As I started the program two years ago, it seemed like it would be difficult to single out one intellectual challenge. While I have had plenty of practical library experience, involving myself with the theory behind the practice was very new to me. But as I began to build my course plan, I saw the themes of access and organization appearing over and over again. Through a combination of happenstance and course planning, I was able to muster the courage to take on the challenge of designing a metadata application profile and implementing it in a digital library for the University of Washington Ethnomusicology Archives.

When I first approached the archivist, Laurel Sercombe, about volunteering in the Archives, it seemed like a natural fit. I am always curious to try new things that relate to music, and had almost no experience with Ethnomusicology. We focused on trying to get some form of digital metadata for the 78 rpm collection, a set of published recordings that had been donated to the archives, but had only some notes in a binder to describe them.

A classmate of mine, Spencer Lamm, then introduced Laurel to Greenstone Digital Library Software. Laurel and I began to talk about the possibility for developing a digital library that would provide access to the 78 rpm collection online. We then went about forming a plan for bringing the project to fruition. I was incredibly nervous about my ability to actually successfully accomplish our goals, but I was also excited about engaging in a project that would take boxes of 78 rpm records from the archives and make them globally accessible.

In preparation, I was able to take LIS 538 - Metadata in the fall of 2007. As I hoped, this course completely changed how I thought about describing materials for the web and gave me the tools I needed to navigate the conceptual ideas behind building a digital library. I was able to build a full metadata application profile, including a conceptual model, user analysis, functional requirements, and element definitions, which turned out to be the easy part of the project!

But the real challenge of the project came in implementation. After the metadata schema was finalized, I had to see how it would work within the constraints of the project: the limited staff of the archives, the IT team that was being stretched a little to far, and the constraints of the Greenstone software itself. The bibliographic records needed to represent images, descriptive bibliographic information, and digital sound files of the content. I was able to work within these limitations, but it required some compromises in metadata best practices. It was a swift lesson in how ideal concepts cannot always translate into ideal implementations, but that does not mean that they are not successful. Unforuntately, due to some server migration in the music department, the library is currently unavailable on-line for an interactive preview. The link below provides a slide show of the library and demonstrates it's functionality.

I remember when I first approached Mike Crandall about supervising my independent study - I told him I was approaching this project with a mix of terror and excitement. He replied "Well, isn't that the best kind of project?"

He was right.

See a preview of the digital library
View the documentation (including metadata application profile).