Tools

Digital Humanities

  • Rosenzweig, Roy and Dan Cohen. Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
    • This text, produced and written by the members of the Center for History and New Media, is an excellent guide for anyone wishing to present archival materials on the web. It is not a preservation guide, but addresses rather, issues of presentation and standards for putting images up on the web.
  • Daniel J. Cohen's Blog
    • Dan Cohen is a pioneer and leader in the field of digital history. His blog is an excellent place to check on developments in the field and to find resources for setting up a digital history project.
  • Digital Humanities Now
    • Also created by Dan Cohen, assisted by Jeremy Boggs, DHN was created under the auspices of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. DHN is a fully-automated aggregator site, whose content is created by ingesting the Twitter feeds of hundreds of scholars on the @dhnow Twitter list, "processing these feeds through Twittertim.es to generate a more narrow feed of common interest and debate, and reformatting that feed on this site, in part to allow for further (non-Twitter) discussions." It is an excellent place to check for up-to-the-minute developments and to discuss trends in digital technologies.
  • Center for History and New Media
    • Founded by Roy Rosenzweig in 1994 at George Mason University, CHNM "uses digital media and technology to preserve and present history online, transform scholarship across the humanities, and advance historical education and understanding." It was the original web resource for those interested in presenting history on the web, or with the aid of media technologies. It remains an important resource for those looking to create digital history projects, as the organization hosts grant-funded projects to create useful web-based tools and exhibits. Examples include open-source technologies such as Omeka, Zotero, WordPress and Drupal, and web exhibits such as Egyptomania, American Women's Dime Novel Project and Papers of the War Department.
  • Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities
    • Based at the University of Maryland, and funded by a major Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, MITH is a collaboration among the University's College of Arts and Humanities, Libraries, and Office of Information Technology. "MITH is the University's primary intellectual hub for scholars and practitioners of digital humanities, electronic literature, and cyberculture, as well as the home of the Electronic Literature Organization, the most prominent international group devoted to the writing, publishing and reading of electronic literature. It functions as an applied think tank for the digital humanities, both in furthering the excellence of its Fellows' research and in cultivating its own innovative research agendas—currently clustering around digital tools, text mining and visualization, and the creation and preservation of electronic literature, digital games, virtual worlds" MITH conducts fellowships, grant partnerships, client relationships and hosts an Administrative Council with the aim of promoting collaboration among a wide range of campus units.

Digital Archiving

  • Well-intentioned Practice for Putting Digitized Collections of Unpublished Materials Online (W-iP)
    • Endorsed by the SAA and prepared by OCLC Research, The Well-intentioned Practice for Putting Digitized Collections of Unpublished Materials Online (W-iP) offers a framework for an assertive approach to digitization of unpublished archival materials whose rights holders are often difficult to identify and contact.
  • The Digital Ark
    • Digital Ark Corporation offers technology and consulting services for digital archiving projects, including on- and off-site image capture, interface and database design. Collaborating with cultural heritage institutions in the academic, entertainment and corporate markets, Digital Ark is on top of current trends in digital history and preservation. The corporation posts guidelines links and tools for preserving, managing and sharing historic collections on its website, making the site an excellent e-resource.

Digital Asset Management

  • Digital Asset Management
    • This website contains excellent resources for those interested in researching, justifying and purchasing DAM software. The site is powered by Widen, Inc., which is a private, for-profit software company, so the information available here should be taken with a grain of salt, but it offers some good demos and documentation on how DAM systems operate and are used.
  • Krogh, Peter. The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers. Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2006.
    • Although this book is marketed at being specifically for photographers, it is an excellent resource for archivists, given that the digital assets they handle are primarily photographic (i.e. images which are not meant to be edited, even when they are textual) in nature.

Metadata Schemas and Data Content Standards

  • Using Metadata Standards in Digital Libraries
    • This website, published by the Library of Congress(LOC), offers links to PowerPoint presentations from lectures sponsored by LOC, which discussed best-practices for metadata usage in digital library environments.
  • Society of American Archivists. Describing Archives: A Content Standard. Chicago, Ill.: Society of American Archivists, 2007.
    • The DACS schema, maintained by the Society of American Archivists (SAA), should be used when creating digital finding aids or other catalog records for archival collections. The book is also an excellent resource for learning how to create a site using Encoded Archival Description(EAD), which is the XHTML standard for publishing archival finding aids on-line.
  • Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
    • Dublin Core is the most basic metadata schema, used by a broad range of institutions to describe cultural objects presented on the Web. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is a public, not-for-profit Company, whose goal is "to provide simple standards to facilitate the finding, sharing and management of information." Those interested in using the Dublin Core schema can find resources and tutorials on this site.
  • Visual Resources Association Core
    • Used primarily for museum and library archival imaging projects, the VRA Core schema is a data standard for describing visual culture items and the images that document them. This this website hosts all VRA Core user support materials including FAQs, Cataloging Examples, and Presentations.
  • Categories for the Description of Works of Art
    • CDWA defines categories for use in describing and accessing information about art, architecture and cultural objects. It includes more than 500 categories or sub-categories, thirty-six of which are identified as 'core' fields. CDWA was developed by the US-based Art Information Task Force, with funding from the J. Paul Getty Trust, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the College Art Association. The standard is now maintained by the Getty Research Institute, which developed CWDA Lite, in cooperation with ARTstor and RLG/OCLC, as a more basic, user-friendly schema encoded in XML and compatible with OAI-PMH.
  • METS Official Standards  
    • METS is one of the official metadata schemas maintained by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO) of the LOC. Its development and maintenance is an initiative of the Digital Library Federation. The schema is used to encode descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata for objects within a digital library. It is expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium.
  • MIX Official Standards 
    • MIX is one of the official metadata schemas maintained by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO) of the LOC in partnership with the NISO Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images Standards Committee and other interested experts. The MIX schema was developed for managing digital image collections. It is expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium.

Cataloging Tools

  • Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules
    • The AACRII rules cover description and provision of access points for cataloging library items. It deals with the "determination and establishment of headings (access points) under which the descriptive information is to be presented to catalogue users, and with the making of references to those headings."
  • Cataloger's Desktop
    • Published by LOC, and available on a subscription basis, Cataloger's Desktop is a resource portal for those doing original and copy cataloging accoding to the AACRII and LOC standards.
  • Library of Congress Subject Headings
    • This database is used for looking up the standard forms of subject headings used by Library of Congress; and now by most major institutions.
  • Getty Vocabularies
    • Including the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), Cultural Objects Name Authority (CONA), Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) and Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) databases, the Getty Vocabularies "contain structured terminology for art, architecture, decorative arts and other material culture, archival materials, visual surrogates, and bibliographic materials. Compliant with international standards, they provide authoritative information for catalogers and researchers, and can be used to enhance access to databases and Web sites."

Packaging Metadata

  • PREMIS Official Standards
    • This website, maintained by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO) of the LOC, includes the PREMIS Introduction, Data Dictionary, Special Topics, Methodology and Glossary needed by those intending to use the PREMIS strategy for digital preservation. Originally developed by the Preservation Metadata Implementation Strategies Working Group, a joint OCLC and RLG project, the PREMIS data dictionary's goal is to present an easy-to-use set of "core" preservation metadata elements, which have broad applicability within the digital preservation community.
  • Open Archives Initiatives
    • The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. In an effort to acheive this goal, OAI developed the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), which sets down guidlines for metadata structure, XML fields and repository design, that make metadata easier to share across databases. OAI-PMH guidlines are used by most major libraries in the US.
  • Making of America II
    • The Making of America II Testbed Project participants did extensive work to identify and define the structural and administrative metadata elements that are crucial in the development of digital library services and tools.
  • Bag-it: California Digital Library
    • A widely accepted standard in the industry, BagIt is a "hierarchical file packaging format for the exchange of generalized digital content." According to BagIt specifications a "bag" has just enough structure to safely enclose descriptive "tags" and a "payload" but does not require any knowledge of the payload's internal semantics. It specifies a metadata and XHTML structure which formats data in such a way that code can be moved back and forth and still retain its meaning.

Web Design

  • Meloni, Julie C. and Michael Morrison. SAMS Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours, Eighth Edition. Indianapolis, Ind.: SAMS, 2010.
    • This is an excellent and easy-to-use guide for creating websites using XHTML and CSS coding. Although it is not necessary for a digital archivist or historian to know how to build a website from scratch, both HTML and CSS are needed for tailoring open-source (mainly blogging and wiki) sites to support the presentational needs of an institution.
  • W3C Tutorial and Quick Reference
    • An integral resource for anyone trying to construct a website, this website is easy to search for troublesome web design terms, tips and tools.

Preservation

  • Ritzenthaler, Mary Lynn. Preserving Archives and Manuscripts, 2nd Edition. Chicago, Ill.: Society of American Archivists, 2010.
    • This text is an industry standard for archival preservation. The chapter on digital preservation is particularly helpful. It outlines the standards to follow when preserving items and digitally.
  • Ritzenthaler, Mary Lynn and Diane Vogt-O'Connor, with Helena Zinkham, Brett Carnell, and Kit A Peterson. Photographs: Archival Care and Management, Revised Edition. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists, 2006.
    • When digitizing photographs and other imagery, it is important to have a good reference text on how to care for and store them. Ritzenthaler is an expert on material preservation, her guide is easy to read and is specifically geared towards archival users.
  • Digital Preservation Coalition
    • The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) "is a not-for-profit membership organization whose primary objective is to raise awareness of the importance of the preservation of digital material and the attendant strategic, cultural and technological issues." If one wishes to remain on top of developments in digital preservation technologies and techniques, the DPC website is an excellent resource. It is also a great place to look for grant opportunities and funding for digital preservation projects.

Web Archive/ Preservation Project Examples (About)