Bringing Collections to Life
Archives and Special Collections work collaboratively with colleagues across the library, University, and world. The work of three Milner Library areas in particular, the Digitization Center, Metadata, and Preservation, however, is essential to the conservation, preservation, discovery, and accessibility of archival and special collection materials.
Digitization Center
For more than a decade, Milner Library’s Digitization Center has been bringing Illinois State University’s historical treasures to classrooms on campus and researchers around the world. Digitization Center staff operate in close partnership with Special Collections and the Dr. Jo Ann Rayfield Archives to select, digitize, and describe cultural heritage resources for research purposes. More than 75,000 of these images are freely available for users to view and interact with online through Milner’s digital collections.
Working together with curators, conservators, and catalogers, the center prioritizes items for digitization that best represent the unique collecting foci of Illinois State University, have the widest possible research applications, and are most likely to significantly deteriorate in the coming years due to their inherent physical instability. Staff then spot check the resulting digital files for quality control purposes and process them into access derivative copies that are uploaded to one of Milner’s digital delivery platforms along with accompanying descriptive and structural metadata. The work doesn’t stop there. Files are then archived, backed up, and continually monitored for bit stream degradation in order to ensure their lasting digital preservation.
A perennial favorite of remote researchers continues to be our circus collections. By far the most comprehensive of our digital offerings, these collections provide a birds-eye view of the circus industry in the United States, as well as privileged glimpses into moments of life and spectacle at ground level. This mélange of hard data and human stories gets at the heart of the circus experience and lends itself especially well to the visualization tools used in digital humanities projects, such as Agency Through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books, 1875-1925, an interactive digital exhibit spearheaded by Metadata Librarian Angela Yon.
The Digitization Center’s i2s Quartz A0 HD planetary scanner, acquired in spring 2021, produces extremely accurate high-resolution images and represents a tenfold time savings over previous digitization options for large format items such as circus posters.
As of late 2020, users will notice a much more modern interface when browsing digitized materials on our main delivery platform, CONTENTdm. These enhancements, including an improved image viewer, streamlined look-and-feel, and additional mobile capabilities, serve to make the library’s distinctive digital collections more accessible and user friendly. Expanded landing pages for each collection help to orient users to the types of resources they will find inside and place this content in historical context.
The center also recently brought online a new, state-of-the-art planetary scanner capable of generating extremely accurate and detailed images in just a few seconds—a 10-fold time savings over the department’s previous large-format scanning system. Imported from France, the i2s Quartz A0 HD is optimized for large, flat media such as maps, posters, artwork, and blueprints but has also shown promise with bound volumes and photo prints. This new equipment will allow for higher through-put of tricky formats and open new avenues for collaboration.
As the Digitization Center expands in exciting new directions, we look forward to continuing to collaborate on innovative projects that leverage the transformative potential of web access in order to bring together disparate sources and create new knowledge on a scale not possible before the advent of the internet.
Metadata
A primary reason for digitizing collections is to increase access beyond the institution. Digitization does not, however, automatically make materials findable, accessible, or understandable to an audience. Carefully crafted descriptive metadata accompanying digitized material optimizes access and discoverability for current users and attracts new user communities. Metadata and contextual information describe the relationships and history that give meaning to the items in a collection. One of the most important assets of a collection is its metadata.
Map visualization of P.T. Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth, & the Great London Circus combined with Sanger’s Royal British Menagerie & Grand International Allied Shows 1876 circus route stops with historical railroad lines, highlighting Pawtucket, Rhode Island, stop on June 7, 1876.
Commonly defined as data about data, metadata provides context: the who, what, where, why, when that connects users to digital content in different search environments and aids contextual user/interface interaction. A digitized image (data) must be described before it becomes part of a digital collection. Without a title, a date, creator, and other description (data), images would not be usable or retrievable. Resources lose meaning and relevance, become less searchable, less protected, and are less valuable to researchers without proper, structured metadata. The more comprehensive the metadata, the more it promotes discovery in search engines and information systems.
Metadata also serves as structured information for use, administration, management, processing, and preservation of data. Rich metadata enables users to search precisely, sort, filter, disambiguate, navigate, and interact with large collections. There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to metadata; institutions must carefully assess collections and choose the appropriate metadata schemas and controlled vocabularies, collection-specific thesauri, and locally created lists to best describe and provide access. The intellectual and technical design issues inherent to metadata development and management are also related to the discovery platforms in which the metadata and content exist.
Metadata Connections Visualization in Agency Through Otherness
The digital exhibit Agency Through Otherness: Portraits of Circus Performers 1875-1925 is an example of user engagement afforded by rich metadata. Milner Library was awarded the competitive Digitizing Hidden Collections national grant administered by the Council on Library & Information Resources for its circus route books collection. The four-year grant funded not only digitizing the collection but also creating robust metadata. Librarians conducted extensive research into the individual circuses, numerous circus performers, geographic coordinates for circus routes, and other contextual information. They leveraged thousands of data points to create interactive and engaging data visualizations based on the metadata.
Preservation
Paper tears are mended using specialized archival mending papers and paste, as with this circus herald.
Located on the first floor of Milner Library, the Preservation Department works behind the scenes to repair library books and maintain a safe environment for the long-term care of the library’s physical holdings. Since its establishment more than 20 years ago, Preservation has met the needs of the Illinois State University community by caring for the library’s books and media. Preservation provides holistic care for the collection, from environmental monitoring and disaster preparedness to repairing individual circulating and special collections books. The department is responsible for every part of the collection’s well-being.
While environmental monitoring may seem like a surprising job for librarians, books and paper are sensitive to rapid changes in temperature and humidity—particularly to extremes in either direction. Poor environmental conditions can cause paper to deteriorate faster than expected, resulting in yellowed and brittle pages. High humidity puts the library at risk of a mold outbreak. Mold is especially detrimental to books and can be dangerous for humans, so it is important to monitor the relative humidity inside the building. The Preservation department monitors the environmental conditions around the building to guarantee that levels remain in a “safe” zone with minimal fluctuations and takes action if temperature or humidity reach dangerous levels.
Preservation is also concerned with potential disasters that could damage many materials at once. One of the jobs of the department is to anticipate and mitigate any damage that could occur through unexpected disasters, be that flood, fire, or earthquake. The department has established disaster plans that optimize the response to disaster situations, and materials are on hand to respond to disasters as rapidly as possible. Preservation also trains Milner staff in how to respond and complete basic triage and treatments in the event of a disaster.
Preservation is concerned not only with the library structure as a whole but also with the treatment and care of individual books. As books are used and checked out by students, damage due to regular wear and tear is inevitable. Common damage includes paper tears, cracks along the spine of the book, and crushed corners. Nearly every type of damage can be repaired by the trained conservators in the lab, greatly extending the life of these items and allowing books to return to circulation to be checked out again and again.
A book spine is cleaned of old adhesive in preparation for rebinding.
Items from Special Collections are given particular care in the conservation lab. Each item is individually assessed to determine its unique materials and the techniques that were used to create it. Based on the results of this evaluation, a treatment plan is produced that outlines the best way to repair any damage through the least invasive manner. The goal is always to extend the life of the piece while preserving its historical integrity.
Treatments on Special Collections books may be minor, such as repairing a torn page or surface cleaning a dirty case, but they can often be extensive. Books with loose pages may need to be entirely resewn. If there is damage to the spine or if the covers have fallen off, the book may need to be “re-backed,” a process where the original spine is carefully removed, a new spine is attached, and the original spine is replaced over the new spine. This process makes the book strong and able to be used by researchers, while maintaining its aesthetic integrity.
Enclosures for books can be made in the lab and are one of the best preventive conservation practices. A box may be made for an especially fragile item that could be damaged while being shelved or unshelved or for an unusually shaped item that otherwise could not be stored with other items. An enclosure can prevent light and dirt from fading the covers, can protect a book from any drops or scratches that may inadvertently occur during everyday care and handling, and in general, can extend the life of an object without need for conservation treatment. Preservation makes enclosures for both circulating books and Special Collection items.
Preservation frequently collaborates with other departments throughout the University. The lab serves art classes interested in learning about archival materials and conservation techniques and has worked with history students to discuss physical book history and historical book-making practices. Conservators have also collaborated widely with University Galleries, assisting with exhibit prep and object handling. The conservation lab proudly serves as a resource for the entire campus community, not just Milner Library.
Preservation works continuously behind the scenes to ensure Milner Library’s resources remain intact and accessible for Illinois State University students and faculty, and to provide preservation resources and knowledge for the Illinois State University community.