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Interim Report March 31, 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