Ellen Swallow Richards Digital Library

Ellen Swallow Richards Digital Library

This digital library has been prepared in fulfillment of a class assignment for
ILS655-70 -- at Southern Connecticut State University.

Production Notes

The Beginning -- Meeting with MIT Archives staff

This project started fairly small. I initially talked with MIT Archives staff and told them of my assignment. I asked if there was a certain collection that they would be interested in having digitized. As their important collections are larger than the scope of my project -- we discussed what might be good for me to start and put a framework in place for Archives staff to continue on as their time permitted. Several collections were suggested to me, and in the end I picked Ellen Swallow Richards for two reasons. First, the Archives does have some information about her on their website. All but one of the primary documents have been simply transcribed into text documents. We agreed it would be great to have scanned images of some of her very interesting publications and writings. The Archives only has an older smaller scanner, so they agreed to allow me to take the selected documents for a weekend to scan in the Engineering Library. I spent over eight hours on basic scanning of the publications. I saved the images as JPEG files. After this came countless hours of cropping, contrast adjustment, resizing, etc. While this site is image intensive, I tried to keep the images to sizes that would be easily downloadable, yet still legible and printable. With that said, this site is still best viewed using a high speed connection.

The Collection begins to grow -- Meeting with the MIT Museum

As I was working on the documents, I remembered that in the Archives collection there was mention of photographs and letters held in the MIT Museum. I contacted the collections assistant at the Museum and made an appointment to look at their collection. She was interested and excited to hear about my project. Over the course of several meetings I selected a group of photos and letters to scan. Luckily, they allowed me to use their scanner and Mac which was much faster than the scanner I had used for the publications. They asked that I save the files as TIFFs and manipulate/resave them from there. In retrospect, perhaps I should have done the same for the publications -- but as I have said, this was a learning process. At the end of this round of scanning the Museum staff burned a CD of my files for me and sent me on my way. Anxious to see the eventual product.

So many files...

I worked with Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Photoshop in manipulating and preparing the image files. I had many failures before things started going smoothly. I am a very novice user of Photoshop, and this was my first experience with Fireworks. I often thought to myself that I'd be an expert just as I was finishing the project. And while I don't think I am an expert, if I knew then what I know now -- things might have gone a bit more smoothly. But it is all part of the learning process. I was certain to save these files in several places -- always keeping an original or backup copy in case things went terribly wrong in the learning process. This did happen more than a few times, and these backup copies came in very handy.

The thumbnail pages of images were created using Dreamweaver in conjunction with Fireworks. I had to download a free trial of Fireworks in order to get the functionality I needed. Luckily, Macromedia has decent online documentation for their software -- it provided invaluable to me as I dove in head first.

Content procured -- now what about design?

So now I had content -- but needed a design and organization structure. I decided to start with the basic sidebar design that had served me well in the past. From there the process was rather organic and unplanned. I just kept trying certain things and experimenting until things started to fall into place. For the main page I did run several ideas and versions past friends and coworkers as I continued to play. I really enjoyed this part of the process -- experimenting and playing -- until it finally works out. Subsequent pages were also tried out by friends and coworkers, and I tweaked along the way. This is also how I learned of some of the quirks that happen in Netscape and Mozilla. I designed this site in IE, though did look at it in Netscape from time to time. I also looked at the site in several monitor resolutions - to keep tabs on how it looked. Because I don't have easy access to a Mac -- I was not able to examine the site across platforms.

Uploading it to the server

As I completed more pages, I started putting the pages on the MIT server to see them live and in action. This is when I ran into another problem. I had trouble with my FTP program -- as it seemed not to like the pages that Fireworks and Dreamweaver had created together. Luckily, my office tech support staff member helped me diagnose what was going on, and found me another MIT approved FTP program to try instead. This program had a very clunky interface, but worked well after I got used to it.

Deciding to add the bibliography, links to MIT Archives materials, and the search engine

As the Library was growing, I wanted to round it out and include links to the MIT Archives resources. I took their bibliography page and worked with it a bit -- making tables with grid lines for clearer presentation, as well as hyperlinking the titles that I had scanned. I felt that this really tied things together. I also included the various biographical links, and other information that I felt was pertinent from the Archives site. However, I wanted there to be a clear delineation of effort -- and I believe the design conveys that quite well. I also contacted several people in regards to adding a search box that would work in conjunction with the MIT search engine. It was easier than I thought it would be -- which was a welcomed surprise. Unfortunately, the scanned text is not searchable. To do this I would have needed the access/support/knowledge of converting the scans into searchable files through OCR or Optical Character Recognition. This simply wasn't in the scope of this project.

Final Thoughts

This project really allowed me to challenge myself. I had done basic web pages in the past, so I really wanted to take on a project that would allow me to expand my web skills, as well as learn new programs and technologies. I decided that whatever I did -- it would involve scanning. I was determined to conquer my fear of scanning and working with image files. To do this I had to learn how to use our new scanner, learn elements of Adobe Photoshop that I had never used, continued learning of Dreamweaver, and learn Fireworks from scratch. I also had to have a crash course in a new FTP program. But I think the results were worth it and I hope that the MIT Libraries and the MIT Museum benefit from the work I have done.

This project also gave me a very good view of the wide variety of issues, problems, etc., that present themselves when making a digital colletion. It really helped to bring much of what we have reading and talking about all semester to life.

Like many projects, this one took on a life of its own as time went on. As others have said, digital libraries, and the Internet in general, is a work in progress. While I will post this project and consider it "done" -- it really isn't -- and I'll probably be tweaking things within a week, if not earlier.