4th Annual Upper Midwest CONTENTdm User Group Meeting: November 14-15, 2011
Over 50 CONTENTdm users participated in the 4th Annual Upper Midwest CONTENTdm User Group meeting at the University of Minnesota
Continuing Education and Conference Center, St. Paul, MN.
The meeting was sponsored by Minitex, OCLC, and Backstage Library Works.
There are over 50 institutions in the region (Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wisconsin) currently using CONTENTdm to build
their digital collections. The meeting provided the opportunity for networking and sharing of CONTENTdm best practices among colleagues
as well as a CONTENTdm product update from OCLC. Below are links to the presentations from each session.
Visit any of the resources listed below to receive announcements about the 2012 Upper Midwest CONTENTdm User Group Meeting.
Meeting Agenda
Monday, November 14
8:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Preconference: Project Client Tips and Tricks
You'll hear from a variety of presenters on topics such as replacing image thumbnails; working with tab delmited text files and
using the Compound Object Wizard; sharing a single project across multiple Project Client installations; editing existing
collection items in the Project Client; branding, banding, and watermarking, deciphering error messages (e.g. "Object field is blank," etc.); and a segment
called "don't make this mistake," where you will learn from users who have made critical mistakes and lost data or had to redo actions.
—Wayne Torborg, The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Saint John's University; Brooke Roegge, Minnesota Department of Employment
and Economic Development; Josh Hickman, Beloit College; Greta Bahnemann, University of Minnesota
• View
Brooke Roegge's presentation handout
(PDF; 2.5 MB)
• View
Josh Hickman's presentation online
• View
Greta Bahnemann's presentation handout
(PDF; 141 KB)
1:00 PM – 1:20 PM
Registration
1:20 PM – 1:30 PM
Welcome
1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
(concurrent sessions)
Creating a botanical collection with historical significance in CONTENTdm
When is a flower a cultural artifact? When it was collected by a historical figure and preserved in a herbarium. Learn
about the difficulties in digitizing botanical specimens over half a century old. Then find out about the challenges
of creating metadata within CONTENTdm that satisfies both botanical researchers and historians, as well as the unique
challenges of creating standard place names for botanical collection sites.
—Danielle De Jager-Loftus, University of South Dakota; Kathleen McElhinney, University of South Dakota
• View
Danielle De Jager-Loftus and Kathleen McElhinney's presentation online
Collaboration with CONTENTdm: Building Local History Collections
The statewide digitization program Wisconsin Heritage Online partners with the Milwaukee Public Library to help historical
societies, public libraries and academic libraries build digital collections of Wisconsin history materials. MPL hosts these
collections on its CONTENTdm server and WHO trains Content Providers in the use of the CONTENTdm Project Client. WHO Outreach
Specialist Emily Pfotenhauer will describe how she helps library staff and local history volunteers create their first digital
collections and will share examples of recent projects from across the state. MPL Digital Projects Librarian Rose Fortier will
discuss the project support and customizations MPL provides for hosted collections.
—Emily Pfotenhauer, Outreach Specialist, Wisconsin Heritage Online; Rose Fortier, Milwaukee Public Library
• View
Emily Pfotenhauer and Rose Fortier's presentation handout
(PDF; 2.8 MB)
2:30 PM – 2:45 PM
Break
2:45 PM – 3:55 PM
(concurrent sessions)
Using CONTENTdm as an Institutional Repository
This session will examine various elements of planning, developing, and implementing an institutional repository using CONTENTdm.
Panelists will discuss their experiences working with faculty, students, and administrators to not only get buy-in for the project, but
also the fundamentals of accepting and uploading items into the repository. Following short presentations by each of the speakers, an
open discussion will allow attendees to dialogue about their experiences and ask questions of the panelists.
—Carol Eyler and Nat Wilson, Carleton College; Jeff Jensen, Gustavus Adolphus College; Lisa Sjoberg, Concordia College Moorhead
• View
the institutional repository panel's presentation handout
(PDF; 4.4 MB)
Minnesota Digital Library's Upgrade to CONTENTdm 6.0
This session will focus on the practical aspects of the upgrade to CONTENTdm 6.0/6.1 by the Minnesota Digital
Library's image database “Minnesota Reflections” (note: this is an OCLC hosted collection – and our perspective will
reflect this type of upgrade). The upgrade will be discussed from four perspectives: project management overview; website
configuration and customization; metadata enhancements to enable faceted searching and browsing; training and promotion for end users.
—Jason Roy, Minnesota Reflections Project Manager, University of Minnesota; Scott Hreha, Web Services Coordinator, Minitex; Greta
Bahnemann, Metadata Coordinator, University of Minnesota; Marian Rengel, Outreach Coordinator, MN Digital Library
• View
the Minnesota Digital Library presentation handout
(PDF; 1.28 MB)
4:05 PM – 5:00 PM
(concurrent sessions)
Tales of a College Yearbook: the Planning and Execution of a Yearbook Project
Learn about yearbook projects as two small, liberal arts colleges share their experiences on getting yearbooks online. Topics
covered are: Gaining access to yearbooks for scanning purposes; search issues with compound objects and PDF formats; Metadata
choices; workflow issues for yearbook projects.
—Gae Kelly, Concordia University Wisconsin; Jill Strass, St. Olaf College
• View
Gae Kelly and Jill Strass's presentation handout
(PDF; 811 KB)
Working with PDFs in CONTENTdm
This presentation is a practical demonstration of how to create collections of text-searchable PDF documents. Ms. Theroux will
discuss using proper collections configurations to make the best use of the PDF format. She will show how to configure the
settings, create a text-searchable PDF and import it into the project client. Ms. McElhinney will then show how to incorporate
OCR into the scanning process to create searchable PDFs directly in CONTENTdm. Also discussed is how to edit OCR text for more
accurate searching. The configurations shown will enable the user to search across the entire collection or within a specific document.
—Shari Theroux, Northern State University; Kathleen McElhinney, University of South Dakota
• View
Shari Theroux and Kathleen McElhinney's presentation handout
(PDF; 860 KB)
• View
Shari Theroux's presentation handout
(PDF; 1.87 MB)
Tuesday, November 15
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Registration and breakfast with your colleagues
Is there a CONTENTdm topic you would like to learn more about? Join your colleagues for breakfast and informal discussion.
9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
CONTENTdm Update
Hear the latest about the new CONTENTdm 6.1 features and have a chance to ask your burning question and interact
with a member of the CONTENTdm Digital Collection Services team.
—Geri Bunker Ingram, OCLC Digital Collection Services
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
(concurrent sessions)
Lessons Learned Upgrading and Migrating to CONTENTdm 6 on a Virtual Server
Find out about obstacles that were overcome by the University of Minnesota, Morris campus as they upgraded from CONTENTdm
version 4 to 5 and then migrated to CONTENTdm 6 for Linux on a VMware Server. Besides learning some do's and don'ts when
upgrading to version 6, this presentation will also explore some issues encountered with CONTENTdm 6.0 including High-resolution
image linking and public user interface inconsistencies.
—William Straub, University of Minnesota, Morris
• View
William Straub's presentation handout
(PDF; 2.4 MB)
CONTENTdm Open Forum and Q & A
Do you have a question about CONTENTdm functionality, but need to see the answer demonstrated? Bring your questions to this informal
session with OCLC staff.
—Geri Bunker Ingram, OCLC Digital Collection Services
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Lunch at the Continuing Education and Conference Center
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
(concurrent sessions)
The Trials and Tribulations of Two WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway Users
Josh Hickman will discuss Beloit College's use of the Digital Collection Gateway to upload metadata from images of over 2000
archaeological artifacts into WorldCat. During the last several years, staff members at Beloit College's library and Logan Museum
of Anthropology have worked to create a virtual catalog of museum holdings in CONTENTdm. The ease of uploading digital items to
WorldCat from CONTENTdm was one of the main motivating factors behind the selection of this platform as a home for the digital collection.
Although the Digital Collection Gateway is fairly easy to use with regard to smaller archival or library collections, Beloit staff
encountered a number of challenges when uploading a large collection of items with metadata that does not easily map to MARC. Josh
will explain some of the problems that arose during the course of this project and the solutions that were employed to resolve them.
Over the past few years Sara Ring has worked on a project for the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) to add the metadata from more than
125 different institutions that contribute content to Minnesota Reflections to OCLC WorldCat, using OCLC's WorldCat Digital Collection
Gateway tool. From a consortial perspective, she will discuss their metadata configuration, how she maps the Dublin Core (dcterms) to
WorldCat's MARC format, her efforts toward and issues with completely automating the project, and the impact on usage since adding the
records to WorldCat.
—Josh Hickman, Beloit College; Sara Ring, Minitex
• View
Sara Ring and Josh Hickman's presentation handout
(PDF; 2.46 MB)
Getting Started with Scanning Newspapers
Learn how 2 small, liberal arts colleges (Augsburg College, and St. Olaf College) are digitizing local papers from the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. Topics covered: funding for scanners; ATIZ large format scanner; and workflow issues one may encounter when
tackling a newspaper project.
—Bill Wittenbreer, Augsburg College; Jill Strass, St. Olaf College
• View
Bill Wittenbreer and Jill Strass's presentation handout
(PDF; 2.07 MB)
2:00 PM – 2:15 PM
Break
2:15 PM – 3:15 PM
(concurrent sessions)
Statistics on CONTENTdm: Using a Script to Gather Information on Usage
Learn how St. Olaf College uses a script based off the contents of our Apache Server log to collect
statistics. We crunched the numbers and found what 18 months of data told us about our collections.
—Shannon Peevey, St. Olaf College; Jill Strass, St. Olaf College
• View
Shannon Peevey and Jill Strass's presentation handout
(PDF; 1.38 MB)
Content, Competency, and Community: Learning to Manage Digital Collections Through the Lifecycle of Bethel's Student Newspaper Collection
Newspapers are a key resource for institutions who are seeking to provide a unique contribution to their community and to the cultural
record in the age of mass digitization projects like Google Books and the Internet Archive. The complexity of digitizing and providing
access to newspapers can be a daunting obstacle but also provides great rewards.
Bethel University’s Digital Library is two years old and the Student Newspaper Collection is the most mature and complex collection to
date. This presentation will discuss the process of developing this collection from the beginning to the present and the technical,
financial, and personal decisions that were made. The collection has succeeded in demonstrating the strategic value of digital
collections, raised awareness of the library’s involvement in them, and led to more opportunities for collaboration with other
members of the University community.
—Kent Gerber, Bethel University
• View
Kent Gerber's presentation handout online