Plentiful Harvest at University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Making Five Large Databases Accessible Through Encore

By Innovative Interfaces, Inc.

There are 45 million acres of farmland in Nebraska, but some of the most interesting “harvesting” is taking place in a series of structures on the campus of University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). Here industrious library staff are successfully harvesting a series of content databases into Encore, which include the fertile literary soil of the American authors Walt Whitman and Willa Cather. They will also add content from UNL’s institutional repository, as well as their Image and Multi-Media Databases, expanding Encore’s power to make local digital assets more discoverable.

The result of Encore harvesting will be the addition of one community and four library databases into its discovery environment. “We are bringing these five collections into the thick of things by presenting them in Encore’s catalog search-results,” says Dee Ann Allison, Professor and Director of Computing Operations and Research Services. “It is fairly rich when you consider we are also harvesting a range of items—Encoded Archival Description (EAD), TEI, and images—each with their own strengths.” Library Content

Step into the University Archives—or search Encore!—and you will find photographs, letters, and ephemera belonging to Willa Cather, an international author with Nebraska connections, who earned fame as an author focusing on frontier life. Records in the Cather collection are presented in EAD format, and serve as finding aids for the various photographs, letters, and ephemera the UNL Libraries have collected. UNL’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) hosts additional Willa Cather content in book form, cataloged in the TEI format that lends itself to text documents.

The EAD records originate from the University Archives and contain vital information about the collection, its scope, and a list of what is in each archival box. “The essential elements of EAD metadata are harvested into Encore, which links directly to complete finding aids,” says Mary Ellen Ducey, University Archivist. “Harvesting new collections will provide one-stop shopping through Encore.” Before harvesting began, UNL had about 174 EAD records in its WebPAC, providing access to collections on American military history from the World Wars, and 19th-Century railroad and agriculture materials. The harvesting project will bring even more EAD results into Encore.

UNL dedicates over 7,000 linear feet to the archives, which include major photograph collections that staff are continually working to digitize. Nebraska state history is prominent because early faculty at UNL who studied the state’s landscape and natural history also figure prominently in the collection.

The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) components come from the CDRH, whose mission is to support faculty research and digitize original materials. There is also a research and development component to their activities.

“The digitized texts we have, and the metadata that describes them, add valuable information to the research process and aid discovery on the web,” says Allison. “It’s clear that we’re providing a real service when you consider that we had nearly half a million visitors to the Whitman Archive, and over 100,000 to the Cather and Lewis & Clark portals, in the 2007 academic year.”

Community Content

In addition to library staff, the UNL community adds content to its digital library by directly contributing image files, most of which support the University’s art programs. At present, the image database contains 174,000 objects across 74 unique collections. This includes finds such as images from the Larson Tractor Test Museum, which chronicles a local laboratory that has built and tested tractors since 1917. “We’re proud to say that a tractor historian examined 750 records we created and concluded that they are 99.9% accurate,” says Ducey.

“We have advertised our digital services to the community,” says Allison. “As a result, people see us as playing a pivotal role in organizing and presenting access to information. We provide the server space for adding image files. We work with our IT department and those in the University at-large to facilitate creation of new digital content and provide expertise.”

In the library, the process of adding new files starts with students who scan and upload images and create metadata. The University Archives often dovetail student interests with a digitization project, such as a student interested in World War I that worked on converting images from the French World War I photographer Cliché Patras.

Expanding Discovery with Encore

Although finding aids are not yet harvested into Encore, the Encore beta harvesting-project has already brought archival image records into Encore. Ducey says: “We were giving a tour of the library to UNL alumni. We showed them an Encore search and they were impressed. We will be able to say to our visitors that you can look in once place, and then click on the manuscript facet to get to archival materials. You can tell them that it’s all right there on the page. It’s a way of showing them how the 21st-Century student expects to get access to things from the web.”

Allison continues: “As we complete the process with Innovative, we hope to present facets by format and the collection source,” says Allison. “Want a picture that reflects your search, it’s right there. We’re really using the variety and depth of the collection as a strength that makes searching more rewarding for the millions of times people visit our Library’s web pages each year.”

Digitization is an ongoing process; they are always adding and will harvest new materials into Encore as time goes on. Says Allison: “It is very exciting to be building a new tool with Innovative that leverages the catalog. Encore is a different kind of beast and it is fascinating to see how things fold together.”

The harvesting project only adds to the breadth of an Encore search. “The harvesting project will allow us to have a single search interface to find anything we have and present a contemporary internet search experience,” says Allison. “Students do not understand the weaknesses of Google searching, but they can use something similar to get the rich data we want to advertise. Our in-depth searching portals will remain and are great resources. We know that people are finding our local digital collections now in our portals, but Encore will bring things to the top in a general search. We hope Encore will be a tool for the entire state and not just the UNL community.”