1.
Introduction
This
report covers the third six-month period of the IMLS National
Leadership Grant #LL-90160 awarded to the University of
Miami for the Digitization & Preservation of Selected
Afro-Cuban & Cuban Exile Collections.
2. Personnel
The project
experienced a number of personnel changes during this period.
Most significant was the departure of the Principal Investigator,
Diana Gonzalez Kirby, in March 2001. This opening, however,
did allow us the opportunity to re-examine the role of
this position in the project to determine the best set
of skills needed in a replacement for Ms. Kirby.
It was
decided that a librarian with archival experience who could
focus on selecting material to be digitized would be more
suitable than hiring an individual without this specialized
knowledge, as was the case with Ms. Kirby. Also, it was
decided that this new individual should be placed at the
Project Director position. The Principal Investigator for
the project was changed from Diana Kirby to Jeff Barry,
retroactive to March 1, 2001.
Also
in March, the current Project Director was changed from
Esperanza de Varona to Jeff Barry on an interim basis.
It is expected that the successor to Ms. Kirby will assume
the Project Director's role.
A candidate
holding an MLS with an concentration in archival management
and possessing knowledge of Cuban history was hired effective
May 1 to fill the opening left by Ms. Kirby. A letter advising
IMLS of this hire is being sent separately.
Among
the non-professional staff, project research assistant
Marta Merlo resigned to pursue further graduate work. Ms.
Merlo's contribution to the project focused on digitizing
and preparing metadata. Her vacated position is currently
open.
3. Content
An announcement
about the availability of selected materials from the Lydia
Cabrera Collection is expected this summer. Lydia Cabrera
was an ethnographer who extensively studied Afro-Cuban
folklore, particularly Santeria. An EAD-based finding aid
is in development for the Lydia Cabrera Collection.
4.
Technology
The initial
plans of this project was to utilize the Electronic
Museum Management (EMu) system from KE Software to
index the metadata in a database and to provide delivery
of the digital images over the Web. A significant amount
of time during the first year of the project and the early
part of this reporting period was spent on acquiring this
software and the hardware to support operations of this
system. The hardware included a Sun Enterprise 250 server,
an external 90 GB RAID storage subsystem, and a magneto-optical
jukebox.
We experienced
significant difficulties with the RAID storage subsystem.
The configuration of the RAID system caused the server
to crash when the RAID subsystem malfunctioned. After isolating
and resolving this problem, it was determined that two
of the five RAID disk drives were defective. These drives
were returned to the vendor - Rising Edge Technologies,
Inc. - and replaced with new drives. However, when these
drives were installed, the RAID subsystem continued to
malfunction. After extensive troubleshooting and assistance
from technicians at Rising Edge, it was determined that
the RAID subsystem had experienced a "catastrophic failure." Rising
Edge requested that we return the subsystem for repair.
In hindsight, we should have requested the vendor to provide
us with a replacement subsystem as it took the vendor several
months to repair the RAID subsystem and return it to Miami.
Once we realized that the subsystem was going to take longer
to repair than expected, we immediately acquired four 36
GB internal disk drives for the Sun server so that we could
continue loading digital images onto the server. The vendor
did eventually return the RAID subsystem, though we again
immediately experienced problems with the device. Indeed,
this particular RAID subsystem has proven so unreliable
that we have decided not to utilize that specific device
on any server that is critical to this project. Fortunately,
the internal disk drives of the server now provide more
than adequate disk space for the scope of this project.
Based on our experiences, we decided no longer to continue
business with Rising Edge Technologies, Inc.
In order
to get the project "back on track" due to these hardware
delays, an assessment of the technological architecture
originally designed for the project determined that to
utilize the complex KE EMu object-oriented database management
system would shift the focus of the project away from the
digitization of Afro-Cuban materials and towards a pilot
project demonstrating the capabilities of the KE EMu system.
It was decided that the focus of the project must be kept
on the content of the Cuban Heritage Collection rather
than on proving the worthiness of proprietary software.
It also was determined that a museum collection management
system was not the appropriate tool to manage the metadata
and Web delivery of archival manuscripts. Additionally,
KE EMu did not fit into the newly developed library technology
strategy. Based on these factors, it was decided that the
project would not pursue the utilization of this specific
software any further.
The revised
strategy for this project centers around developing finding
aids based on the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) standard
and utilizing the Digital Archival Object (DAO) element
of that standard to display the digital images as part
of the finding aid. Locally created Perl scripts have been
developed to facilitate the display of the images via the
Web from a finding aid. However, we are actively monitoring
developments with other EAD implementations and closely
examining the finding aid middleware offered through the
Digital Library Extension Service of the University of
Michigan.
5.
Objectives for Next Phase
- Announce
the Web availability of the first phase of the Lydia
Cabrera Collection.
- Complete
a revision of the project timeline in order to specify
milestones for the remainder of project.
- Place
detailed documentation of workflow and adopted technical
standards onto project Web site.
- Complete
digitization of the 2nd phase of the Lydia Cabrera Collection.
Principal
Investigator: Jeff Barry
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