The End of the Road...

Well, the ensuing weeks have been filled with scanning and tagging as many photos as possible and still the boxes of materials loom large. I was able to consolidate the boxes into (mostly) like materials, which brought them down to about nine boxes (from the original twelve), one of which is not really scannable material, and I completed approximately a box and a half. I would say we’re looking at possible 7500 to 10,000 images in this collection. There may be some materials worth keeping in the remaining boxes, but when Dave Wenger, Director of Communications, asked my opinion about physical retention, I recommended tossing them. As long as the Picasa database (on their network drive) is backed up regularly, I feel the Communications Department’s needs will be well met by the database of electronic images. I was not able to get into scanning any negatives or slides, so any issues with whether or not the current equipment will be able to handle those materials adequately will have to be addressed by a future intern/capstone student (if the department wishes to continue with this kind of assistance). The issues I was experiencing with the scanner initially were a little distressing (scanned images appearing fine in the preview mode, but the final scan was “foggy”) until I spoke with a friend in the graphic arts field. To quote him “Scanners are voodoo”. At first I laughed (through the tears of frustration), but he basically suggested snapping the USB cable (to clear out any “phantom” electrons) and moving the connection to a different USB port. There are four ports on the front of the ‘droid I was using and I just went from left to right and, presto, the last one gave me no problems. I guess that’s why they call this a learning experience. ;-) Also, as I will be in the McCombs School until at least next May, I would be happy to provide guidance for anyone who comes in after me.

I would like to comment on using Google’s Picasa as photographic database tool. I had never used it prior to this project and I was quite impressed (especially for this being a free product) not only with the built-in tagging tool (allowing me to include any information that might improve search results, such as group names, VIP images, dates, departments , etc.), the search function, and the editing tools, but more specifically with the face recognition capabilities. It apparently takes face images already identified and finds similarities to faces that have not yet been identified, giving you the option to either accept or reject the image as matching a particular person. It’s not perfect (if it were, I’d be stunned), but it’s pretty damned good. I believe this will also be helpful to future scanners/taggers of this database who may not be as familiar with people in the McCombs School as I am. I will definitely be using this tool for my own personal database of photographs and will recommend it to others as an excellent Web 2.0 resource.

Now on to consolidating all of this information into a 60 second presentation for Friday’s event…

Excitement of the Most Annoying Kind

Not quite 6AM on Saturday morning, and I discover that I'm locked out of the office with all the photographic materials in it. Not locked out of the Communications Department, just the office that has the computer and working materials. Well, as I ride in with my husband who works between 3 and 4pm on Saturdays, this puts me in a bit of a quandary. Fortunately, I can set up shop in the office of my full-time job and do a bit of further research on the actual database. Last week, I had thought mayhaps a PHP/MySQL database would be the way to go. However, I realized that would also require setting up a webpage that would likely require more time to accomplish than this summer's semester will allow. Then I thought perhaps a Microsoft Access database, which would be feasible until I remembered something that Mary Cone mentioned last April when I was just getting all my capstone ducks in a row: Picasa.

Now, I can be a little OCD, even a little Frank Sinatra-ish (to paraphrase, "I'll do it...MY WAY!"), but I'm also disinclined to reinvent the wheel. So sitting here on Saturday morning, I set up Picasa on my work 'droid and, with emailed guidance from Kyle Rosenblad, I downloaded Picasa and started to sync the existing archive of photos (which will take approximately 8 hours). I'm not certain, not having worked with Picasa before, if I'll have to do the same thing on the 'droid in the Communications Department but, if that's the case, so be it. I am able to poke around in Picasa while it's syncing and noticed 1) the Communications Department has already established their existing photo archive by years (easy to work with) and 2) Picasa has a tag function.

{visualize lightbulb over my pointed little head}

Now part of the current problem which we need to resolve is long term storage and access to these photos, slides, and negatives. I confess I have been near to weeping whenever I find myself gently trying to separate photos which have become stuck together, carefully removing the rubber bands which have melted onto the materials, or delicately sliding the paper clips which have been in place for a decade from pages of negatives. So if it is possible to render these materials into a digital format and store them in Picasa with appropriate tags (which would make them searchable), this could be the best possible solution. Critical images could still be kept in photo/negative/slide format as well, but I suspect that would be a far more manageable number than at present. Also, at the beginning of this project, the possibility of outsourcing the digitization of the collection was discussed. This now seems more like a possibility, so if Mary Cone is in agreement, I can look into getting bids for this. If this appears cost prohibitive, I have looked into equipment to handle this in-house and HP has very reasonably priced scanners equipped with transparency materials adapters (http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/organize_archive_photos/tips/scanning_slides.html#5)and so photos, negatives, and slides could all be scanned and tagged in Picasa (http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/organize_archive_photos/tips/scanning_slides.html)

So, wow! What started out as a day that looked like a complete bust has actually brought me to some potential solutions!

Edit: And I just realized that if, in fact, we can do this in-house, it would actually be a little more efficient in terms of tagging, as I could upload and tag small groups of materials immediately after scanning them, determine if they could be discard at that time, and minimize the times an item is touched (I'm a firm believer in the time savings of a "touch once" system).

Logistics and Other Frightening Ideas

As of today, I have officially put my hands on all the materials. The lion’s share of the items is printed photos, some with accompanying negatives, some without, as well as slides, contact sheets with and without negatives (or negatives with and without any kind of printed image), and even a small handful of CDs with digital images (I presume – I haven’t loaded them into a ‘droid yet). My next goal is to focus on one particular group (probably faculty) and begin to determine how they should be stored – regardless of medium - with the aim of ease of search and retrieval. I’ve started a spreadsheet with headers that I think might be of value (medium, data, event, individuals, etc.), but I’m starting to think about the possibility of programming a simple database in MySQL and PHP, as that might facilitate future materials logging, searching, and report generation. Upon initial consideration, reports might seem like overkill, but say (for example) someone of significance to the school passes away, receives a major promotion, or something of similar import . Running a report to generate a list of photos that person appeared in and where they are stored might give the Communications Department an easy tool to help them create press releases or stories for various publications.

I’ve also looked over the results of the Survey Monkey survey I created and half of the Communications staff has responded. The preponderance of need appears to be for actual photographs, with negatives and contact sheets next in importance, and slides bringing up the rear. In some ways, this will make the slides easier to deal with, as they are all of pretty much the same size (aside from a few medium format slides) and slide storage could be fairly quickly calculated. On the down side, most of the slides have no identifiers, so I might have to see if I can get hold of a loupe (easy) and a light table (not so easy).

I’m also starting to think about an efficient manner of physically labeling these items. Photos can be (and some have been) labeled on the back with a brief description and perhaps a unique identifier that will link it back to the database (or spreadsheet). Slides could also be labeled this way, but the labels would have to be much smaller, possibly requiring an abbreviated description (or none at all). PrintFile has 35mm archival slide labels (amongst many other very useful photographic storage solutions), with 84 labels per sheet, so it’s definitely a possibility. They also carry archival quality general purpose labels, which would work for the individual photos. For contact sheets (with or without accompanying negatives), perhaps a larger label could be used to identify significant images and also include a unique identifier for the sheet. Negatives alone might be a stickier wicket, as even identifying individuals would be more difficult than it would on slides. I will attempt to match up orphaned negatives with photos, but failing that, perhaps it might be worthwhile to see if the Communications Department would want to invest in contact sheets for those negatives (provided it’s not cost prohibitive).

More later - as I have been writing this, my brain is incubating more ideas (h/t to LB for suggesting that I’m an incubator and not a procrastinator).

So - What Is It?

What is it? Well, it is what it is, and what it is is ten, count 'em, ten boxes of photos, slides, negatives, contact sheets, and miscellaneous materials encompassing the photographic history of the Business School, from the 1930s to the turn of the 21st century. Yesterday was my first full day of examining the materials and doing an initial sort, and I got through seven of the ten boxes, and along the way, I went from the sublime to the ridiculous, finding photos of the Honorable Barbara Jordan cheek by jowl with photos of Ken Lay, former CEO of the former Enron! I've begun by dividing the materials up by medium and once that first sort is done, I'll start examining the quantities of the different materials (to address potential storage solutions) and the possible metadata/search tags, as well as making note of images that get the Gold Star for potential inclusion in the Texas Digital Library's McCombs Community.

I also felt it was important to consider the specific needs of the end users, the members of the McCombs Department of Communications, Marketing and Public Affairs. With this in mind, I composed a brief series of questions via Survey Monkey and sent it to the ten members of the Communications team. I will use their responses to guide my decisions regarding the formats preferred, the materials to be cataloged, and materials to be discarded. I've created a spreadsheet to start logging the materials, but I will likely make adjustments to it after I assimilate these responses. Hmm. Does that make me The Borg?

Stay tuned for next week's installment. Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel.

And Thus It Begins...

In just a few weeks, I will begin my Professional Experience Project as part of the degree requirements for my MSIS (Master's of Science in Information Studies) at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information (The iSchool). I've been working on my degree since Spring 2007 and will complete my program of studies in Spring 2011, all the while holding down a 40+ hour a week job. As much as I have enjoyed the program, the process, and the people, I'd be lying if I said I can't wait for it all to be finished, so I can go on to just fretting about my personal life and my work life.

Well, enough of my whining - on to the real meat of this blog.

First, for those of you unfamiliar with the program, the Professional Experience Project (aka Capstone) is a professional project designed to integrate our educational experience with a real life work experience in order to prepare us for The Big, Bad World of Information Professionals. This is usually done in a student's final semester, but as I'm a part time student and this almost perfect opportunity presented itself, I'll be undertaking this during the upcoming summer semester instead of Spring 2011 (and the fact that there is often a dearth of good summer classes - at least ones I have not yet taken - is another excellent reason for taking this slightly out of sync).

The project I will be undertaking is the McCombs School of Business Photo Digitization and Archival Project, working with Mary Cone in the McCombs Department of Communications, Marketing & Public Affairs and Amy Rushing in the UT Libraries, with Professor Megan Winget acting as my faculty supervisor. My goals for this project are to:

• Create an improved storage solution for photographic materials which the Department of Communications wishes to keep;


• Create a searchable spreadsheet of materials in the collection with keywords for subject and physical location;

• Identify images from the collection to digitize;

• Digitize selected images from the collection of photos, slides, and negatives from the McCombs Department of Communications; and


• Ingest digitized images and metadata into the University of Texas Digital Repository

I'll be working on this project from May 26, 2010 through August 11, 2010 and will participate in a poster presentation session (along with other students completing their capstone projects) at the end of the summer semester. This blog was requested by Professor Winget as an efficient way to keep a log of my progress, so for those of you reading this who are not part of the iSchool, I thank you for your interest and even your input.