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Reports

Interim Report March 31, 2012

Posted to NDNP 3/28/2012  

NDNP Awardee Interim Performance Report

NEH Award Number: PJ-50038-08
NDNP State: Washington
Submitted By: Shawn Schollmeyer, Marlys Rudeen
Report Date: March 31, 2012


 
1. Describe any changes that you have made or that you anticipate making in the project work plan or methodology from the award proposal submitted to the competition.
Minor modifications have been made to the 2010-2012 work plan to improve workflow efficiency and accommodate the OCR processing and metadata creation that is now being done in-house rather than submitting for processing by our vendor, Content Conversion Specialists (CCS), in Europe. By processing the content locally we are able to avoid the waiting periods for shipping drives to Romania and packages delayed by weather or international customs. However there has been a considerable learning curve to use the CCS docWorks application and a few metadata conversion issues that we needed to resolve. Microfilm evaluation had originally been created in Excel spreadsheets, stored for the processing team to access via "the cloud" as a Google document, then converted to an Access database used by the docWorks program. To minimize formatting problems created by converting Google formats to Access, we now store the data in Microsoft SkyDrive for better compatibility with docWorks’ Windows-based software. The current version requires the Access database to compare the METS files against the original film evaluation data, a critical step in verifying data at the end of the processing cycle. We are still experiencing some issues with the conversion and are currently working with the vendor to resolve the issue.

In order to improve the learning curve for several different document processing stages and quick onboarding of any new staff and volunteers, careful documentation is being created. In some cases the vendor was not able to provide enough specific information for the NDNP workflow and project handling for remote and local processing data. Export QA and verification was not covered since there is so much variation between the grantees. This information is being compiled from various resources including other NDNP grantees at the Universities of Virginia and California, Riverside who also use the same application.

After the deliverable files have been exported from the docWorks program, a few changes have been made to streamline the QA check before running LC validation and verification programs. A few steps have been eliminated in favor of a docWorks recommended process using an out-of-box file comparison tool and their comparison file generator script instead of an earlier DOS command line tool. This has been further improved upon by using an easier to read file comparison application called Beyond Compare 3. This cuts down a considerable amount of time in reviewing any differences between the Access database and the METS file.  

2. Please describe any selection or film acquisition/evaluation activities during the performance period. Newspaper title and film selection is complete for the Washington NDNP grant project and the number of scanned images remains at 75% due to the changes in staffing over the summer. No additional reels will be scanned for this grant cycle so we can prioritize current deliverables. The remaining content has been identified as a title chosen for the third grant cycle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 

3. Describe any specific award activities that have taken place between collaborating institutions in your state. As part of the Washington State Library and University of Washington partnership, an NDNP office is maintained in UW’s Suzzallo Library for our UW student staff. We were able to secure a larger space in the basement of the building this past fall after the Maps department moved to a different floor. This area is much bigger than the work area we had before and allows more than two people to work at a time. This is important in that we are interested in opening this project opportunity to students at the UW Information School through a non-paid, for-credit internship program known as "Directed Fieldwork" (DFW) or an unpaid, for-credit internship for the undergraduate students in the Informatics program. We are currently working with a student volunteer in addition to these other options as a way to promote newspaper preservation and digitization projects. We’ve had a positive amount of interest in the program and would like to test it this summer. If we are awarded a third grant cycle we would launch the program solidly in the fall quarter.

Our current UW student staff are a tremendous asset to the NDNP program. Claire Imamura has been with us since the early microfilm evaluation days and will graduate this summer. She is very detailed and production oriented, with a great knowledge of the docWorks tool. April Martin graduated last year and we fear we may lose her to a full time job soon. She is a passionate researcher and librarian and brings great energy and questions about the NDNP program. I hope to find more students like Claire and April through the internship programs and anticipate that we have a pool of potential candidates for promotion of NDNP and if needed, interested library students to fill their shoes if they should find other opportunities in librarianship.

Our UW staff contacts have been very supportive, filling me in on access to UW networks and resources. Glenda Pearson and Jessica Albano are a wealth of information. I have been meeting quarterly with Glenda to keep the UW team updated on the progress of the program. After an exciting discovery that we have an even earlier start date to the Ellensburg Dawn title than previously thought, the UW and WSL cataloging staff are aligning MARC records to reflect the print copies of the 1893
Reformers’ Dawn, Volumes 1-3, held in UW Special Collections department. April was thrilled when her research revealed the copies she had seen references to and now we have the opportunity to add these to the Chronicling America catalog and ensure the records are consistent across agencies, including Library of Congress.

  4. Describe specifically your progress in conversion and/or vendor selection (attach documentation as desired). Our vendor, CCS, has been very good at making themselves available and assisting me where possible in learning the nuances of the docWorks tool. Most of the documentation however is oriented toward the broad scope of materials they provide support for and far less is provided specifically for the NDNP program due to the fact that each of their NDNP customers has a variation in workflow. With this though, they have provided phone support every two weeks, online communication tools for issue tracking and as of September 2011, a U.S. based systems engineer who is in a much nearer time zone.

We found a few problems last summer with the generation of JP2 files that were resolved in a February upgrade, but as with many upgrades, some new problems were introduced. We have been working closely with the CCS support team to resolve the issues and maintain an environment as close to we had before the upgrade. The software is very configurable and sometimes the smallest script change may disrupt the output of files. As mentioned in the answer to question one, the conversion of our metadata from evaluation spreadsheets to a
docWorks accessible database has been a challenge to a fairly straightforward process of export and batch verification. Once we have this resolved with the vendor, most of the system issues we’ve been experiencing will also be resolved.

 
5. Do you have any questions or comments regarding the use of the tools provided by LC (Digital Viewer Validation)? The DVV tool provided by LC has been very easy to use and reliable. I do find the DOS command line less user friendly, but I’ve had to use both now and the results are consistent with the data in the batch.  

6. Provide an update on your planned schedule for delivery of digital assets to the NDNP repository. Include anticipated number of files to be delivered and planned means of delivery or transfer. (Keep in mind the delivery deadlines noted in the Cooperative Agreement Document, but also take into consideration your own resources and workflow plans. LC requests that you plan to deliver new data monthly, with one batch per hard drive. Batches that have been submitted and require rework should be shipped to LC as soon as fixes are complete (send more than one hard drive at a time, if needed). The last reported plan to deliver 25% of grant deliverables by August 2011 was unfortunately delayed by several factors but we are now on schedule for a delivery of over 32,000 pages by the end of April 2012. The workflow change and learning curve of the docWorks software program; a significant reduction of WSL staff over the past year; the three month vacancy of the Washington NDNP coordinator; and issues surrounding a docWorks software upgrade have been challenges that we are surmounting. Two WSL staff members working part-time, two University of Washington students, and our two volunteers were able to keep the processing going over the summer and fall while I came up to speed on NDNP requirements and docWorks software beginning full time in late November. The processing team kept working with minimal guidance and built up a high rate of content ready to be exported into batches as soon as I began the program. Several batches, named after Washington rivers, are ready to be exported and allow us to catch up quickly. I resubmitted our first batch, batch_wa_american, at the end of December 2011. The second batch, batch_wa_bumping has been submitted to Library of Congress and pending approval. We now have two more batches that will be shipped in the next two weeks and then account for approximately 32,000 pages. These batches will include the following titles:

  • Wenatchee Daily World
  • Labor Journal (Everett)
  • The Lynden Tribune
  • The Spokane Press
  • The Vancouver Independent

We will continue toward a goal of another batch of 10,000 pages every two-three weeks to catch up on the previous delays and complete 100,000 pages by the end of the grant cycle. I have been reviewing the steps of the docWorks process and working with CCS in finding ways to streamline processing and make many of the steps easier. These improvements along with the UW student staffing plans mentioned in question three will speed up the overall processing time from import to export and verification.


7. State briefly the status of any other digitized newspaper activities in your or collaborating partners’ institutions (non-NDNP-funded). With the greater visibility of our papers on the Chronicling America website, we have been receiving more phone calls and emails regarding small projects around the state from museums, publishers and archives. The furthest along in a newspaper digitization project is the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum, celebrating their centennial this year, who will be promoting the content in their searchable database. Their questions were based around image standards and ways to collaborate with the state library. They had also contacted the state archives regarding image formats to use and guidelines for their volunteer with a professional camera.

After a Grays Harbor county publisher for local paper,
The Vidette, contacted us wanting to know how she could use volunteers to have their paper searchable on the Google Online Newspaper Site, I realized it would be beneficial to have some guidelines and standards available in a quick and easy to use format. This activity will focus on image standards and basic metadata that organizations should capture for best preservation and tracking. It will start as a handout and lead to a more detailed document for the level of interest and development of a project. Ideally, these standards will enable us to collate collections and allow easier database migration as collections are developed and shared.

  8. Please provide copies of or URLs for any public presentations or publications on topics related to your participation in NDNP (or describe future plans for such). As we get more titles into the Chronicling America database we are eager to promote usage of the content in broader regions of our state. We are planning two main tours of the eastern side of Washington and the Washington Library Media Association conference to promote usage within our schools. The list below is only a preliminary itinerary which will be solidified in the next few months. I will begin introducing myself and our new Washington NDNP energy to librarians at our Washington Library Association conference next month and begin contacting key libraries across the state.

I will also be partnering with a Washington State Library sister program, Washington Rural Heritage, which focuses on our regional history through images and historic events. WRH often receives questions regarding the digitization of local newspapers and we are already planning on ways we can collaborate through common standards and preservation goals. My message will focus on ways we can encourage future preservation programs in regional organizations and develop high quality standards across the state, based on NDNP guidelines, even after the program ends.

  • Spring Tour, (TBD 2012) Southeast: Walla Walla (Whitman College)
  • Autumn Tour, Northeast: (TBD 2012) Spokane, Colville, Omak
  • NDNP Conference, September 26-28, 2012 Washington, DC
  • WLMA, October 11-13, 2012 in Yakima
  • Everett (Labor Journal) & Puget Sound libraries, informal over several dates

 
9. Describe any follow-up issues or questions you would like convey to the NDNP program committee Bringing the image and metadata processing in-house was an ambitious step that brought with it a host of challenges for staff. Continued state budget problems and staff changes exacerbated them. But the process has also allowed staff to learn so much about the structure of the data and the workflow used by vendors that we believe the experience has been extremely valuable.

July 1, 2010 - Jan 31, 2011

See NDNPInterimReport20110131_final.pdf

Final Report 2008-2010

See 2010 Final Reports

July 1, - December 30, 2009

INTERIM PERFORMANCE REPORT NARRATIVE

NDNP Awardee Interim Performance Report
NEH Award Number: PJ-50038-08
NDNP State: Washington
Submitted By: Laura Robinson, Project Manger
Report Date: January 31, 2010

1. Changes in Workplan or Methodology

QA – There have been a few changes to our QA procedures due to corrupt JP2 files in our first batch. Since validation checks and byte counts didn’t catch these nor help us determine problem files, we’ve begun a visual QA check of all JP2 files. We use a batch script to output a copy of all JP2s of the same reel into one folder, this eliminates the need to navigate the file structure and click on each issue folder. Each image is viewed as a large thumbnail in Adobe Bridge to make sure the image renders properly, is deskewed and cropped accordingly. Approx 10 percent of the images are then opened and further examined to make sure image quality is acceptable

We still use the QA-Report tool (scripts reported in last report) to cross check the input and output data and investigate all variations. This is an efficient form of QA and accounts for approx. 90% of the errors we catch in the batches. A further check on approx. every 10th issue is made in order to check dates, volume and issue numbers as well as page order.

We’ve found that it is generally easier to send all errors back to CCS and have the images reprocessed via the docWorks software. Errors are corrected in house only when they don’t affect the embedded (or header) metadata in the images.

Documentation – We’re documenting the research and work via a project wiki. A new progress chart was created and is used to keep track of the milestones for each title.

Communication – Communication hasn’t changed much since Backstage Library Works has taken over for OCLC. We have noted that staff assigned to our project has decreased and this has caused some difficulty for the project manager at BSLW. Monthly phone calls are scheduled with WSL, BSLW and CCS. Communication and action based on communication remains to be slow and cumbersome. In order to mitigate this issue, we’ve asked BSLW to post meeting minutes and action items after each phone call.

2. Selection or Film Acquisition/Evaluation Activities

Title selection is final now that pages counts are coming in. We’ve had to reprioritize some of the titles and remove some from our final list. The final list is below:

  1. Cayton's Weekly (Seattle) 1917-1921
    1. includes Cayton’s Monthly
  2. Colfax Gazette 1900-1912
  3. Colville Examiner 1907-1922
  4. Commonwealth, (Everett) 1911-1914
  5. Industrial Freedom, (Edison) 1898-1901
  6. Leavenworth Echo 1904-1922
  7. Pullman Herald 1888-1922
  8. Ranch (North Yakima) 1894-1912
    1. includes Ranche and Range
    2. Ranch (Seattle)
    3. Washington Farmer (Spokane)
  9. San Juan Islander 1894-1914
    1. includes Islander
  10. Seattle Republican 1896-1902
    1. includes Daily Republican
    2. Republican
  11. Seattle Star 1899-1910
  12. Tacoma Times 1894-1922
  13. Washington Socialist 1914-1915
    1. includes Co-operative News
    2. Northwest Worker
  14. Yakima Herald 1893-1912

3. Award Activities with Collaborating Institutions

Collaboration with the UW Libraries continues. Office space is provided for the Project Manager and work study student. Also, coordination with UW Libraries continues in reimbursement of student work, research and creation of the title essays, and purchase of duplicate film from negative masters owned by UW. The selection committee is also managed by UW Libraries staff member Glenda Pearson.

We are planning collaboration with the Seattle Public Library and other institutions in order to publicize the collections as they go online.

4. Conversion and/or Vendor Selection

Approx. 90% of the images have been scanned and converted. We are working with the vendors to lessen the errors found in each batch, which significantly slows our progress. We’ve seen less major errors in the latest batches, though turnaround of rework still seems very slow. One of the main reasons we’ve proposed licensing the docWorks software and doing the image conversion in-house is because of the slow turn-around time of batches and re-work. We’ve found that much of the time wasted is due to the layers of communication between the vendors and their staff as well as the shipping of hard drives.

5. Do you have any questions or comments regarding the use of the tools provided by LC (Digital Viewer Validation)?

We find that we are using the DVV mostly just for verification and re-validation upon rework. We use Adobe Bridge to view the images and our QA-Report tool to test and link to the metadata files.

6. Provide an update on your planned schedule for delivery of digital assets for the award, including samples, to the NDNP repository.

We have approx. 40% of the images delivered and live in Chronicling America and plan to have nearly 70% of the images delivered to LC by mid February.

7. State briefly the status of any other digitized newspaper activities in your or collaborating partners’ institutions (non-NDNP-funded).

Since July, 2009, the State Library has put up two more newspaper titles in their internal digital newspaper project. They are the Puget Sound Mail from La Conner (1879 – 1884) and the Northern Star from Snohomish (1876 – 1879), with a total of 1874 pages. We anticipate expanding an existing title, the Puget Sound Weekly Argus from Port Townsend within the month. These newspapers are indexed to the article level by volunteers who are supervised by staff.

8. Please provide copies of or URLs for any public presentations or publications on topics related to your participation in NDNP (or describe future plans for such).

Publications:
  1. WSL’s NDNP related news: http://blogs.sos.wa.gov/library/index.php/tag/ndnp/
  2. Microform & Imaging Review article to be submitted by Feb. 1, 2010

Presentations:
  1. Oct. 3 - LITA National Forum, Salt Lake City, UT
  2. Oct. 9 - WLMA, Yakima, WA
  3. Nov. 14 - Museum Computer Network, Portland, OR

9. Describe any follow-up issues or questions you would like convey to the NDNP program committee as you begin your digital conversion project.

Please submit to your NEH Program Officer ([email protected]) with a copy to [email protected], by January 31, 2009.

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January 1, - June 30, 2009

INTERIM PERFORMANCE REPORT NARRATIVE

NDNP Awardee Interim Performance Report
NEH Award Number: PJ-50038-08
NDNP State: Washington
Submitted By: Marlys Rudeen, Project Director
Report Date: July 31, 2009

1. Changes in Workplan or Methodology

QA - The first batches were received and reviewed. A workflow for dealing with data or image errors has been established but continues to be refined. Most data errors in the batches are fixed in-house while images are sent back to the vendor via ftp to be reprocessed. Some common errors to look for during QA and other hints and tips were provided by Deb Thomas during her site visit in May. The data and digital image QA process has been created and tested. Using the detailed documentation of the NDNP METS data structure provided by LOC, we created scripts to verify that the evaluation data (input data) matches the metsrecord xml files (output data). The pdfs are checked by staff. For now, every pdf is copied to a temporary location while staff conducts review.

Documentation - A project wiki has been established and is used to collate project documentation, title selection, and ongoing research. Links to evaluation spreadsheets (Google Docs) are also available on the wiki. An effort to keep information on the internet helps to keep the project mobile and aid in collaboration.

Communication - OCLC hosts a SharePoint portal used for data delivery and communication. Semi weekly phone calls happen with OCLC and monthly phone calls are scheduled with all sub-contractors. Communication and coordination with multiple organizations in multiple countries has proven to be a slow process.

Infrastructure - We've worked to find funding to increase server capacity for the batches to live locally. Further work will be required to manage and preserve the local copy of files long term. An intermediary server is being set up to provide remote access to pdfs during QA.

2. Selection or Film Acquisition/Evaluation Activities

The final selection list was delivered to LOC in February, 2009 (included below). In late June, the decision was made to substitute the Bremerton News with the Walla Walla Evening Statesman due to a lack of complete microfilm and local funding to finish microfilming originals.

3. Award Activities with Collaborating Institutions

The University of Washington houses half the project by hosting the student work station and a work space for the project coordinator three days per week. The University also orders approximately half the film and manages the selection committee.

Other organization will aid in promoting the collection once images are loaded into Chronicling America.

4. Conversion and/or Vendor Selection

The first batch of approx 16,000 newspaper pages were delivered in June. Approx 20 errors were found and fixed. The vendor is having internal software issues and is only able to deliver a partial second batch of approx 6,000 - this batch is due to arrive in early July. We may not have the full 25% of images delivered to LOC in time to meet our July 31st deadline but the rest should follow soon after.

We're pleased with the quality of images and OCR data received from OCLC. We'd like to move to using the 2009 NDNP specs but have had to hold off due to sub-contractor's software. This has hindered the project somewhat.

5. Do you have any questions or comments regarding the use of the tools provided by LC (Digital Viewer Validation)?

We feel more confident with the DVV. There was a small hiccup with our first batch in that the subcontractor validated our first batch with the latest version of the DVV software and didn't tell us. After consulting with Ray Murray we learned that the file signatures are not upward compatible so it took us a while to figure out why our data wasn't validating once we received the batch.

6. Provide an update on your planned schedule for delivery of digital assets for the award, including samples, to the NDNP repository.

We should have approx. 22,000 images delivered by the end of July with approx. 10,000 to follow a few weeks after that. We are currently on track with our other milestones.

7. State briefly the status of any other digitized newspaper activities in your or collaborating partners’ institutions (non-NDNP-funded).

Since Jan. 1, 2009, the State Library has put up three more newspaper titles in their internal digital newspaper project. They are the Yakima Herald (1891-1892), the Vancouver Register (1865-1869), and the Puget Sound Herald (1861-1864), with a total of 1,822 page images. These newspapers are indexed to the article level by volunteers who are supervised by staff.

8. Please provide copies of or URLs for any public presentations or publications on topics related to your participation in NDNP (or describe future plans for such).

Presentation at WLA (Washington Library Association) in April related to using maps to display collections of digital newspapers (including NDNP) - slides

Washington State Library blog posts related to NDNP - posts

Planned poster presentation at LITA National Forum - display uses of various tools and techniques to make Washington's participation in NDNP a collaborative and mobile project.

Planned co-presentation at WLMA (Washington Library Media Association) - will talk about digital collections available to social studies teachers, including Chronicling America.

9. Describe any follow-up issues or questions you would like convey to the NDNP program committee as you begin your digital conversion project.

Please submit to your NEH Program Officer ([email protected]) with a copy to [email protected], by January 31, 2009.

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July 1, - December 31, 2008

NDNP Awardee Interim Performance Report
NEH Award Number: PJ-50038-08
NDNP State: Washington
Submitted By: Marlys Rudeen, Project Director
Report Date: January 31, 2009

INTERIM PERFORMANCE REPORT NARRATIVE

1. Changes in Workplan or Methodology

There have been few changes in the preliminary workplan to this point in the project. However, with the advent of the new DVV and adoption of the new technical specifications, there will be some adjustments in future months. At present, despite occasional bureaucratic delays, the project is on schedule for the first deliverables at the end of January.

The Project Coordinator, Laura Robinson, was hired and began work full-time in September. It was decided that it would be advantageous to have her work part of each week at the University of Washington (UW) campus. This enabled her to supervise student workers directly, and continue to work closely on selection issues with UW staff.

2. Selection or Film Acquisition/Evaluation Activities

Title selection is continuing, and the decision was made to focus on a particular time period with a wide geographic distribution. Accordingly the selection committee looked for titles that covered 1900-1910, with at least one title for each region and the significant towns of the period: Bellingham, Everett, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Vancouver, Walla Walla, Wenatchee and Yakima. At a meeting between UW and WSL on Sept. 12, 2008 both organizations decided on the first titles to be duplicated/purchased. Since both UW and WSL own master negatives, it was decided that each organization would be responsible for managing its own negatives and obtaining the required duplicates for the titles they own.

Both partners have spent some time working with their service bureaus to get acceptable 2nd generation negatives and the required density readings. Since many of WSL’s negatives are held by a third party, this required some research to confirm the location and availability of certain titles.

While this was happening, Laura hired a work study student and began developing the workflow for examining the film and collecting metadata. She began by experimenting with an Access database supplied by our vendor (OCLC) and with Excel spreadsheets. However it was not always possible to get the required programs on the computer available for the student worker, so they began to use the spreadsheet function on Google Docs, a free web-based set of applications. This has worked well, ensuring that Laura and the student can reach the files from any location and providing the ability to link the film evaluation data to the NDNP wiki (see section 3). They are consulting with OCLC to firm up the respective metadata responsibilities.

The first reel was scanned and run through OCLC’s OCR process, and the data and images were shipped to WSL. Laura ran it through the DVV to make sure it validated before beginning the quality assurance process. Using the sample reel, the internal quality assurance processes are being developed.

We did find some incorrect metadata and are creating a work plan to best deal with such errors. One such example of an error was the incorrect attribution of ownership of the tiff images to ‘Minnesota State Historical Society’ in the validated data files (_1.xml files). Laura investigated and determined it came from embedded metadata in tiff files. She located a command-line tool used to extract, write, and view embedded data in image files and is working with the vendor to develop a plan of correction.

Since the latest version of the DVV has arrived, the decision was made to adopt the 2009 technical specifications for metadata on future reels.

3. Award Activities with Collaborating Institutions

A contract with the UW was executed to allow the Washington State Library (WSL) to reimburse UW for two functions: purchase of duplicate film from negative masters owned by UW; and payment of work study worker(s) at the UW Library. Arrangements were also made to provide office space for Laura and student worker(s) at UW.

Laura has established a wiki for the project to use for maintaining files and communicating. The NDNP wiki is located at http://wiki.secstate.wa.gov/ndnp/MainPage.ashx

The wiki provides a method of storing and making available a variety of documents generated during the project, and will provide a coherent record of the project. News and updates also circulate on a project listserv to all participants and committee members.

4. Conversion and/or Vendor Selection The RFP for scanning and OCR was issued on Sept. 15, 2008 and responses were due Oct. 15, 2008. Three proposals were received and evaluated by staff according to a procedure and scoring process developed in consultation with WSL’s contracts office. On Oct. 24, 2008, WSL announced that the successful vendor was OCLC. WSL and its contract office immediately began working on the contract which is now completed.

While contract negotiations were going on, the portable hard drive and mailing cases were purchased, named (after boats in the Washington State Ferry fleet), and shipped to the vendor in Bethlehem, PA.

Film examination and metadata collection were completed for the first title, five reels of the Seattle Republican and related titles. The first reel will be used as the sample reel to be submitted to LOC by January 31, 2009.

A kickoff meeting with OCLC staff has been scheduled for January 7, 2009 to discuss metadata specifics, project structure, communication, and scheduling of work and shipments.

5. Do you have any questions or comments regarding the use of the tools provided by LC (Digital Viewer Validation)?

The DVV has been very helpful and generally easy to use. There were very minor issues with the install and a suggestion made to LOC staff to add text to the documentation for future users. We’ve found that the GUI has been less helpful and more limiting than the command-line options of validation. We intend to use the GUI and perhaps Adobe Bridge for visual validation of the image files.

We are hoping to create scripts and that can output the batch, reel, and issue metadata into various formats for testing and validation.

6. Provide an update on your planned schedule for delivery of digital assets for the award, including samples, to the NDNP repository.

The hard drives purchased for the project have a capacity of 1 TB, requiring between 18-20 reels to fill. Shipments of drives will take place every 6-8 weeks. The table below represents the list of titles and possible substitutes divided by six month periods to assist the staff members responsible for acquiring the negatives, performing the film evaluation and quality control.



7. State briefly the status of any other digitized newspaper activities in your or collaborating partners’ institutions (non-NDNP-funded).

Since July the State Library has put up two more newspaper titles in their internal digital newspaper project, the Yakima Herald (1889-1890), and the Puget Sound Herald from Steilacoom (Mar. 1858-1860). Several more titles are in process. This internal project has been significantly slowed down by budget and staff cuts, and by the fact that some of the personnel involved have significant roles in the NDNP project.

8. Please provide copies of or URLs for any public presentations or publications on topics related to your participation in NDNP (or describe future plans for such).

WSL’s NDNP related news:
9. Describe any follow-up issues or questions you would like convey to the NDNP program committee as you begin your digital conversion project.

It is our understanding that the new DVV includes validation of embedded metadata in the image files. Because of such issues as described above we are looking forward to having more robust checking of the metadata in the image files.

Please submit to your NEH Program Officer ([email protected]) with a copy to [email protected], by January 31, 2009.

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Template

COVER PAGE

Provide the following information in the order requested:

  • type of report (interim or final performance report),
  • grant number,
  • title of project,
  • name of project director(s),
  • name of grantee institution (if applicable),
  • date report is submitted.

NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION

The items listed are provided as guidance to the project director in developing the narrative description of project activities. Because projects vary considerably, not all items will be relevant to a particular project. Please feel free to organize this portion of the report in the way that most clearly presents what has taken place during the grant period.

Interim Performance Reports

  • Compare actual accomplishments with goals established for the report period. Whenever possible, describe the work accomplished in both quantitative and qualitative terms. If project goals have not been met, explain the reason for this, what steps have been taken to get the project back on schedule, and whether it seems likely that the project will be completed by the expiration date of the grant. Favorable developments that will enable project goals to be realized sooner or at less cost than anticipated should be described.
  • Describe any changes that have been made or are anticipated in the project work plan or methodology.
  • If the role of consultants, as outlined in the approved project plan, has changed, explain how and why it has changed.
  • If applicable, describe how automation contributed to the project and whether hardware, software, or staffing problems have been encountered.
  • If federal matching funds are a component of the award and the full amount of gifts has not yet been raised, provide information on ongoing fund-raising activities and the prospects for raising additional gifts.

The narrative description of an interim performance report should average between one and three pages in length.

APPENDICES

Enclose with the report one copy of any supporting material that would contribute to an understanding of the project and its accomplishments to date. This would include:

  • representative samples of completed work,
  • preliminary products such as conference or workshop papers,
  • course syllabi and manuals,
  • written evaluations of a project,
  • consultant reports, if required,
  • articles submitted to journals,
  • illustrated field reports,
  • copies of published announcements or other formal efforts to recruit participating scholars,
  • copies of any mailing, fliers, newspaper releases or articles, or other media coverage.

It is not necessary to append work in progress, such as draft chapters of a book or other manuscript materials. However, unless otherwise specified in the conditions of the grant award, two copies of any publication, film, videotape, or slide presentation resulting from the grant should be forwarded to the Endowment with the final report.

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