In 2007, NAAL approved a grant for the Auburn University at Montgomery Library to test the OCLC Digital Archive Toolbox during FY2007-2008. The Task Force will assess this method to improve the ability to archive, catalog, and make Alabama state information publicly available. This section of the SPRTF wiki has been created for documentation and discussion of this project.

January 2008: NAAL grant check received by AUM and order placed for the OCLC Digital Archive Toolbox.

February 20, 2008: Task Force meets to hear update by AUM staff and document questions and needs for the future.

OCLC is supposed to change to the new software mid- to late-April.

Colleen's questions

The following are some observations I have made, as I work through the list of titles the group came up with.

1. There are technical difficulties - Some publications cannot currently be harvested at all because the webmaster has excluded robots (the harvesting tool is, of course, a robot). However, the new client based Contentdm harvesting tool will override the robot exclusion. OCLC recommends that I inform the webmaster, if I do that.

2. Many documents are laid out in pieces. For instance, in a number of cases each chapter of a document is a separate pdf. This will force the person who wants to read the document to go back and forth between the archive and the pieces of the document.

3. Many documents have scripting that hides their URLS. These cannot be harvested, so far as I can tell.

I have discussed this with our OCLC Digital Archives liaison who has asked me to send her the URLS of documents that illustrate the technical problems I encounter. She will work with me to see what can be done.

The Contentdm software and harvesting tools will be made available on April 21, 2008. I will be reporting on what I learn and what I catalog below in my "experiments" page.

Help Needed!

As all catalogers probably know, Connexion has a feature that allows one to submit one's newly created bibliographic record to another institution for review (i.e. proof-reading for errors, miscodings, etc). Would anyone be willing to do this for me? I really hate adding records to OCLC that no one else has looked at with a severe but merciful eye.

Colleen's experiments