Putting Content Online: A Practical Guide for Libraries

This is the "author's page" for my book Putting Content Online: A Practical Guide for Libraries, published September 2006 by Chandos Publishing (ISBN hardcover 1843341778 / paperback 184334176X).

The chapters "Search and Display" (PDF, 736kb) and "Project Management" (PDF, 121kb) are available here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.

If you think you'd benefit from the rest of the book, consider purchasing a copy from Amazon.ca (hardcover or paperback), Amazon.uk (hardcover or paperback), or preferably your local bookstore.

Acknowledgements xi
List of figures xiii
List of tables xv
About the author xvii

1. Introduction

This book’s intended audiences 2
The big(ger) picture 3
A word on terminology 4
More on digital collections 6
Libraries as publishers 10
Some current trends 10
Keeping current 13
Conventions used in this book 15
Notes 16

2. Preliminary tasks

Rationales for digitising 17
Defining collection goals, scope and objectives 22
Evaluating and selecting source material 26
Cultural sensitivity and privacy issues 32
Collection policies 33
Summary: preliminary tasks 33
Notes 34

3. Copyright and digital library collections

National copyright law and digital collections 38
Putting Content Online: A Practical Guide for Libraries
What libraries can put online 40
Managing permissions 44
Additional issues 46
Summary: making decisions about intellectual property 48
Further reading 48
Notes 50

4. Metadata for digital collections

Types of metadata 54
Selected major standards 65
Collection description 77
Subject access and authority control 78
Persistent identifiers 79
Interoperability 82
Native vs. derived metadata 84
Sources of metadata 86
Strategies for metadata creation and maintenance 87
Summary: making decisions about metadata 89
Further reading 89
Notes 90

5. File formats

Master vs. derivative versions 94
Open vs. proprietary formats 94
Formats for still images 96
Resolution, colour depth and compression 97
Formats for text 101
Formats for sound and video 106
Formats for data sets 109
Formats for complex documents 111
Factors in determining which formats to use 111
Summary: making decisions about file formats 117
Further reading 117
Notes 119

6. Search and display

View chapter (PDF, 736kb)

Still images 122
Textual documents 128
Moving images and sound 134
Data sets 137
Mixed document collections 138
Planning your collection’s interface 139
Summary: making decisions about search and display 147
Further reading 148
Notes 149

7. Content management systems

Types of CMSs 151
Examples of DLCMSs 153
Evaluating DLCMSs 159
Summary: making decisions about content management systems 173
Further reading 173
Notes 174

8. Project management

View chapter (PDF, 121kb)

Sequence and timing 178
Planning the implementation 180
Additional planning considerations 194
Executing the project 199
Proposal writing 199
Reporting 203
Monitoring 204
Evaluating the production phase of the project 204
Evaluating the overall project 205
Evaluating the collection 207
Multi-institution projects 208
Summary: managing digital collection projects 209
Further reading 210
Notes 211

9. Project operations

A closer look at staffing 214
Documentation in project operations 219
Creating metadata 221
Quality control 224
General hardware and software used in project operations 228
Capturing and converting printed content 232
Capturing sound and video 238
Evaluating and acquiring specialised hardware and software 240
File management 246
Summary: making decisions about project operations 250
Further reading 250
Notes 251

10. Developing workflows

The workflow development cycle 257
Outlining techniques 259
Diagramming techniques 260
Selected workflows from the literature and the field 267
A general workflow modelling technique 269
Summary: developing workflows for digital collections 279
Further reading 280
Notes 281

11. Preservation strategies

The problems 283
Approaches to digital preservation 285
OAIS Reference Model 288
Trusted digital repositories 290
Preservation metadata 290
Preservation policies 293
Practical technologies 295
Practical things you can do 298
Summary: making decisions about digital preservation 301
Further reading 301
Notes 303

12. A case study

Description of the collection and the project 306
Defining the collection’s goals 307
Evaluating the content and clearing permissions 308
Planning the project 310
Developing the workflows 319
Staffing 330
Documentation and procedures 331
Budgeting 331
Final preparations 337
Executing the project: doing the work 337
Evaluating the project 338
Notes 339

Index

Attachment	Size
Putting_Content_Online_Chapter_06.pdf	734.54 KB
Putting_Content_Online_Chapter_08.pdf	121.21 KB

Comments

Tue, 2008-01-29 11:24 — mikeybenson (not verified)

Wow Mark

Wow. I did not know a book existed on this. I was writing a small post on Webjunction that I haven't posted yet. It was a response to this question:

With little budget and no staff time, how can we build a good website?

http://al.webjunction.org/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=7663&tstart=0

I was writing a small practical guide, with 5 steps, 5 paragraphs. You might be able to suggest your book or formulate a way better response. I think you might have thought a little more about this than myself. ; )

Sun, 2008-06-15 22:08 — Melchior (not verified)

My recommendations

The author doesn't make the mistake of recommending specific information technologies and detailing step-by-step instructions to use these technologies, instead offering just the right amount of detail and offering an extensive further reading list and endnotes at the end of each chapter.

Mark's web presence nothing very exciting, just some guy's web presence

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