University of Southern California

Report to the Digital Library Federation
Spring, 2004

For the most part this report describes projects and activities with major changes although some descriptions of our digital collections are repeated from previous years. For a description of all other ongoing activities, please see previous reports.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Collections, services, and systems
II. Projects and programs
III. Specific digital library challenges
IV. Digital library publications, policies, working papers, and other documents

I. Collections, services, and systems

A. Collections

The Archival Collections Database

Provides full text searching of the descriptions of over 400 collections from USC's Specialized Libraries and Archival Collections. In addition to full text searching, the search interface also offers access by Library/Collection, alphabetically by title, by topic, and by format. Many descriptions contain links to online finding aids. New collection descriptions are added continuously. The Archival Collections database is available at: http://www.usc.edu/arc/libraries/collections

Automobile Club of Southern California Digital Archive

Provides documentation on the region's transportation history from the Auto Club's Corporate Archives. The Digital Archive includes: a selection of about 100 historic strip maps, illustrating the development of major Southern California routes; nearly 500 photographs from the general photograph collection, depicting buildings, businesses, streets, and points of interest; and about 650 photographs from engineering notebooks along with searchable transcriptions of the engineers' notes documenting the conditions of streets, highways, bridges, railroads, etc.

The Automobile Club of Southern California was founded in 1900 and its archive provides a distinctive picture of life in the region during the 20th century. The documents and pictorial materials relate not only to the Club's history but also to local and regional architecture, infrastructure, public policy, and cultural and recreational history. The full corporate archive includes: maps, photographs engineering notebooks compiled by the Auto Club’s engineers, the Auto Club’s magazine, transportation policy working files and corporate documents. http://www.usc.edu/arc/digarchives

California Historical Society Digital Archive

This collection contains over 15,600 photographs from the California Historical Society Collection of over 23,000 photographs. The full archive was placed on long-term deposit at USC in 1990 and includes the Title Insurance and Trust Company, also known as TICOR, and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce Collections, both of which are incomparable for the documentary picture they provide of the development of the Los Angeles region between 1860 and 1960.

The 17,000 photographs of the Title Insurance and Trust Company Collection, (1860 - 1960) contains the work of C.C. Pierce which cover the Los Angeles region city, street and architectural views, California Missions, Southwestern Native Americans, and turn-of-century Nevada, Arizona, and California. Pierce, active from 1886 to 1940, was one of the leading photographers of his day and amassed a collection of 15,000 images, including his own and those bought and copied from his contemporaries, George Wharton James and Charles Puck. The James collection contains over 2,000 images of portraits, customs, ceremonies, arts, and games of various groups of Southwestern Native Americans.

The 5,000 photographs of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce Collection (1888 - 1960) document the Chamber's promotional efforts during the city's early years. In addition to stock photographs, there are pictures of the elaborate booths and displays that the Chamber prepared for use at state fairs and international trade shows. The photographic collection contains images showing the growth of important municipal enterprises, such as ground transportation systems, aviation, and shipping.

http://www.usc.edu/arc/digarchives

Chinese Historical Society of Southern California Digital Archive

Includes 1,040 color images of artifacts excavated from the site of the original Los Angeles Chinatown; an additional 150 images document artifacts from the site of a Chinese laundry in Santa Barbara. These two outstanding Chinese Historical Society of Los Angeles artifact collections are among the largest and best-documented assemblage of cultural materials on Chinese settlement in the United States. Excavated from unmixed dated sites with developed historical context, the collections represent tremendous research potential.

The first and larger collection consists of materials systematically excavated in October/November 1989 and February/March 1991, during the construction of the Metro-Rail Red Line by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Unearthed from a sealed and unmixed deposit underneath Union Station, the collection conveys information on the daily life and activities of people from all walks of life and all classes of the Chinese community from the1880's to 1933.Valuable data on food and subsistence, medicinal preparations and health practices, household technology, recreation, art, ritual patterns of space usage, and interaction with the Anglo community can be garnered from the objects, and changes over time may also be traced stratigraphically.

The second collection consists of materials excavated in 1992 during the seismic upgrading by the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation of an old adobe structure that for about 25 years housed a Chinese laundry. These materials represent a valuable resource for reconstructing a narrower range of Chinese working class daily life in Santa Barbara from about the mid 1880s - 1905. The digitization of artifacts from these two sites was supported by a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation. http://www.usc.edu/arc/digarchives

El Clamor Publico

This archive is available through a partnership with The Huntington Library, who generously allowed USC to digitize their complete holdings of this newspaper. Billed as Los Angeles' "Periodica Independiente y Literacio," El Clamor Publico was the first Spanish-language newspaper in California after the American occupation. It was founded by the former Spanish editor of the Los Angeles Star, Francisco P. Ramirez, a 19-year old printer. Published weekly, 233 four-page issues were published between July 1855 and August 1859. The initially moderate paper evolved into an activist tabloid and espoused strong political views generally in support of the Mexicanos. While articles commonly dealt with American political ideology and practice, the newspaper's publication of poetry and literature make it an excellent source of cultural history. It was distributed as far north as San Francisco. For additional information see an account of the historic building in Los Angeles which housed the newspaper at Mexican Americans in California.

http://www.usc.edu/arc/digarchives

Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive

This collection of 222 photographs from the Hearst Collection of the Los Angeles Examiner in the USC Regional History Collection, documents the relocation of Japanese Americans in California during World War II. It provides a glimpse into the lives of Japanese immigrants and native-born Japanese Americans (a.k.a. Nisei) residing in California from 1921 to 1958, with primary emphasis on 1941-1946. Much of the coverage documents scenes of:

· The relocation process

· Life in camps at Manzanar, Santa Anita, Tanforan, and Tule Lake

· Post-war repatriation to Japan

· The original captions from the photographs, many of which were published in the Los Angeles Examiner, have been transcribed into the Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive to enhance subject-specific retrieval; the cultural references reflect the 1940's terminology.

USC's Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive was funded by a grant from the Library Services and Technology Act to the California Digital Library, administered by the California State Library, as part of an initiative to assemble a statewide Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (JARDA), available at: jarda.cdlib.org. JARDA includes access to more than 25 different collections from four (eventually nine) institutions. It features newly digitized photographs, documents, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, letters, oral histories, and inventories of archival collections. It will eventually bring together over 10,000 digital images and 20,000 pages of electronic transcriptions of documents and oral histories, showing daily life in the camps.

http://www.usc.edu/arc/digarchives

The Korean-American Digital Archive

Funded through a California State Library LSTA grant, the archive includes over 13,000 document images, over 1,900 photographs, and about 180 sound files relating to the "first wave" Korean-American community in the United States. The documents focus on the organization of resistance to Japanese rule over the immigrants' homeland of Korea as well as on family and social life of Korean-Americans in the period from 1903 to 1965.

The archive is accessible through the Digital Archive of the Archival Research Center (http://www.usc.edu/arc/digarchives), from the Korean Heritage Library Web site ( http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/arc/libraries/eastasian/korea/index.html) and the Korean Resources of the Council on East Asian Libraries Web sites.

Sea of Korea Maps Digital Archive

This archive consists of 172 original old maps, dating from 1606 to 1895, in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Latin, German and Russian. It was formed by digitizing the combination of two private collections. The David Lee Collection (of 132 maps) was assembled for the purpose of documenting the application of the term "Sea of Korea" (or similar terms) to identify the body of water between Japan and Korea. The Shannon McCune Collection consists of the maps gathered by the prominent professor of East Asian geography for use in his distinguished teaching and research career. Together, they help to illustrate how the West's image of East Asia evolved over the course of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. See http://www.usc.edu/arc/digarchives

WPA Maps Digital Archive

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted a land use survey from Dec. 18, 1933 to May 8, 1939 for the City of Los Angeles, Department of City Planning. It covered approximately 460 square miles within the boundary of the City of Los Angeles and resulted in a series of Land Use Survey Maps. There are 10 books containing a total of 345 hand-colored maps (averaging 35 maps per book). Each original map measures about 2 ft. x 3.5 ft.

The original WPA maps are available at the Huntington Library, which has permitted their digitization, resulting in the WPA Maps Digital Archive of 345 maps.

Books:

1: North Los Angeles District

2: Tujunga

3: San Fernando Valley from Canoga Park District to Van Nuys District

4: Van Nuys District to Garvanza District

5: Santa Monica Mountains from Girard to Van Nuys District

6: Hollywood District to Boyle Heights District

7: Topanga Canyon to Hollywood District

8: Downtown Los Angeles and Hyde Park to Watts District

9: Mar Vista District to Mines Field (Municipal Airport)

10: Shoestring Addition to San Pedro District

Each book includes:

· A title page with key, legend and list of symbols used;

· A composite index page of the entire city (which indicates on a city map which portion is included in a given book);

· An index, which indicates on a city section map, the specific coordinates and sheets of maps contained in a given book (book 4 and 7 of the Huntington copies are missing their indices).

Land uses tracked:

· 9 different types of farming (mixed, livestock, field crops, row crops, bush fruits, orchard, nursery, woodland, farming);

· Vacant;

· 16 residential classifications broadly grouped as: single family residential; multiple residential (2 to 4 families); unlimited multiple residential (i.e. hotels, boarding houses, chicken or rabbit ranches, etc.);

· Institutional;

· Commercial (31 classifications: i.e. undertakers, theaters, restaurants, etc.);

· Industry, utilities, recreational, agricultural, open uses, problem uses, combined uses, electric railway, steam railway;

· Manufacturing (30 classifications: i.e. cannery, oil well supply, ice manufacturing, motion picture studio, etc.);

· Height of buildings in stories.

http://www.usc.edu/arc/digarchives

InscriptiFact

A data and image base system of ancient inscriptions and material culture archives from the Near Eastern and the Mediterranean World. The initial participants include West Semitic Research (WSR), the University of Southern California, and the University of Illinois, leaders in the application of photographic and computer imaging techniques to capture and analyze visual data of ancient texts. The image data include the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Canaanite texts from the biblical period and earlier, Mesopotamian documents and medieval Jewish manuscripts as well as the oldest biblical text currently extant and the oldest complete Hebrew bible in the world. These materials are scattered worldwide and therefore cannot usually be viewed together for detailed comparison and study. InscriptiFact brings these scattered materials together virtually. The archive now contains about 100,000 high-resolution images and is growing. The InscriptiFact Internet Database Prototype became available online with a test set of 840 images in May 2003. An additional 5000 images will be brought online in fall, 2003.The InscriptiFact application is based on the Java programming language and Oracle’s database management system. InscriptiFact offers the capacity to view cataloging for both the ancient texts and for the photographs representing those texts. Among InscriptiFact's features is a spatial search engine that facilitates user definition of an area on a small-scale reference image of an ancient text followed by the retrieval of all photographs that include the defined area. InscriptiFact also includes an image viewer that enables side-by-side comparisons with high-resolution pan and zoom capabilities.
http://www.inscriptifact.com/
http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/

LA As Subject Database

The L.A. as Subject database is an on-line directory of less visible archives and collections that preserve historical materials related to the Los Angeles region. The directory provides a cross-section of the varied cultural materials held by local institutions and community groups, large and small. It is intended not only to provide a key to specific archives and collections, but also to serve as a map for locating people, places, and the contributions of individuals and communities to the region's diverse and unique cultural heritage. Originally created by the Getty Research Institute, the database has been enhanced and supported by USC since 2001 and is available via the web at: www.usc.edu/arc/lasubject. The web interface to the database offers full text searching as well retrieval by institution, material types, languages, dates, and sectors of the population represented in the collection. An online form is also available for organizations that would like to list their collection in the database. Currently the database lists almost 200 organizations.

The Los Angeles Comprehensive Bibliographic Database (LACBD)

Integrates two major print bibliographies on the history of Los Angeles as a basis for a digitally published new authoritative resource that can be expanded and continuously updated.

LACBD Phase I publishes in one comprehensive electronic edition, Los Angeles and its Environs in the Twentieth Century: A Bibliography of a Metropolis, compiled under the auspices of the Los Angeles Metropolitan History Project; foreword by Mrs. Fletcher Bowron; edited with an introduction by Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1973 and Los Angeles and its Environs in the Twentieth Century: A Bibliography of a Metropolis: 1970-1990, with a directory of resources in Los Angeles County, compiled and edited by Hynda L. Rudd; foreword by Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. Los Angeles : Los Angeles City Historical Society, 1996.

LACBD will be expanded to include new domains, increase geographic and time coverage and will be updated to include new research on Los Angeles County and its environs. The LACBD Thesaurus Edition 1.5 synthesizes the print subject indexes and is supplemented by other vocabularies including ERIC, LCSH, and UNESCO according to NISO guidelines. The thesaurus represents a unique knowledge domain for Los Angeles and was copyrighted in June 2002.It will continue to develop as new research is added to LACBD.

http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/arc/lacbd/-

B. Services

Services may include user-profiling services, online reference services, services supporting interlibrary loan or the use of electronic reserves. Details below.

Ask-A Librarian Service

In addition to telephone and walk-in-appointment services, reference service is also available via Email using a Web form or via an online chat session using OCLC’s Questionpoint. This service is presently available only to current students, faculty and staff of USC. Chat is available during certain posted hours. Email response time is promised in most cases to be within 24 hours (Monday-Friday).

http://www.usc.edu/isd/locations/dml/research_services/rs_ask_a_librarian.html

LEAP (Library Expedited Acquisitions Program)

LEAP, allows current students, staff and faculty to place recommendations and have the library purchase and make the material available for use within seven calendar days. If a user asks for an item that is available in the U.S. and it fits the library's collection policies, LEAP will try to obtain it quickly. Using the USC bookstore, e-mail, publisher websites, and Internet book services such as Amazon and Bibliofind, the library is able to deliver purchased items in a very short period of time. Titles published outside the U.S, or which are out of stock or out of print, may take longer, but they will be tracked, receive immediate processing and be made available to the users as soon as possible.

http://www.usc.edu/isd/locations/dml/leap/

Electronic Reserves

Electronic Reserves are now integrated into USC’s library catalog, using the reserve module of SIRSI to display both print and electronic reserves. When a course list is retrieved by professor or course number, records for all print and electronic reserve materials for the class will be displayed together. Brief records have been created for each e-reserve item (i.e., article, book chapter) and the URL to retrieve the content appears in the 856 field, just as it does for other e-resources. To abide by copyright conventions, access is restricted, so after clicking on the URL a student must enter his/her USC user name and password to display the document. Once the student is authenticated the document will be displayed. Most of the URLs currently retrieve PDF files of materials scanned in-house, so Acrobat Reader is required to view the document. USC has recently joined Crossref and in the future DOIs will be created that will lead directly to articles in USC's e resources, external websites, or electronic files in other formats. http://library.usc.edu

C. Systems

Collection Information System (CIS): This multi-year project, managed by the Digital Information Management group within USC’s Information Services Division that began in 2001 continues. The CIS will be the infrastructure that houses USC’s Digital Archives. A rigorous RFP process was conducted in the summer of 2002, and Documentum was selected as the vendor for the system. In spring of 2003, project participants began working with consultants from Documentum on the design of the data repository and contributor interface.

Documentum uses Oracle as its database. The contributor/cataloger screens are a Web-based client that employs JSP and JDK. The repository is designed on a common set of data elements - Qualified Dublin Core - that will be used by all collections in the system to enable integrated searching across all collections with the ability to supplement the descriptions of each collections according to other standards (EAD, VRA,) needed by each collection manager. This architecture will maximize the use of standards while maintaining the flexibility needed in managing and delivering diverse materials types.

The data repository and initial contributor interface are being tested. Programming of the public interface is in process for release in Summer 2004. Further development of the contributor interface will begin in Spring 2004, also for release in Summer 2004. Migration of the current Digital Archive collections is also in process and scheduled for release in Summer 2004.

Please contact Barbara Shepard, Project Sponsor, <bshepard@usc.edu>, 213-821-2898, Deborah Holmes-Wong, Project Manager <dhwong@usc.edu >213-740-2867 or Wayne Shoaf, <shoaf@usc.edu> Metadata Specialist 213-740-4090 for further information.

Geospatial/Temporal Interface: USC Digital Information Management group is working with the GIS Lab at USC to integrate Geo-spatial search capabilities with Documentum software. A key component of this work is the development of a gazetteer that facilitates the look-up of geographic coordinates by tying place names to them. Since most of the content in USC’s Digital Archives has a place name associated with it, but not the geographic coordinates for that place, the gazetteer can be used to facilitate a map-based search of the archives by acting as an “index” that matches place names to geographic coordinates. The GIS Lab has geocoded over 3,000 place names associated with Los Angeles County as part of work on the gazetteer.

Design work with Documentum is scheduled for FY 2005. The GIS software will be ESRI’s ArcIMS and ArcSDE.

For more information, please contact: John Wilson, Project Sponsor, <jpwilson@usc.edu> 213-740-1908 or Deborah Holmes-Wong, Project Manager, <dhwong@usc.edu> 213-740-2867.

II. Projects and programs

A. Projects

Projects in progress 2003:

Shoah Foundation Collaborative Project

Through a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation, USC is participating in a pilot project with Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, Rice University and Yale University. For the first time, the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation is sharing its Holocaust survivor testimonies archive as a teaching and research tool, making it available to scholars, researchers and students at the three institutions. Each survivor testimony is associated meta-data that shed further light on the Holocaust experience and is an untapped source for research. Multiple, pre-defined search parameters allow users to approach data from various points of reference. The Testimony Catalogue, another Shoah Visual History Foundation initiative, is available for Boolean searches. http://isd.usc.edu/~timstant/VHF/kiosk.html

Scholars Portal

The goal of the Scholars Portal Project, a joint ARL project, is to improve the quality of information students and faculty find on the Web by creating a web-based search portal that provides integrated access to high quality research materials available from the Internet either free of charge or by subscription and from local research collections. The software has been selected, and ARL has signed a contract with Fretwell Downing International to develop this portal. A white paper by Jerry Campbell is available at: www.arl.org/newsltr/211/portal.html; additional information about the project concept is available at: www.arl.org/access/scholarsportal/

USC is one of seven pilot implementers; the others are Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Dartmouth College (another DLF member), Iowa State University, UC San Diego and the University of Utah. A project managers group was created in January 2003 for purposes of communication and sharing of development activity information. Pilot systems are currently available at the University of Arizona and Iowa State University; all other institutions are slated for live systems by the end of 2003.

The USC pilot to be implemented in FY03 will target undergraduate students. Planning for the project, including identifying goals, objectives, and measures began in fall of 2001 by USC’s Digital Information Management group within the Information Services Division and is now being developed by a newly constituted Scholars Portal Project Team.

A key component of the USC pilot project will be assessment. Questions that are being explored include: do students and faculty find the Scholars Portal as easy to use as Internet search engines such as Google or Yahoo: are they using the portal to do research; is the quality of materials cited in students’ research papers higher than those without use of he portal; is the overall quality of papers higher; what is the total cost of ownership of the system; and how scalable is the system and how well does it interoperate with existing systems? USC will begin the evaluation study in spring 2003.

For more information contact: Jerry Campbell, Dean University Libraries, Project Sponsor, <jerryc@usc.edu>, 213-740-7317; Deborah Holmes-Wong, <dhwong@usc.edu> 213-740-2867 or Marianne Afifi, <afifi@usc.edu>, 213-740-8817, Project Co-Managers.

B. PROGRAMS

III. Specific Digital Library Challenges

Collection Development

Encouraged by the strategic plan (see IV) and one of its strategic pathways to improve seamless access to user-driven collections, USC’s Resources & Services department has recently realigned its collection development efforts and created interdisciplinary teams in broad subject areas such as Arts& Humanities, Social Sciences. The challenges in the digital library arena are to integrate existing and potential digital library collections into these new broad areas and find a way of incorporating their consideration into the more traditional processes of collecting non-digital resources.

Vendor Relations

Vendor Relations continue to be a challenge both in system development and in areas of electronic resource management. While many vendors listen to their customers and work proactively to incorporate new and customizable technologies, many do not. The effort required to manage these less than satisfactory relationships is often considerable and costly.

Rights Management

Many of USC’s digital collections are based on materials that we do not own. Rather we partner with other organizations to digitize their materials and make them available via the Digital Archive. Each partner organization has different requirements and we negotiate different contracts for different organizations. This process is resource intensive, since legal and copyright issues, which inherently are ambiguous, must be addressed. We are interested in developing more general licenses that can apply broadly and assign specific rights and responsibilities to all parties involved.

IV. Digital library publications, policies, working papers, and other documents

Strategic Plan

Approximately three years ago, USC’s Information Services Division embarked on a strategic planning process for library and information technology services. The process has been instructional and informative and resulted in the development of six information pathways to guide development of library and information technology services for greatest impact at USC.” Thus, all Digital Library initiatives at USC will be in support of the strategic plan. See http://www.usc.edu/isd/strategicplan

Presentations

Deborah Holmes-Wong, “USC: Managing Library Assets With Documentum.” Momentum 2003 [Documentum Users Conference] November 15, 2003, New Orleans, Louisiana.