CONTENTdm training

On September 23, 2008, Laura Osterhout, Regional Services Librarian at the Western New York Library Resources Council (WNYLRC), and I taught "Introduction to CONTENTdm for WNY Legacy". This 5 hour workshop was attended by 11 local library employees, mostly librarians, and was part of WNYLRC's Digitization Boot Camp: Image Series. The advertisement for this workshop stated: During this session, participants will be introduced to WNYLRC's WNY Legacy digital repository, and will get hands-on experience uploading images using the CONTENTdm Acquisition Station. The workshop will include a step by step workflow for uploading images as well as a detailed discussion of the use and importance of metadata.

CONTENTdm is digital collection management software. WNYLRC has purchased a license for use by its members. WNY Legacy is the local CONTENTdm site which brings together digital collections from libraries and library systems in Western New York. As part of WNYLRC's efforts to spearhead the creation of library digital collections, the Regional Digital Heritage Advisory Subcommittee was formed in 2004. I have been on this subcommittee since its inception and served as chair for two years (2005-2007). Laura has also been on the committee since its inception and now manages the CONTENTdm site. To read more about the WNYLRC Regional Digitization Program, visit the WNYLRC website page for the program.

The workshop gave the participants hands-on experience working with CONTENTdm and thinking through the process of assigning metadata. Laura and I used images from Laura's own photograph collection to provide examples to work with. Each participant was able to upload and create metadata for 2 images by the end of the class. We stressed the use of WNYLRC's metadata template in CONTENTdm along with the other online tools available to help in the creation of meaningful metadata, including the WNYLegacy Metadata Dictionary we started on WNYLRC's wiki site. Other metadata resources discussed were Dublin Core and controlled vocabularies.

What I might do differently if asked to present this again would be to do an in-class evaluation of a few of the participant's final uploaded images and metadata. Having a discussion with the entire class about why the item was cataloged with particular phrases, subjects, etc. would be helpful in teaching context of the metadata. It is important to catalog each item with enough information to describe it on its own, but also place it in the larger context of the collection. This is a difficult concept and one that is key to providing relevant metadata.

All in all, the class was well received and the evaluations were very positive.