Tales of an Awardee: Year One Digitizing Nevada Newspapers

National Digital Newspaper Conference 2015September, 16 2015 Washington, DC

Jason Vaughan and Cory LampertNevada Digital Newspaper Program

You Can Do It!

Kicking Off the Project: Advisory Board and Project Team

• Confirm Advisory Board and welcome them to the project • Refer back to your research on your state newspaper inventories

and microfilm status• Decide if initial microfilm quality evaluation will inform the

process and how• Provide the criteria and context (selection guidelines from NDNP

as well as some practical considerations)• Provide project overview with everyone’s roles and timeline

Slow and Steady: The Sample Reel

• Isn’t that NDNP wiki amazing??• Hire staff and show them that wiki!• Hopefully, you have a vendor… • Sample reel is your chance to finally figure out the process;

you won’t really know what you’re doing – it’s okay!• Doesn’t matter what the content is: this is for you to learn• Can be helpful to learn the basics:

• operate a microfilm reader (buy one?)• get to know reel vs. page metadata• practice collating with other’s worksheets (service

copies)• Vendor orientation reveals all sorts of secrets (like the DVV

and other tools)• LC provides webinars and very helpful staff – use them and

the other awardees at this phase to establish your workflow

Up To Speed: Collation and Batches

• It’s all about the spreadsheets; there are lots of details and ways to talk about the project; lots of shipping/receiving and dates

• Get a sense at this phase who does what, how fast each phase moves, and any potential bottlenecks

• Regular communication keeps everyone on track (weekly meetings)

• Reports / LC Timeline is reasonable and helpful• Site visit clarified lots of questions in this phase• Celebrate milestones with the team

Building the Digital Newspaper: Vendors and QC

• Get to know your vendor’s process, workflow tools, and preferred communication methods

• Production will follow the steps of the sample reel but be prepared for the scale to increase

• Time to get to know the DVV (try it first before using vendor tools) and discern the difference between VERIFY and VALIDATE

• Quality control process can be daunting at first, but there are some great resources and tools to help you out (counting files, ThumbsPlus)

• Focus on verifying files, image quality and OCR• Work with vendor on questions, concerns, data issues, and

tracking progress

PHASE ONE: Send title list to microfilm vendor; duplication and technical analysis, metadata; SHIP to you

PHASE TWO: Receive, bar code, do reel metadata, collate, prepare batch; SHIP to vendor

PHASE THREE: Receive deliverables from vendor, verify with DVV, do QC; validate and SHIP to LC

PHASE FOUR: Wait for LC to approve batch and load into ChronAm, CELEBRATE, … and repeat.

Tips and Tricks

Looking Ahead

Questions?

Nevada Digital Newspaper ProgramJason Vaughan

jason.vaughan@unlv.edCory Lampert

cory.lampert@unlv.edu

Very Special Thanks to our Project Team: Dana Bullinger, NDNP Project Coordinator

Melissa Stoner, NDNP Project Specialist@nvndp

Blog: https://nvdnp.wordpress.com/