Sean Aery, Digital Projects Developer (Duke)
- Jason Ronallo, Digital Collections Technology Librarian (NCSU)
- Laura Clark Brown, Digital Southern Historical Collection Coordinator (UNC)
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Communication
With four complex bureaucracies and so many moving parts involved in a project of this scope, communication is critical to effective project management. Early on, we developed the following communication protocols that will remain in place throughout the project.
Assign responsibility for facilitating communicationWe established communication roles for the grant participants and staff. Institutional representatives on working groups are responsible for liaising with people at their home libraries who are not working directly on the grant in an official capacity. Working group chairs are responsible for communicating with everyone in their working groups, and for passing information from their groups up to the Steering Committee. The main institutional representative on the Steering Committee is responsible for relaying relevant information about the project to administration at their home libraries. The project librarian is a member of every working group as well as the Steering Committee, and she is available to aid in communication between all groups. The principal investigator is the chair of the Steering Committee, and in this role, she facilitates communication with the TRLN staff and appropriate governing bodies. Put information where geographic location cannot deter access
Project documentation is often located on access-restricted drives within one institution. For CCC, we needed dozens of people at four institutions to have easy access to all project documentation. To this end, we created a project wiki with numerous resources to help project staff conduct grant-related work, including contact information for everyone working on the grant, budget information, lists of all the collections to be digitized, a calendar with deadlines and meeting information, links to all the guidelines and documentation created by the working groups, and collaborative spaces for working groups to post meeting minutes and work on collaborative documents (see screenshot below). We used the free wiki software pbworks.
We also used Google Docs that were open to all project participants. For example, collection material transfers between libraries are scheduled through a shared Google spreadsheet.
Keep communication as open as possible
A listserv was created for each working group and for the Steering Committee. We encourage communication and discussion to take place on the listservs so that no one was accidentally cut out of the conversational loop. We rely heavily on the project wiki for communication in tandem with the listservs. We have developed policies and guidelines through collaborative editing processes on the wiki, and used commenting features for some discussions. People can choose to receive alerts when updates are made, if they want to keep abreast of specific areas of the project under development.
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Shared workflows
In the first few months of the grant, the Production & Materials Management Working Group was responsible for significant work defining guidelines for inter-institutional workflows for materials preparation, materials transportation and receiving, digitization production specifications, digital file verification and quality control. Each institution had its own existing workflows, which were not necessarily similar. The group began the process of developing shared guidelines by discussing similarities and differences in workflows. Similiarities were pulled out, and where differences existed, the group chose best practice for a collaborative approach. Guidelines were then sent to the Steering Committee for final approval.
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Shared reporting
For evaluation and grant reporting purposes, numerous data from partner institutions must be combined and presented uniformly. This brings up questions of data interoperability, which we addressed in the initial months of the grant. The areas in which data would be combine included:
Usage data for digital objects and finding aids (Google Analytics data)
The key to setting up interoperable Google Analytics data was to convene a group of technology librarians who understood the digital delivery platforms from the various institutions, and determine the least common denominators for which we could all conceivably gather data. These are:
- Clicks on digital containers in the finding aid (such as a linked digital folder)
- Views of digital objects
- Views of finding aids
- Clicks on a link in the finding aid to "view all digital content"
We then decided on communal Event Tracking methodologies, and documented each institution's approach on the group wiki. Every six months, the project librarian extracts data from all Google Analytics accounts and combines it for analysis and semiannual online usage statistics reporting.
Time tracking for conservation, condition review, fastener removal, privacy review, and materials transportation
Time tracking plans were set up in year one for each of the different tasks. Much of the tracking was performed by student workers, using shared Google spreadsheets. The ability to track time granularly differed from institution to institution, based on staff availability and workflows. We worked to create the simplest time tracking scenarios possible, sometimes based on estimations or sampling rather than consistent real time tracking.
Digital production progress
We decided that digital production progress could most easily be tracked by PHP scripts that compiled data from logfiles, which were automatically produced by scanning software. Digital production statistics are then displayed online for all project participants – as well as the public – to view: http://www2.trln.org/ccc/content.php#progress. Most of the scanning software at the three Digital Production Centers is capable of exporting such metadata files automatically; however, none of the institutions were utilizing these capabilities prior to the CCC grant. In the first few months of the grant, staff from Digital Production Centers determined their software's ability to automatically export certain core metadata for digital production and to set up similarly structured metadata files for scanning equipment at different libraries. We required a minimal, core set of metadata elements (as well as several preferred elements). With these elements, we were able to track digital production from various angles with the minimal effort it took to write scripts that read the logfiles.
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