DESIGN & EVALUATION
This one-year archive project will collect, organize, and make accessible via an online digital library all published and born-digital intellectual capital created by Clamor Magazine during the first seven years of publishing. CAP will create an accessible means by which future issues and other intellectual capital may be added to the collection. Clamor Magazine has been granted first-time use rights by all contributors to publish their work in the magazine or on the website. Contributors also agree to grant Clamor and related parties (ProQuest, for example) permission to archive and make accessible their work via digital collections, as specified in the agreement made with each contributor:
“…you agree to a one-time reprint in Clamor, possible inclusion on the Clamor website, and inclusion in the Clamor archive (which is maintained by ProQuest to make full-text articles available to libraries and other subscribers).”
A project of this scope is well outside the means of a small, volunteer-run organization to manage on its own. However, the entropic nature of the ephemeral materials would make it virtually impossible for an individual outside of the organization to gather a comprehensive collection of the ephemeral materials to complement the print magazine collection. CAP will benefit from employing Jason Kucsma, Clamor co-founder and current student at the School of Information Resources and Library Science to take full advantage of his intimate knowledge with the organization’s history as well as his skills in Digital Asset Management (DAM). Kucsma will be responsible for creating the digital collection within a 12-month span, after which Clamor Magazine and Kucsma will determine whether to continue with the working relationship or turn over maintenance of the collection to another experienced volunteer or DAM professional.
Intellectual capital that will be archived in this collection will include, but is not limited to:
- Each published page of Clamor Magazine from over 38 issues,
- Advertisements and related promotional print collateral created by Clamor for print in other publications or distribution,
- Email updates sent to Clamor subscribers,
- Fundraising letters and related print ephemera (including Clamor’s renewal series mailed to subscribers, subscriber bind-in cards used in the magazine, and promotional cards) used in the day-to-day business operations,
Additional objects for consideration in this collection may include staff email archives, notes from conference-call proceedings and annual editorial retreats, and related inter-organization communication. At this time, however, the collection will be limited only to items that have been made available to the public to avoid copyright and confidentiality concerns that would hamper the creation of this project.
The attention to ephemeral detail distinguishes CAP from other full-text magazine digitization projects. Rather than focus simply on one element of the publishing process (text of articles as they appeared in print and related metadata), CAP will supplement full-text records with low-resolution digital surrogates of the magazine spreads. High-resolution master copies will be stored on Clamor Magazine’s main server for preservation purposes, and users will access low-resolution surrogates to investigate the layout, design, and overall context in which the article appears.
Digital images will be exported directly from the native desktop publishing software when available, utilizing Adobe Pagemaker and InDesign export options to generate standard (medium resolution) and high resolution (offset press quality) PDFs for use in the CAP collection. When native digital files are not accessible, original copies of the print magazine will be scanned to generate TIFFs (300dpi, full color and grayscale) and JPEGs (72dpi, full color and grayscale), for the high-resolution master and medium resolution surrogates, respectively.
CAP will utilize Dublin Core metadata records to supplement full-text records of individual articles taken directly from the digital files sent to the printer by the publisher. These native files may be created in Adobe Pagemaker, InDesign or related desktop publishing suites and will allow for more accurate extraction of the full text of articles than relying on optical character recognition (OCR) software or manual keying of text. When native digital files are unavailable due to the loss or corruption of files, Readiris Pro OCR software (99% accuracy) will be used to generate full-text for articles.
Building on the digital collection of the primary resource published by Clamor Magazine (the actual printed magazine), CAP will also include related materials that will broaden an understanding of the magazine’s operations and historical context. These materials include ephemeral print materials as well as born-digital objects. Examples of the former include bind-in cards inserted in the magazine to generate new subscribers, renewal series letters mailed to subscribers to encourage them to renew their subscriptions, and fundraising letters mailed to supporters to encourage donations to the volunteer-run project, advertisements created to run in partnering publications or on websites. Born-digital objects include rich-text email updates mailed to subscribers throughout the year to keep them abreast of world news and magazine-related developments.
The aggregation of objects will be prioritized in reverse chronological order — adding more recent issues, born-digital files, and related ephemera first and working back toward the beginning of the magazine. We anticipate that we will encounter more difficulty in retrieving objects during the early years of the project (particularly with regard to born-digital objects and ephemeral print objects), so the success of completing this project will rely heavily on the support of Clamor Magazine staff members (past and present) and the heavily invested readership, who has often developed a much more intimate relationship with the project than readers of mainstream newsstand magazines. With this in mind, approximately 25% of the working term will successfully archive 75% of the collection, while the remaining time will be spent locating and digitizing the remaining more difficult aspects of the collection.
The collection will be created and made accessible via open-source Greenstone Digital Library software. The main collection will be housed on Clamor Magazine’s main online server with back-ups preserved on local hard drives maintained by the publishers.
Access to the collection will be provided to Clamor staff during a beta testing period. During this period, the site will be password-protected with a common username and password for all users. After the site is evaluated by Clamor staff for accessibility and comprehensiveness of the collection, the site will be opened to general users who will be able to register for free access to the digital collection. Registration will allow for the collection of confidential demographic data to supplement site traffic information. Contact information will also provide a link to users should user surveys or focus group testing of site users become necessary in the future.