Washington State Library Digital Images Initiative
Pilot Test Grants - Final narrative report

Library Name: Port Townsend Public Library
Project Grant Number: G-2070

Address: 1220 Lawrence Street, Port Townsend, WA 98368
Library Director: Linnea Patrick
Project Manager: Carol Cahill
Contact email: ccahill@ci.port-townsend.wa.us
Contract Telephone: (360) 344-3068

Project Assumptions:
The goal of the digitization effort is to make facsimile images of the Port Townsend Leader, the only continuous record of local history and current events, accessible on the World Wide Web, indexing of the newspaper's content is to be achieved through the assignment of metadata to each page image. The software package chosen for the pilot project was the University of Washington's CONTENT database. The print versions of the newspaper are in bound volumes, in poor condition. Several decades worth of the paper already have been microfilmed, so the project was designed to test the feasibility of converting the microfilm images to digital format, rather than handling the paper copies again. The plan was to outsource the scanning, with the vendor returning compact discs with GIF or JPEG images which could be uploaded to the Content server at UW. We wanted to test two possible scenarios for scanning, to compare costs and image quality: using positive copy microfilm from the local historical society, scanned by a local (i.e., Seattle) vendor, and microfilm negatives supplied directly from Bell & Howell and scanned by OCLC's Preservation Resources. As we suspected, the costs for the latter option were higher, but the quality was much higher too. One of the objectives of the project was to train volunteers to assign index terms for the newspaper page images. Given the time it took to obtain satisfactory scans, and the short duration of the pilot, it was decided to postpone training volunteers until it was clear there would be funding to continue the digitization effort.

Project Description:
The purpose of the project was to test the feasibility of digitization of microfilm copies of the Port Townsend Leader newspaper. The Leader is the only continuous record of local history and current events, and is important to the life of the community. The pilot project will test creation of statewide access to issues of the newspaper via the Internet, including cost and logistics of converting images. Internet access to digital images of newspaper articles, with metadata indexing, would greatly enhance citizens' ability to use this rich historical resource.

a. How many hours were spent preparing collections for scanning?
Collection preparation time was minimal, and mainly involved phone conversations with the vendors of the microfilm and the scanning.

b. How many hours were spent scanning the collection materials?
The scanning was sent to an outside vendor.

c. How many hours were spent indexing the scanned objects?
Once I was comfortable with the software, I found it took anywhere from half an hour to an hour per newspaper page; the front page of each issue takes more time than the interior pages. Some of this time was used in searching various authority files for proper names and appropriate subject headings (see discussion below about metadata and Indexing).

d. How many hours were spent training staff to doing scanning and to do indexing using the metadata schema in CONTENT?
There was no training of other staff for this pilot project.

e. Was the project budget adequate to do all tasks? If not, where did you experience a shortfall?
The budget was adequate for the project. Because we contracted for test scans rather than a full roll of microfilm, we did not spend the entire budget. Also, I had anticipated training staff at the library and the historical society to do some of the indexing, but did not do that since there was such a small number of uploaded images.

f. What was your greatest challenge in project management?
The greatest challenge in managing this project had to do with the method of tracking grant funds that is used by the City of Port Townsend finance department. It was very difficult to get a concise printed report of expenditures, especially because the city was using different accounting programs simultaneously during the course of the pilot project.

g. What was your greatest challenge in handling and managing the collections?
The main difficulty had to do with identifying just which agency in the state (if any) held the microfilm negatives of the Leader. After several conversations with individuals at the University of Washington Libraries, the Washington State Library and the Washington State Archives, I finally determined I would have to go to the original source: Bell & Howell. Other than that, there really were not many difficulties in handling the physical collections since I was dealing with microfilm; the negative was ordered from Bell & Howell and shipped directly to Preservation Resources. There was some difficulty when trying to borrow the local positive film to be used by the local vendor for test scans; the historical society director was unwilling to loan it for more than 3 days, so I borrowed film on interlibrary loan from the Washington State Library.