University of Massachusetts Worcester
Dr. Gregory Pincus Collection: Pilot
Digital Project
Final Report
Project Background and Goals
It was the goal of UMass
Worcester to select a unique body of material, which was not available for use
by faculty, staff, researchers and students, and of scientific importance and
make it available for use.
We chose the work of Dr.
Gregory Pincus. Dr. Gregory Goodwin
Pincus and Dr. M.C. Chang, his collaborator, developed the first practical oral
contraceptive birth-control pill. He received a grant from the Planned
Parenthood Federation in 1951 to test the contraceptive value of steroids. The
steroids were found to be successful in inhibiting ovulation in laboratory
animals and appeared to be harmless.
Dr. Pincus persuaded the Searle Company to undertake extensive research
aimed at developing a contraceptive injection or pill.
The Library owns the
original slides Dr. Pincus created to present his research findings to the
larger scientific community. They
arrived at the Library is two wooden trunks.
It was the goal of the Library to convert this material to an electronic
format and make the images available via the web.
Scanning of Materials
To date the scanning of
materials has been outsourced to Boston Photo Imaging. They were the recipients of RFP for scanning
services issued by UMass Worcester which would provide services upon request by
any of the five UMass campuses. To date
1000 tiff images have been created.
Professional Development Grant funds were used to outsource the lantern
slides while Information Technology Bond funds were used to produce the super
slides and negatives.
We choose to have a high
quality tiff file created for each image.
Our goal was to have to scan each slide or negative only once. Any derivative of the image needed could be
obtained from the original tiff image.
This would reduce handling of the original materials, which would lessen
the likelihood of damage.
Materials Scanned to Date
|
QTY |
Material |
Resolution |
Pixels |
Color
Mode |
|
419 |
Lantern Slides |
600 |
2000X2000 |
Bitonal |
|
338 |
Super Slides |
600 |
2400X2400 |
Bitonal |
|
243 |
4 X 5 Negatives |
600 |
2000X2000 |
Bitonal |
Processing of Images
Quality Control: Each image received from Boston Photo was careful examined to check for
clarity and that it was scanned at the proper resolution and pixel dimension. Less then 20 images were identified as
needing to be rescanned because of illegibility.
Creating Derivatives: We requested from Boston Photo images that meet
archival standards, as a result needed to create a derivative of that image of
lesser quality that could be presented on the web. An acceptable format for this purpose is a jpeg file.
Watermarking or Branding: The Library determined that it would be a good idea
to place a copyright statement on each image to show that ownership of the
material was held by the University.
Cataloging and Indexing: The
Technical Services department of the Library decided on the guidelines for
cataloging and indexing the Pincus Collection.
It was determined that the images would be cataloged using Dublin Core;
a sample record follows. Indexing terms
or controlled vocabulary for the images will come from MeSH: Medical Subject
Headings. MeSH is the National Library
of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. Thesauri are carefully
constructed sets of terms often connected by "broader-than,"
narrower-than," and "related" links. These links show the
relationship between related terms and provide a hierarchical structure that
permits searching at various levels of specificity from narrower to
broader. The task of indexing and
cataloging the Pincus Collection has not been completed.
Sample Dublin Core Record
Prepared with a workform
available at http://www.lub.lu.se/cgi-bin/nmdc.pl
DC.Title Percent
population increases by major regions, 1900 to 2000
DC.Subject Gregory
Pincus, population, graph, birth control, contraception
DC.Subject.MeSH Population
DC.Subject.LCSH Population – Statistics.
DC.Subject.MeSH Contraception
DC.Subject.LCSH Pincus, Gregory, 1903-1967.
DC.Description A
graph used by Gregory Pincus in presenting his research to develop the first
birth control pill. The graph was originally a 4x5 inch negative that was
digitized as part of a digital library project at the Lamar Soutter Library of
the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
DC.Publisher University
of Massachusetts Medical School
DC.Contributor Pincus,
Gregory, 1903-1967
DC.Date.ISO8601 2002-5-18
DC.Type Image.Graphic
DC.Format.IMT image/jpeg
DC.Identifier http://library.umassmed.edu/
DC.Language.ISO639-1 en
DC.Relation One
of several hundred images in the Gregory Pincus Research Collection.
DC.Rights c2002
by Lamar Soutter Library, University of Massachusetts Medical School
DC.Data.X-MetadataLast
Modified.ISO8601 2002-05-17
Presentation of Images: The Library wanted to explore all the options
available for presentation of the digital collection. We had the option of using out Intergrated Library System Endeavor, our electronic reserve system Docutek, or to create a database from
scratch. We asked other people what
they were using and how it was working for them. In this process we discovered that there were other digital
projects on campus already started and were using software called Cumuls. After further discussion we learned that the
campus was considering purchasing a campus wide version of this program to be
used by any department. Cumuls offered
many of the features we were looking for in a database solution. It had the option of being a standalone or
campus wide database, it allowed us to set out own workforms and field
labels. There were multiple options for
viewing, sorting and exporting data as well as searching data.
The Library made the
decision to use the Cumuls software with the hope that in the future the campus
as a whole would have the funding needed to implement a campus wide solution
for digital assets storage and retrieval.
Library data could then be converted and added to the web version on the
Cumuls product.
Summary
UMass Worcester has learned
many things while working on this project.
First and foremost is that creating a digital collection takes
time. Outsourcing scanning saves some
time, but to maintain levels of quality control the review of each slide can in
some instances take as much time if we were to do the scanning in-house.
Secondly the most important
lesson we learned is that organizing, cataloging and indexing, and presenting
scientific research is different from a historical photographic collection or a
collection of manuscripts. It was
reading of and seeing these types of projects that inspired the Library to
start thinking of creating our own digital collection. A collection of scientific tables, graphs
and charts present their own unique challenges. In an old photograph the cataloger may struggle to identify the
people or buildings in the photo. With
a table of statistics on reactions to a certain medication the cataloger often
struggles to simply understand what they are looking at and describe the image
in a way that will distinguish it from the next.
Thirdly we learned that
naturally the research stands by itself, but that it is with in the power of
the Library to enhance the collection by adding other materials or data into
the collection, such as a biography of Dr. Pincus and a bibliography of his
published works.
To date the materials have
been scanned and examined for quality control and we have identified the data
elements we will collect on each image.
We still need to catalog and index each image and build our Cumuls
databae.
Budget Expenditures UMass Worcester
|
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$1628 |
Salary Graphic Editor |
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$4190 |
Outsourcing of Scanning |
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$174 |
Hardware: CD-RW Burner |
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$5992 |
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