This is How You Do Digital Collections in

2013Sean Hannan & Steven Heslip

The Sheridan LibrariesJohns Hopkins University

The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection

• Over 29,000 pieces of American popular sheet music

• Spans 1780 to 1980

• Illustrates American history and culture through lyrical content, song forms, and visual depiction

History of the Collection

• Donated to Johns Hopkins in 1976

• First digital collection went online in 1998

• Offered browsing by archival box & searching by metadata keyword

What it Was & What it Was Not

• OpenText LiveLink

• Keyword & Advanced Search

• Browse by Box Number

• Aging hardware

• Inflexible result sets

• UX that did not match modern expectations

What is Possible Now

• More sophisticated interactions customized for the collection

• Rights management

• Responsive design

• Visual refresh

Scoping

• Challenges

• What we will do

• What we won’t do

Team & Functions

• Departmental representation:• Archives & Special Collections• Digitization• Systems• User Experience

• Functions:• Backend Development• Content Development• Design• UI Programming

Timeline

• November 2012 – March 2013

• (Backend development started a bit sooner)

Approach

• Collaboration on a proof of concept:• Identify the needed experiences• Iterate on the concept• Prototype to explore ideas and requirements as a

team

• Three parallel workflows:• Infrastructure• Design• Content Management

Rapid Iteration

Rapid Iteration

Rapid Iteration

Rapid Iteration

Rapid Iteration

Infrastructure

• “We need a system to make _______ possible.”

• Fedora:• Solid, tested repository foundation• Rights management

• Hydra:• Exposure of Fedora through the web• Rapid development via Ruby/Rails

• Blacklight:• Fast search UI framework• Leveraged existing institutional knowledge

Content Management

• User Stories:

I’m a research editor with the Oxford University Press.  We are publishing a book on the objectification of obesity in 19th century American polka music.  We would like to reproduce the cover of “The Fat Man’s Polka,” one of the many amazing polka examples you have in the Levy Collection. Is it possible to download a high res version of the cover? Are there any rights issues involved in us publishing the cover?

• Identified content requirements

• Revised existing content & generated new content

• Metadata

Design

• Fueled by user stories provided by the content team

• Develop information architecture based on user stories

• Interaction design through rapid iteration prototyping

• Visual design• Make use of the gorgeous cover illustrations• Device-first emphasis

Design Iterations

Design Iterations

Tour

Implications

• Custom application vs. off-the-shelf solution

• Old materials deserve fresh interfaces

Takeaways

• Know your user

• Clear divisions and expectations of work

• Iteration in every aspect you do (IA, IxD, Content)

• Divide and empower

Questions