Missouri Digital Heritage: Missouri’s State Wide Digital Portal
(www.missouridigitalheritage.com)
Haiying Qian
Missouri State Library
CALA MW 2010 Annual Conference, May 22, 2010
Outline of Topics• Birth of Missouri Digital Heritage
(MDH)• Highlights of digital collections• Outreach• Collaboration • Usability study• Future plans
The Birth of MDH• Formerly Virtually Missouri • MDH was established by the Missouri Office
of Secretary of State (SOS) in July 2007• Large format scanners purchased• Collections transition to CONTENTdm server• Officially Rolled out April 2008
MDH Structure and Collections• Formerly Virtually Missouri linked collections • About 80 digital collections on CONTENTdm
server• Missouri State Archive’s SQL databases• Exhibits and lesson plans • Federated search
Outreach
Outreach letter / Letter of Intent sent
Digital Collection Coordinator site visit / appraisal
LSTA Digital Imaging Grant / In house digitization
State Librarian and State Archivist evaluate and
approve collections to be added to MDH
In house digitization at Digital Imaging Center
Collaboration Across State Regional digitization collaboration Projects
Ozark Region Kansas City region St. Louis Region Southeast Missouri
Example: Community and Conflict Project http://www.ozarkscivilwar.org/
Collaboration Across State Agencies
Signature project of MO Secretary of State
Administrated by Missouri State Library and Missouri State Archive
Partner with State Historical Society of Missouri
Challenges Different Culture and Concepts
library vs. archive practices
access vs. preservation, archival master
Policies and Proceduresdifferent chain of command
workflow
Project ManagementMDH Management Team
MDH Working Group
Digital Imaging Center
Challenges Technical Difficulties mesh different data sets, SQL database & CONTENTdm
granularity vs. lowest common denominator Political Entities everything has to go through communication dept. low priority
IT Support firewall, large project ftp timeout staff turnover compete with other projects on IT support
Usability Study Contracted with Information Experience Lab
at MU School of Information & Learning technologies
Usability Study from Jan. – June 2010 web statistics review
comparative review focus group studies
Comparative Review5 digital project comparables
Georgia
Maine
Arizona
Denver Public Library
South Carolina Digital
• first impression• design/layout• functionality• special features• content
Usability Study- Focus group studies
Genealogist (done)
Researcher/ Librarians (done)
Teachers/Students (in process)
First Time Users (drafting questions)
Usability StudyWrap Up in June, 2010
Preliminary results from comparative review and genealogist focus group
great content, but categorization confusing
navigation is cumbersome, not intuitive federated search not effective, have to use Google
exhibits confusing
huge banner
lack of dynamics
Future PlansCivil War Sesquicentennial promotion
Civil War Portal on MDH
Federated search improvement
Web redesign based on usability study
EAD Finding Aids
Multi-site server and metadata harvest?
Questions