Gabrielle Michalek

Requirements and Characteristics of a Preservation Quality Information Management System

Gabrielle Michalek — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 10:53:40 PDT

This paper focuses on the requirements of an information management system that is designed to ensure the long term preservation of the information managed and delivered by that system. It is not an all inclusive list or description, but rather, an overview of the approaches and methodologies that have been used by the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries as we have built, developed, and now, acquired, information management systems that have the onerous task of supporting collections we have promised to keep in perpetuity.

Pittsburgh Jewish Newspapers Project: Digitizing Archival Newspapers for Full-Text Indexing

Gabrielle Michalek — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:28:59 PST

The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries was asked by the library director of a local synagogue to digitize a singular collection of three historic Jewish newspapers, all of which were published in Pittsburgh. These three newspapers, the runs of which span the 19th to the 21st century, posed unique digitization challenges, both as unwieldy, fragile physical objects and as unindexed, dense analog datasets. Using a combination of revamped workflows and repurposed equipment, the Carnegie Mellon Library staff rose to the challenge, creating a full text searchable set of 160,000 digital surrogates for under $100,000. As of 2009, fundraising to secure another $100,000 is underway to support creation of 75,000 more images, creating a searchable database of approximately 235,000 images by project end. In its current incarnation, the Jewish Newspapers Project provides open access to a one of a kind collection of social, genealogical and demographic information about the Jewish communities in and beyond 20th century Pittsburgh. This article is an examination of how a successful archival digitization project was launched by retrofitting earlier workflows, utilizing existing equipment from other projects, and by cobbling together a likeminded group of participants, all of whom have some stake in the end product.

The Heinz Electronic Library Interactive On-Line System: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach

Gabrielle Michalek — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:06:51 PDT

ThiS year Carnegie Mellon University began work to develop a fully electronic historical archive of the papers of the late Senator H. John Heinz III. The project is named HEllOS, the Heinz Electronic-Library Interactive On-line System, in honor of the late Senator. Carnegie Mellon received over one million dollars from the Heinz Family Foundation, Heinz Company Foundation and Heinz Endowments in support of the HEllOS project. The grant supports the establishment of the H. John Heinz III Archives where the Congressional papers of the late Sena tor are being preserved and digitized to make them electronically accessible to students, faculty, public-policy professionals and researchers. Edward Galloway, the Heinz Archivist, will describe the Heinz Archives and the HEllOS project in his presentation. The present pa per will concentrate on the members of the HEllOS project team and their intellectual contributions with special emphasis on Carnegie Mellon's multidisciplin ary approach to creating an electroni c archives.

The Heinz Electronic Library Interactive On-Line System (HELIOS): An Update

Gabrielle Michalek — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:34:50 PDT

In February 1994 Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Libraries embarked on an ambitious project to convert approximately one million pages of the congressional papers of Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz into digital format. [1] Innovative image-management and text-retrieval software created at CMU provides the ability to search and retrieve these papers. Named in memory of the late Senator, the Heinz Electronic Library Interactive On-line System (HELIOS) currently allows researchers to browse, search, view, and print over 434,000 digital images from the collection. Accessible through the campus network and the Internet, HELIOS dramatically increases depth of indexing and quality of retrieval beyond that which archiving resources have traditionally allowed. Since January 1998, HELIOS can be accessed on the Internet at . In order to stimulate the exploration and use of the Heinz papers by a much broader community of users than is expected with a paper-based archive, the University Libraries proposed to digitize the congressional papers. Over one million dollars was donated by the Heinz Family Foundation, Heinz Company Foundation, and the Heinz Endowments to support the establishment of the H. John Heinz III Archives and the digitization project. In addition to the Heinz gift, CMU and the CLARITECH Corporation contributed over $700,000 in resources, including permanent full-time staff salaries, archival equipment, and office rental space for a processing facility. Heinz assistance has made it possible to advance the techniques of digital preservation and access for archival collections. Our goal has been to develop a digital archive to serve as a model for the archival profession and research community. Traditionally, archives have faced several challenges, including: 1. the creation of good finding aids and indexes for large archival collections; 2. the provision of effective retrieval of information from paper archives in spite of the inherent diversity and size of these unique materials; and 3. the difficulty of offering broad public access to archives since they represent resources that the researcher must visit in order to use effectively.

The Heinz Electronic Library Interactive On-Line System (HELIOS): Building A Digital Archive Using Imaging, OCR, and Natural Language Processing Technologies

Gabrielle Michalek — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:31:10 PDT

In February 1994, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) embarked on an ambitious project to convert one million pages of the congressional papers of Senator John Heinz (R-PA) into digital format and to provide access to these papers through innovative information retrieval software developed at CMU. Named in memory of the late Senator, the Heinz Electronic Library Interactive Online System (HELIOS) supports full-page digital images and it utilizes natural language processing (NLP) technology to search large quantities of unstructured text. HELIOS will allow researchers to access the Heinz papers through the campus network as well as through the Internet. Over one million dollars was donated by the Heinz Family Foundation, Heinz Company Foundation, and Heinz Endowments to support the establishment of the H. John Heinz III Archives and the digitization project. Heinz assistance has made it possible to advance the principles of digital preservation and access for archival collections. In addition to the Heinz gift, CMU has committed an additional $450,000 in matching resources to the project. These resources primarily come in the form of permanent full-time staff salaries, archival equipment, and rental of a processing facility. Our goal is to develop a digital archive that will serve as a model for the archival profession. We expect to create an archival information technology environment that dramatically increases the depth of indexing and the quality of retrieval beyond what archiving resources have traditionally allowed. To create the HELIOS database, documents are scanned, converted to ASCII form via OCR, verified and organized, and indexed using the CLARIT natural language processing software. The project will develop three graphical user interfaces in a Microsoft Windows environment: a scanning interface, an archivist/verification interface, and an end-user interface. HELIOS represents a significant breakthrough technology that has the potential to transform the work of archivists by helping them to overcome the significant challenges they face, including an inability to: 1. create good finding aids and indexes for paper archives that provide deep access to collections, 2. provide effective retrieval from paper archives due to the inherent diversity and size of these one-of-a-kind files, and 3. offer broad public access to archives because they represent resources that the researcher must visit in order to use effectively. Archivists have resisted the use of information technology because they lack appropriate tools to automatically process large amounts of text for retrieval. HELIOS will offer such a tool. Clearly, there are many problems yet to be solved in the management and preservation of digital archives, but it is CMU's intention to work with the larger archival and library community to help establish standard practices for digitizing paper archives and to develop the information management tools to give scholars and students state-of-the-art access to them.

The Qatar Heritage Rare Book Project: Digitization and Online Publication of Treasures from the Arabian Gulf

Gabrielle Michalek — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:24:53 PDT

Abstract -- In October, 2006 the Qatar Foundation in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University began a Pilot project to digitize the Qatar Heritage Book Collection and make the collection available to the world. The Pilot project will make available online 300 rare materials and 5000 books from the general collection from the Heritage Library by May, 2007. This paper will describe how the project will address the practical problems surrounding intellectual control of the collection, digitization workflow, OCR and management of the Arabic character set, and the configuration of the information management system for world-wide access to the digital library.