I was welcomed to attend this month’s library faculty meeting as I did last month. These meetings are, in some ways, among the most valuable experiences of my internship. The variety of concerns and issues dealt with in the meetings opens my eyes to what my work-life will be when I take up a position as an academic librarian.

The meetings topics ranged from significant changes in how Human Resources will be organized to issues about storage, collections management, library furniture, personnel evaluations, and budget matters.

I was particularly drawn to the discussion about evaluations and the concerns that each librarian’s contract be evaluated to make sure it reflected the actual percentages of service, scholarship, and teaching that each librarian performs–and that these percentages are adjusted regularly as duties and functions change.

We learned about new efforts to better track expenses incurred by faculty for conferences, travel, etc. that will be implemented in part to control those expenses, but also to ensure sustainability of those funds: better documentation will both control the expenses, but also provide clear evidence of the needs of library faculty so that support will continue.

Many of the items that will be used for the online exhibition have never been scanned before. In addition, several items are written letters and documents that have never been transcribed–or whose transcriptions have been done in a fairly informal manner.

Early on, I checked with both my mentor and Andrew, the scholarly communication assistant to ascertain the scanning protocols/standards for the library. These standards follow best practices for digital collections and we have made sure to adhere to these standards for the items digitized for the exhibition. The challenge this week is learning that a few items that we have digitized images for have only been scanned as JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) files, rather than TIFF (Tag Image File Format) files.

This is not ideal, but lacking the original item to re-scan, we will have to make do with the JPEGs. Fortunately, this involves perhaps two items. Otherwise, we can be assured that the exhibition items will adhere to industry standards and will be usable in most other applications in future.

This is an important goal for the exhibition: not only do we want to create an engaging, interesting exhibition for the general public and Butler community, but we hope to promote and support scholarly uses of the materials.

This goal demands that the transcriptions of written sources meet basic scholarly standards for transcription, but also meets ADA compliance for access. My mentor and I discussed the level of scholarly apparatus that would be reflected in the transcriptions–we wanted to strike a balance between the demands of scholarship and ease of use for the general viewer. Thus, the transcriptions will scrupulously reflect exact words use, spelling, and format of the original document, but have none of the more complex notations and annotations common in scholarly editions.

The exhibition continues to dominate discussion and activity. This week we have had to deal with the challenge of what the software will let you do when building an exhibition. Omeka, at the moment, is not letting us get the “look” of the old time photo that we want. We have to also figure out a good timeline function within Omeka. Fortunately, I have the benefit of my husband’s expertise: he is a digital historian and he directed us to Timeline JS3 to embed a really usable, attractive timeline into the exhibition that won’t require too much work. This will allow a great deal of flexibility and we will be able to use virtually any type of media (images, video, music, etc.) within the timeline. Omeka’s ease of compatibility will make this timeline a great addition. Andrew was particularly excited to learn about this, he had never seen Timeline JS3.

As for the “look” we initially wanted, oval images that the viewer clicked on to take you to the profile of the individual, we have decided to re-work the splash page by creating a collage image in Photoshop that will be the banner, but provide individual images below that will be the links.

The compromise will give us the look we are after, along with accommodating the limitations imposed by the software. Of course, this could all change again if someone runs across a solution! The theme here seems to be flexibility and compromise in order to get a good, final product.

This week has started off with a discussion about Metadata. The metadata specialist for Irwin Library wandered in to ask about the items for our online exhibition. Many of the items that will be featured in the exhibition have never been digitized, catalogued, and, of course, not been provided with metadata.

The exhibition will feature several items for each individual, but we are digitizing more items that will become part of the exhibition archive (“collection” in Omeka). It has been useful for me to consider the level of metadata detail that will be applied, especially since these items will become part of the larger digital images archive of the university and open to use by scholars and visitors worldwide.

One aspect of this process that took me by surprise is that the decision to begin applying metadata to the exhibition items happened without an overall plan being put in place. This did not really cause any problems–the metadata had to happen no matter what–but since online exhibitions are a fairly new idea for the library, there is no set order of tasks in place for this process. That conversation has now begun.

One of the projects for this internship is the development of a Special Collections Blog for Irwin Library. In my conversations with my mentor, it became clear that Butler’s Special Collections contains numerous fascinating and significant items that very few people on Butler’s campus and the in the larger community know about.

We discussed the current social media program for Irwin Library and the purpose and goals for social media. I have read a great deal lately about the uses and impact of social media for academic libraries in the professional literature, as well as commentary by various academics in blogs such as this one.

The main goal for this blog is to raise awareness of the Special Collections at Butler University. The hope is that the blog will drive interest and use of the collections. The blog will be maintained by special collections staff, but guest posts will be solicited from various Butler faculty and potentially students who use the collections. Those who use the collections will have the opportunity to write posts discussing items in the collection that they have used in their research and teaching.

This approach will ensure that the blog gains a wider audience, is supported within the university, and relieves the special collections librarian and staff from the burden of writing each post–an important consideration in such a small shop that already has so many responsibilities.

One of the better examples of this approach may be found at Trinity College’s Watkinson Library in Hartford, Connecticut. The “Bibliophile’s Lair” combines images, text, and video to engage a wide audience.

This week I have spent several hours meeting with the Scholarly Communication Associate librarian, Andrew Welp, who is in charge of maintaining the library’s web site and assisting with and facilitating all aspects of scholarly communication endeavors at Irwin Library and Butler University.

Andrew supervises two student workers and together we have begun crafting our vision of the online exhibition for Indiana’s 200th. I began this process by asking questions about many of the technical aspects of the process. I wanted to know the software that would be used, where the exhibition would “live” (on a library-owned & maintained server or a web-based server), etc. I was particularly concerned with digital permanence.

Fortunately, Andrew shared all the same concerns and quickly assured me that we would use Omeka, that the project (and all others going forward) would live on a dedicated library server, and that his staff was up to the challenge of designing and implementing a well-organized, stylish exhibition.

I thought it was useful to bring several examples of successful, interesting, and engaging online exhibitions mounted by other libraries and scholarly organizations. I chose a variety of examples that contained elements of design and functionality that I hoped we could replicate. I also came to the process with an inspiration: an old class photo from the 1880s.

This class photo from the 1880s had been found at and rescued from a local garage sale by the wife of one of Butler’s Board of Directors. The photo represented the first class of Butler University in which an African American graduated. The African American woman depicted is the first African American to graduate from Butler. She highlights Butler’s long-standing commitment to diversity that has been at Butler’s core since its founding.

The organization of the photos and the sepia coloring became the pattern for the splash page of the exhibition–an homage to this class photo and a nod to Butler’s history. The university was chartered in 1850, just 34 years after Indiana became a state.

Andrew, his staff, and the special collections staff will continue to shape the exhibition as we go forward–we still need to figure out the main elements: exhibition, timeline, archive, etc.

This week began the drawn out process of managing the protection of special collections when the library we are housed in gets a new roof! The process began with a walk through by the facilities management people, along with the Dean of Libraries, the Special Collections librarian, and the representative of the construction company handling the new roofing project.

This walk through gave me insight into how the various parts of the library would be impacted, the major and minor concerns for the library as a whole, and the particular concerns for Special Collections. The construction professionals wanted to know about previous leaks, but also about what needed protection and how that protection needed to work within a working special collections and reading room.

Of course, protecting the collections from construction dust, dirt, and water heads the list of major concerns. But facilitating access to the collections required some thought, as well–creating access points that could be closed up so that staff could get down the aisles proved important! Realizing that plastic-draped shelves restricted air circulation, keeping warm air in place, also caused concern. Security procedures required a quick review to make sure that everyone knew how to handle construction personnel coming and going at different times.

The roofing project is welcome after years of leaks and provides the opportunity for Special Collections staff to consider taking advantage of the plastic draping to tackle a major cleaning project: vacuuming the ceiling and walls to remove dust build up–a necessary, but time-consuming task that cannot be completed very often.

This week I had the opportunity to help pick up the slack when my mentor went on vacation and another staff member ended up having some personal emergencies. Fortunately, I was issued a key and expanded my work hours slightly so that I could staff the reading room that would other wise have had to close early. The quiet of the summer term meant that I wasn’t thrown in over my head, but it did leave me time to reflect on the challenges of staffing in a small shop.

I kept in close contact with the various staff members working in near by offices and I am happy to say, they kept an eye on me! I made sure to provide daily updates to my mentor and the other staff via email and fortunately, I had plenty to do: moving forward on my projects.

The roofing project demanded that we continue to patrol the floor, making sure that our collections remained safe from dust, debris, and water–a challenge, since we had a couple of days of thunderstorms!

This week I have had the opportunity to establish contact with individuals both within and outside of Butler University for assistance in acquiring items needed for our online exhibition in celebration of Indiana’s 200th anniversary of statehood. I contacted the Bartholomew County Historical Society, the Butler Athletics Department, and representatives in a couple of other departments, for images and memorabilia associated with some of the individuals to be highlighted in the exhibition.

The responses have generally been positive, though not necessarily helpful in each case. This is to be expected as, in each instance, the people responding have other cares and concerns. Fortunately, most folks have, ultimately, been helpful–though these things always take more time than expected. It is an important lesson to learn: always give yourself plenty of time to complete your task!

With those entities outside of the university, we had to make sure all issues of copyright were clearly known and dealt with. Similarly, we had to be cognizant of issues relating to costs for the use of images. It is intriguing to see the willingness (and unwillingness) of different institutions to accommodate requests for image use–these costs can mount up and often decisions about which images to use will be decided based on use fees.