Minutes are in order starting with the most recent meeting first.

Website for collection : http://libraries.mit.edu/lynch

Archives finding aid: http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/research/collections/collections-mc/mc208.html

Flickr set:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/mit-libraries/sets/72157614966285159/

Archives final report on effort involved for their staff, decisions made, and evaluation. Archives Project Overview.

In production! Click here to go to the collection in DOME.

3.11.09 - Deleted Kepes Lynch from R:DSpaceImages

Update from Beverly 2.13.09

Mikki, Jolene, and Carl have been testing the ingest for the past several weeks.  Mikki will work on gathering her notes regarding the background of the decisions that were made for the full item record in Dome.  This would be a good reference for future projects.

Beverly and Mikki met on 2.09.09 to reconcile the images from R:Drive to the external hard drive that will be used for uploading.  There are two outstanding issues regarding maps. KL002172 & KL002173. They should be reshot by BPI.  BPI has agreed to do this at their shop and at the convenience of Archives' schedule.

The project will begin production into Dome the week of February 16th. Carl advised that we can make changes to the metadata after images are loaded into Dome since the collection is not too large.

The collection will be made publicly. Please test.

There is a subgroup working on uploading the images into flickr.  Notes from this meeting.

The next meeting is on Wednesday, March 4th.  We can review the Dome collection live, continue with the assessment, and discuss the announcement of the collection.

Update from Mikki on Tuesday 1.13.09

We have completed the transcription and review of the documents.  The PDFs are saved on the R drive: R:\DSpace Images\Kepes-Lynch\Letters+Papers\transcripts. The transcriptions can be matched to the "originals" by the KL number. The only difference in file name will be _tr following the number indicating a transcription.
 

Minutes Tuesday 1.06.09

Documents-
Mikki reported transcription is completed, one more week of review, she has half of the transcriptions converted to pdf.

Jolene's group will convert the images to derivatives and will also include the maps when converting derivatives.  RVC will use the external hard drive to save the derivatives and convert using Bridge. 

Document Services will correct the few pdfs that have pages out of order.

Dome Test View of the documents: http://dome-test.mit.edu/handle/1234567890/29563?show=full

Carl will ingest the images and documents from the external hard drive because it is too slow to ingest from the R Drive.

BPI will send another invoice for the additional 23 images.

Assessment:

Should we catalog before digitizing to limit the handling of items? What is the best process?  Prep for scanning, Scan, QC scans, catalog, or Catalog/prep for scanning, scan, QC scans.  This may depend on whether we are working with documents or images.

In the preparation for scanning KL the documents/images were named and had a label attached to them with the name, shipped, scanned, cataloged,  reviewed.

Should we use our naming convention again?  Carl has spent a lot of time matching the project number to the IRIS number in his crosswalk.  Is this necessary?

Update from Mikki on Monday 12.08.08

All 235 digital objects from the Archives are cataloged in IRIS. All that remains is to clean and add to some of the descriptions per a conversation I had with Liz last week. This will be done by the end of the week.
I've been working with Carl to map our data to dc fields in Dome. This is going well. I'll send you a copy once we've worked out the kinks.
The transcription review began last Monday.

Minutes Wednesday 11.19.08

Present: Liz Andrews, Jolene de Verges, Jennifer Friedman, Mikki Simon Macdonald, Tom Rosko, Beverly Turner, Ann Whiteside

Images update:

Jolene reported that there are 1375 images cataloged - this process is getting faster and expects the cataloging to finish by December 8th. Found roughly 20 images that need to be scanned.  Looking ahead RVC wants to export all of the data that the 5 catalogers have created and compare the data to try to be consistent.  They need to complete some quality control of the catalog records.

Text Documents update:

Mikki has catalogued 74 documents.  She reports that it takes about 20 minutes per record, some go faster.  She will have a better idea of completion date at the end of November.  Mikki assigned the last batch of transcription this week.  She anticipates that the transcription will be completed the 1st week of December.  The students will then need to review their work.  Not sure how long this process will take.

The group discussed ways to announce the project.  Some ideas include an IAP session and Brown bag seminar about the project and what we learned from it. Ann Whiteside will ask Larry Vale about how to announce the project. Updated to add response from Larry Vale:

Nov. 25th email from Larry Vale -

Hi Ann,

I am glad to hear about progress with the Lynch materials.   I suggest several possible ways to publicize their existence: 

1) an announcement on the DUSP website, with a link to some sample images; Ezra Glenn would handle that

2) a link to this from one of the DUSP monthly electronic updates we send to DUSP alums (or to all School alums--Scott Campbell could handle that);

3) a reference to this in the Kevin Lynch Award program that will be distributed at the Lynch Award event this spring (and we should also list new book acquisitions from the Lynch Fund in that program); John de Monchaux is chair of the Lynch jury this year and could be the contact for this; and

4) someone could be commissioned to write a brief "dispatch" about the collection for publication in the journal _Places_ (I am on the editorial board).

Ingest Meeting recap:

11/10/08 Liz Andrews, Jolene de Verges, Carl Jones, Mikki Simon Macdonald, Beverly Turner

Need to map from IRIS to Dublin Core initially using the item importer.  Explained to Carl that these items do not have an IRIS number but rather a KL number and that the digital file name is the KL number.  Carl will go ahead and export some of the images which are only tiff files.  The collection will be tested in Dome test:  test site under the collection title Perceptual Form of the City.  The group discussed saving the tiff files along with the pdfs of the text documents.  Concerned that the user will open the tiff and not the pdf so we discussed ways to hide the tiff images or save as an archival file zipped together available for download with click-thru button. It will be useful to get access to these tiff files because the pdfs of so low resolution and it will be easier to manage all of the files together.

Flickr idea:

Ann Whiteside presented an idea based on a session that she saw at the Digital Library Federation Forum.  This would be a good test case for open access, a way to test the idea of Flickr and social tagging. We do this as an experiment and model.  We would continue with ingesting into Dome.  Ann, Rob, Tom, Lisa Sweeney, and Beverly will meet on 11.19 & 12.2.08 to discuss how we could put this project into Flickr.

Began assessment of project:

Ideas/issues-

• Difficult to do this scope of project completely with regular staff
• Mikki has been completely covered with this project alone
• Tremendous amount of work involved writing the Rockafeller Center
• Ended up working with items several times - next project will only touch items once if possible - how do we plan that? 
• How long does it take to prep the photos for digitization? we felt like we were rushed by the vendor's schedule but there were unusual circumstances with this project working simultaneously with the Vail Balloon Project scanning.
• Maybe in the future we could do test work on each part of the work process to see how much time it takes in each step.
• Need to test metadata

10.29.08 update

850 images have been cataloged.  Approximate rate of 175/week.  The catalogers have found 20 images that were not scanned.

Transcription continues.

Minutes Wednesday 10.1.08

Present: Liz Andrews, Jolene de Verges, Jennifer Friedman, Tom Rosko, Mikki Simon, Sean Thomas, Beverly Turner, Ann Whiteside

Mikki Update:

Transcription-

• Three Simmons students  - about 6 weeks transcribing and 3 weeks reviewing the documents.

• The students began their work on September 29^th.

• Three jump drives that students swap, a spreadsheet to track document changes. 

• Mikki gives each student a week's worth of work every Monday.

• Mikki will have the students make the changes and track the changes.   

• Mikki will save the Word documents on the R Drive under DSpace Images. 

• When Mikki does the final document review she will convert the documents to pdfs. 

• The transcription documents will have the same file number with the extension: _tr.pdf

Cataloging-

• Mikki is training on IRIS with Jolene
  
• Mikki has worked with Carl Jones on the ingest of her Filemaker Pro database into IRIS

• Mikki will begin cataloging the documents in IRIS on November 3^rd after the script meeting with Carl and Jolene. 

Jolene:
Cataloging discussion-

One image document for each document and in IRIS they do not care if there is a transcription document.  They go back and add the URI to the IRIS records.

Script ingest from IRIS into DOME. Meeting scheduled for Carl Jones, Mikki Simon, and Jolene de Verges on Monday, November 3^rd. Considerations for cataloging the documents in IRIS should work for DOME and Archivist Toolkit.

Two Simmons students, Jessie Howell and Betsy Baldwin, have been temporarily hired for this project for 12hrs/week each = 24hrs/week along with Gordon Thomas from CAMS.  Gordon will work 1 day a week on this project = 8hrs/week. Michael Schaeffer a casual staff member in RVC is also working on the project.  In total there is 41 hrs/week dedicated to cataloging the images. The estimated completion date is December 1^st or 8-10 weeks.  Also related to the project are Andrea Shuler who is helping manage the project and answer questions from the catalogers, Claire Conway who is checking the quality control of the images returned from BPI and assisting Jolene with the project management of the cataloging process.  Stephanie Tuerk has agreed to continue to consult on the project as needed.  The catalogers will meet once a week on Wednesdays at 3pm briefly to discuss the project and any issues they have with cataloging the images and make sure that they are consistent. The first meeting took place on 10/1/08.  The catalogers started the week of September 22^nd.

Jolene noted that it took a lot longer than anticipated to prep the project for digitization and cataloging.  This was the most difficult part of the process and took most of the summer.

The catalogers are subject indexing everything in the photo and they have created local subject headings, for example "people in touch with their environment."

Interesting news: RVC discovered that the project photographer, Nishan Bijachain,  may be living in MA.  Should we contact him? This does mean that we should document his biographical information in the catalog records. He will get the copyright credit.  He was definitely for hire on the project. The group decided that we would call him and ask him about his involvement in the project, any interesting notes, and maybe he will have more photos to add to the collection.  Jolene will contact. Jolene did go to the department and asked if they had any personnel records on him.

Upcoming:

Monday, November 3^rd - Scripting meeting with Carl Jones, Jolene, Mikki, and Beverly

Wednesday, November 19^th at noon - Update meeting for entire group.  At this time most of the cataloging should be complete, and test scripts should have been tested.

Wednesday, December 17^th at noon - Final Meeting!!  Review items in DOME and review the project.  Decide how to share the project with the Libraries and how to evaluate the project. 

Minutes Thursday 8.14.08 

Present: Jennifer Friedman, Mikki Simon, Tom Rosko, Ann Whiteside, Beverly Turner 

QC of the text files from BPI

Mikki is taking the information she already has minus subject terms and working on mapping her Filemaker database into IRIS.  Mikki has reviewed ¼ of the pdf documents.  She has identified two pdfs that have been a problem this far.  The problem (for example): the first page is the last page. Some of the overlays didn't come out great but they are okay.  Need to speak to Dave at BPI about this.

The maps have been transformed into pdf but we should put the tiff files into DOME because the pdfs are a little fuzzy. 

Mikki has been marking which documents may be difficult for transcription.

Transcription

Stephanie may be able to do some transcription considering her illness however she will be starting the school semester, and working on a book project. Starting August 25^th the student workers may no longer be available because of school.  We need to find new hires. The group decided to hire two Simmons students to do the transcription.  Stephanie has already created a thesaurus so we do not necessarily need a student with an architecture background. Ann will email Martha from Simmons asking for student suggestions and Mikki will write a job description and post to Simmons lists. The students can work from home and must be able to access/visit Archives. Once hired Beverly can manage the timesheets.

Communication with BPI

We have paid BPI for the work and we have overpaid by $1700.  BPI will send a refund.  Mikki would like to wait until she has reviewed all of the documents before we communicate with them regarding any issues on the scanned items.

Appearance of Kepes Lynch in DOME

The community and the collection in DOME will have the same name. The item's physical location will be held in the metadata.  Until we have faceted browsing this organization will work.

The name of the collection in DOME will be: Perceptual Form of the City

The names do not need to be in the collection title because it will be covered in the metadata.

Cataloguing of the documents

Make sure that Kevin Lynch is a keyword in a metadata but not necessarily in the creator field.  If you do not know the creator then you should leave that field blank. Both Kepes & Lynch will be subject headings in all records.

Project Deadline

The group wants a strong deadline for the completion of the project.  October 1^st will be the date of the next meeting.  In light of Mikki's wedding in October we are asking her to complete the cataloguing of the text documents by October 1^st.  Not sure when the cataloguing of the images can be completed.

The project completion is set for Wednesday, November 19^th and a group meeting has been set for this date.

{dynamictasklist:thingsToDo}{dynamictasklist}

Minutes Monday 7.14.08

Present: Jolene De Verges, Mikki Simon, Jennifer Friedman, Liz Andrews, Ann Whiteside , Beverly Turner

Photo QC-

Recapped on the QC meeting with Jolene De Verges and Liz Phipps regarding the QC of the photos. RVC will do a quick QC of the photos by opening the photos in Photoshop and making sure the name is correct and no photos are missing.

...

Cataloguing of photos (1,936 963 photos)-

Prepping the photos for the scanning process was a part of their cataloguing process.  They all have an IRIS number. Stephanie has been working 20 hours a week gathering terminology in IRIS in the subject file when she identifies types of buildings/accents/structures in the photographs.  The titles that are on them will be used as titles in the item even though they are not unique, ex. Street name, date, time of day etc.  The photos also have a category like signs or Boston at night (about 20 categories) these will be subject heading.  Jolene doesn't have an estimation of how long this will take but will check in with Liz P. and Stephanie on their progress to date.

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Group thought that the name of the project should be the name of the collection in DOME.Perceptional form of the city will be the name of the collection in DOME. Or Kevin Lynch's perceptional form of the city

Perceptual Form of the City will be the name of the collection in DOME. Or Kevin Lynch's Perceptual Form of the City.(updated to note that Mikki checked and noticed that the project was named Perceptual Form of the City project documents Boston during the 1960s.  This isn't accurate as the text portion of the project is from 1954 to 1959.  Mikki also noted that the book Image of the City was published in 1960.)

Scope note about the collection. Kevin Lynch would be one of the creators, subject heading to include Kepes Lynch

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BPI will deliver the hard drive in approximately 2 weeks (BPI delivered the harddrive with the scanned images on July 31st) .  The images are located on the SAN: R:\DSpace Images\Kepes-Lynch. Contact Beverly to get access to the folder if needed.

Minutes Friday 5.30.08

Boston Photo Imaging (BPI) has been selected to scan the text documents, photos, and oversized maps. Now the group must decide which items should be scanned first and when they will be ready for BPI to scan. Factors known prior to start of meeting:  the photos are ready to go out of the door today, BPI will be in house

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                Item - Archives Box 1/Fldr 6

Minutes from Friday, 5.23.08 

Revisited the naming convention discussion to make sure that we were confident in our decision.

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4. Agreement on system to use for cataloging Kepes-Lynch content

Minutes from Wednesday, 4.9.08

Present: Ann Whiteside, Jolene de Verges, Jennifer Friedman, Sean Thomas, Tom Rosko, Mikki Simon

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facets - for dome.mit.edu and for this project
 

Minutes from Thursday, 4.3.08

AGENDA

Present: Friedman, de Verges, Simon, Andrews, Whiteside, Rosko

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6.Cataloging - discuss on April 18^th.

Minutes from Thursday, 2.7.08

Present: Tom, Liz, Mikki, AW, Jolene, Jennifer

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