Themes and issues
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Detail and comments
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| 1. Content of archive: (i) What should be stored? |
Candidates for adding to electronic archive:
1.1 Oxford Diocesan Bell Fund - early papers relating to setting up of fund; meeting minutes; individual applications for funding.
1.2 Oxford Diocesan Guild - AGM minutes
such as "Minute Books 1880-1917; 1918-59; 1959-68. Duplicate Minute Book 1880-1946"
1.3 General Committee meeting minutes
1.4 Other sub-committee minutes: education, towers and belfries, F&GP
1.5 Branch Secretaries meeting minutes
1.6 Guild Annual Reports:
1.6.1 pre-1994, not held in computer format
1.6.2 1994 or after, held in computer format
1.7 Odd Bob newsletter - 1982-present
1.8 Meeting attendance books
1.9 Guild Service books, eg "Office for use at the Guild and Branch Meetings together with Dedication Service, Belfry Prayers, Bellringers' Hymns and an Office for the Admission of Probationer Ringers. ca. 1962."
1.10 New members list: books for years 1935-1956 and 1968-1979
1.11 [ Guild Educational leaflets are already held on Guild website ]
1.12 One-off Guild administration papers, eg "Officers Responsibilities. 4pp. Committee and Officers. 4pp. Officers' Meeting. 3pp. 1990.", "Secretary's Expenses. Two exercise books; 1940-1965 and 1956-1976."
1.13 Branch minute books and other papers.
1.14 Striking competition information - results, certificates
1.15 Summary of information extracted from Guild records, such as lists of members for each tower, lists of deceased members, lists of dates and places of meetings
One-offs
1.15 Photographs. There are roughly 50 photos.
1.16 Peal book - first 297 peals for ODG
1.17 Roll of Honour book (WW1 & WW2) - 10 pages
1.18 Record of Great Tew Belfry. Manuscript Album, 1894. Watercolours and one photograph, ff. 18, 4to., original half roan, wanting backstrip
1.19 Golden Jubilee Celebration Menu. [1931.] pp4
1.20 5no. old membership certificates
1.21 Rev CWOJenkyn's Military Cross photographed
1.22 Coleridge's peal book
1.23 Items relating to individual branches or members
1.24 3no. Tewkesbury shield certificates for 1st place
1.25 One-off documents such as training course flyers and recruitment leaflets
How will it be decided which of these should be added to the archive, and in what order (item 2)?
To help decide, it may be worth thinking out what are the most important purpose(s) of the archive. Examples of purposes:
i) A security copy/backup of the Guild's artefacts (documents, other manuscript records, photos). This would give a lower priority to items if copies of them are held away from the library, eg Guild annual reports.
ii) resource for the use of researchers. This purpose would give priority to written (and printed) items, such as meeting minutes, over items with a visual impact such as the manuscript peal book, photographs and old certificates.
iii) to make Guild artefacts more easily accessible to Guild members and a wider readership; as a showcase of the Guild's possessions. This purpose would give items with visual impact at least equal priority to written items.
Comments (JAH):
What to archive? -
In principle everything created by the Guild. (To that could be added anything that is not available elsewhere, but I doubt that we have any
unique documents.)
In practice if that isn't possible then we would need to prioritise based on some measure of value (either extra access gained to material or reduced
'cost' of accessing material compared with now).
Comments (DJB):
A possible criterion for high priority for digitising is items which are irreplaceable, of which there is no other record, and which would be of high value as a record or memento of the Guild and its activities.
It would be useful to put photographs of Guild events on the archive so that people can identify individuals in them. – many photos are without the names of their subjects.
Also to consider, many more recent documents are already in computer format, so could be added to the archive almost straightaway as “quick wins”.
Another point: the most recent documents produced by the Guild might be thought to be the most useful. So we could set up a section of the archive for adding documents very soon after they are published. Keep the documents there for a few years for more immediate reference, then move them to the main archive area.
Comments (JAH):
Looking at this list, my thought was that (apart from capturing anything unique and irreplaceable) the main beneficiaries will be researchers, so things like minutes and reports, in searchable form should be highest priority. Things that are more specific are likely to be of use to fewer people, and so long as they know of their existence can be accessed by current means.
Comments (JAH):
Re (ii) above - I think the dichotomy here might be expressed as: information content v visual impact. From that perspective, photographs of (groups of) named individuals don't fall neatly on the impact side, and would I think be of interest to researchers.
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| 2. Content of archive: (ii) What order should it be added in? |
Comments (JAH):
What order? - Possible rationales:
a - Start with the documents that would be most used to reap early benefit.
b - Start with most useful things in case resources or enthusiasm run out, to maximise residual value of what gets done if it isn't finished.
c - Defer things that are difficult and might benefit from better technology and/or more experience later.
d - Mixed phasing based on documents and function, for example prioritise image capture to get material on line as quickly as possible (which will solve the distance factor) before indexing and/or OCR (which will enhance searchability).
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3. Embellishment, appearance, logos etc
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3.1 Suggested text labels for different archive pages:
3.1.1 Home page title: Oxford Diocesan Guild of Church Bell Ringers ¦ Archives
3.1.2 Sub-menu page titles > Image/text page titles:-
Guild Minutes > Guild Minutes: [name/description of book]
Guild Committee and Sub-committee Meeting Minutes > [name of committee] Meeting Minutes> [name of committee] Meeting Minutes, [date of meeting]
Guild Annual Reports > Guild Annual Report: [Year, page information]
Odd Bob > Odd Bob [Edition No., page information ]
Other Guild Records > [as description in link to the page, with further information added if appropriate. ]
Branch Archives > [branch name] Branch Archives> [branch name] Branch [as description in link to the page ]
3.2 Logos and other embellishments.
See logo page for some examples
3.3 The colour scheme is black text on grey background with dark red links. Would an alternative colour scheme be preferred?
Comment: In response to an observation that the grey background is too dark, the point has been made that some people may find a white background too bright. However the shade of grey has been lightened on this issues page. This will be generally adopted unless further observations are forthcoming.
3.4 The images of peals in the pealbook and larger photos are shown as larger than screen size when first opened. This is to give an impression of the actual size. One exception is for the photograph of the memorial in Christ Church College cloisters under Other Guild Records where the whole photograph is shown on opening. Viewers of the website are likely to wish to see the complete record on opening a screen so this will be the approach which will be adopted for the archive.
Comments (JAH):
I strongly support thumbnailing (as in peal book 2 example). Having an explicit download option on the thumbnail page is also good (instead of having to go to the full page image first). However we should add the download link on the full image page as well so that someone who looks at it before deciding to download it can do so with out either having to go back to the thumbnail page or fiddle around with 'Save image as ...'.
There may be a case for offering bulk download, either of a complete set (however that is defined) or of selected items.
The optimum size of thumbnail may need some experimentation. It's a balance between being able to see more at one go and not being able to see enough detail to identify which one is of interest.
The thumbnails in the sample are a bit odd. They are all rendered at 231x308 pixels but the actual images range from that down to 175x234. (When doing it for real there are tools that will automatically generate thumbnail of the same size from varying size source images.)
Keystone & fit - If possible, we should try to avoid keystone distortion and extraneous background. (I appreciate these are just for illustration,
so this isn't a criticism.) I imagine the professionals have the camera mounted on a stand and preset for the required page size so the 'per item'
task is just getting the page in the right place and pressing the button. Obviously some compromise is needed where a book can't be opened enough without damage (eg peal 269).
Page style overall I would keep simple - white or grey with appropriate headers & footers including Guild logo, etc - is fine.
Data size - Sensible to start by establishing the minimum necessary resolution that will give acceptable quality. Your test files are ~1000x1200, which is probably about right. That gives ~0.5MB per image, but there might be merit in looking at lower values. For example 75% of that size is still quite clear on screen and reduces the file size to about a third as big.
Comments (DJB):
I agree about the thumbnails being preferable. Though if they are such things as pages of minute books, I think the text format would be better.
Re keystone & fit, distortion etc: This is why it will be necessary to set out guidance about taking photos.
Re page style: I have made it grey because white tends to glare. There are alternative non-glare colours to grey – all fairly bland, such as light blue, light green etc. But if the consensus is to have the background white, then that’s not a problem.
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4. Navigation through the website
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Suggested navigation pattern:
4.1. on archive home page, have link to odg website.
4.2 On all sub-menu pages, have link to archive home page.
4.3 On image pages, if part of a set of pages (eg if a page is one of a set of pages from a minutes book) have next page/previous page navigation, and also have link to appropriate sub-menu page.
4.4 On image pages which do not have links to other pages via next/previous, have no navigation.
Comments (JAH)
Navigation - Useful to think about 'width v depth' when designing the logical structure and links between things.
Do we need to worry about screen size or can we assume that researchers using this resource will be working at desktop or laptop machines and not
phones?
Comment (DJB):
Phone screens are rather small for browsing archive material so coding for them seems unnecessary.
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5. Help / information
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Suggested help/information arrangements:
A link would be given where appropriate on the website pages to a separate window with information/explanations. The link could appear on the Home page, leading to background information about the archive, and to general information about using the website. Further links at lower levels could be provided if appropriate.
Possible link logos can be seen at logo page.
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6. Documents: Scan / OCR (Optical Character Recognition) / transcribe?
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Should documents be scanned, transcribed, OCRed, or a combination of these? (this item relates to item 8 on illegible handwriting).
Proposed arrangement:
1. Handwritten items should be scanned or photographed to produce an image for placing on the archive.
2. Typewritten items:
2.1. if held in a book, should be scanned/photographed
2.2. if they are already held on computer, they can be copied directly to the archive.
2.3. if they are free standing papers, they should be scanned or photographed. OCRing documents is an option for a possible future phase of the project, since an image can be submitted for processing by OCR software. Therefore passages of text in images should be as close to horizontal as practicable to facilitate possible future OCR work.
3. Later (see item 8 on illegible handwriting), provide interpretation of illegible words in the archived images of handwritten docs; alternatively, transcribe completely all handwritten docs.
Comments (JAH):
I think original images should be included in any case. If there is a transcript then having the original as well would not require a lot more effort (I assume photographing is quicker than typing the page, including trying to decipher the illegible bits) and with the original there researchers have the option to verify or revise the interpretation with the benefit of more contextual information.
Should transcripts be per page or per document? My preference as a researcher would be for the transcript to be of the whole document (or maybe chapter), but with original page breaks marked to help anyone needing to check back to the source.
OCR can be of variable quality in replicating the original text - scanners/software can misinterpret typed/printed characters
Comment (DJB):
I agree about including original images. Both photographing and transcribing will take plenty of time.
If the intention of OCR is to allow the text to be indexed, I think it may be prudent to defer this to a later phase. I think that any indexing should at this stage be fairly simple, and be tailored for each type of document. For instance, for the peal book, you could (manually) index the places, and possibly the methods. So you would have a link from the index to each peal at each tower and in each method.
Comments (JAH):
Re links for peals - Maybe a Felstead link as well. Also, when established, we should seek Felstead to provide links to our archive. That adds value to Felstead (more richness than the bare record) and value to us (more links = more traffic and greater exposure).
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7. Indexing of information on the archive
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Documents such as minute books, annual reports, would be arranged in chronological order. Is any other form of indexing documents and their contents needed?
Notes about the Trial archive index.
1. The index gives a link to the document/image where the Index term is located. There is no information about the exact whereabouts of the Index term within the document/image.
2. Two variations for grouping the index data are shown.
3. This Index is a very limited example - only a small number of items within each document have been indexed; and documents which belong to branches for instance would introduce a further level of category.
4. There is no way of automating production of this Index. Each document would have to be examined individually, items to be indexed would have to be selected and their website address fixed in a link. So the task would involve many hours of work.
Comments (JAH):
Chronological order yes, but within category. Higher levels should be indexed by type - AGM minutes, or General Committee minutes, or Annual reports, etc. Also at a high level it would be sensible to index by body - Guild, BranchX, BranchY, ...
At that point you realise there is not just one way to build the index tree. Do you list Education Committee & T&B Committee under 'Guild' as a different type of document, or do you list them as a body within the Guild alongside branches? (See also previous comment about width v depth of tree.)
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8. Documents: dealing with illegible handwriting.
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An issue with handwritten documents is legibility - some of the handwriting is difficult to read.
There are a number of options for addressing this issue:
i) place the images of handwritten document on the archive, and also include a typed transcript of words which are difficult to read, eg in a separate column
ii) place the images of handwritten documents on the website and also provide a typed transcript of the whole of each image
iii) do not place the images on the website, just a typed transcipt
It is likely to take at least as long to type documents as to image them.
Comments (JAH):
If the design allows for both images and transcripts then it might be sensible to have an iterative approach: first image, then add crib sheets for bad bits, and progressively replace with transcripts as effort permits.
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9. Backups of the website
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Backup options:
9.1 Copy website to memory sticks and recopy to PCs or other machines held by Guild members for long-term retention
9.2 Backup to Cloud
9.3 Same arrangement as for main ODG website?
Comments (JAH):
Backup should be as for the main website, so the question is whether the backup that we currently have is adequate for archival material (as opposed to more transient material) or whether additional layers of backup are needed, and if so what.
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10. Inputting documents. Who? / guidance / contract work to outside organisation?
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Whichever method of inputting documents is chosen (scanning, OCR, transcribing) it would be necessary to ensure that the task is done to a reasonable standard. Guidance would need to be set up to help with this. (proposed guidance below)
Contracting the task to a professional organisation is an option. This would cost more than £150 per day's work. This may not be considered feasible for the majority of the documents. However for older and more fragile documents, such as the first minute book, this option may be worth considering.
Photography guidance:
Oxford Diocesan Guild Archive: Photographing of library items for holding in the archive.
A major part of the ODG Archive project is to capture images of pages/documents/manuscript items and load them into the archive.
Images can be captured either by photographing or by scanning them. This set of notes contains advice about photographing items: how to take a photograph of pages or other artefacts without causing them harm such as by opening books in a way which damages the spine.
Summary of the objective to be achieved: the photograph taken should be, to the extent that is possible, a perpendicular and square view of a flat page/item, well lit but not over-bright; and of the page only, without showing at the edge any part of the surface that it is supported on, or other stray object or shadow. The photographed item should not suffer any damage as a result of the process.
Suggested ways for achieving this:
Lighting. The item should be placed within a few feet of a window on a bright day, but not in direct sunlight; or be evenly illuminated by a reasonably bright light, eg by a table lamp placed to the side of the item, possibly with another one placed at a different angle.
Preparing the page for the photograph.
A single item, page etc can be laid flat. If it is a page in a book, a way needs to be found to lay the page flat without bending the book so much that its back is strained or damaged. An example of how this might be done:-
Open the book at the page required and lay it on the table.
Continue to open the book until the page to be photographed starts to open away from being flat, or when thee back of the book starts to feel that it is being forced. At this time, the two covers might be at an angle of say 130°- 140° to each other. Place an object underneath the side not on the table so as to prevent it from opening any further. It may also be necessary to find a way to stop the pages on the raised side from closing up again. A light object such as a strip of plastic at the edge of the page to be photographed may be useful for keeping it flat.
When taking the photograph, hold the camera vertically above the page and ensure the camera view is square to the page. Ensure there are no stray shadows of nearby objects on the page.
An obvious alternative is to recruit a second person to hold the page open, but please ensure their fingers do not appear in the photograph!
After taking the photograph(s), check that they look ok and load them onto your computer. In some instances, areas of unwanted background may be visible around the edges of the photograph, such as parts of the surface on which the item is placed. In such a case, if you know how to, use an appropriate software package to remove the unwanted areas. Also note, images will be stored on the archive with a size of less than 1mb, so the opportunity may be taken to use the software to reduce the size of the photograph to this amount.
When ready, please send them to the Guild librarian ( librarian@odg.org.uk ) as a .jpg file. Please attach information about what the images are of – title of book, and page no. (or date of meeting etc if there is no page no.).
>>End of Photography guidance<<
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11. General project issues
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1. There is a need for volunteers to carry out photography/scanning work.
Can a collaborative effort between members of branches be set up for this purpose?
2. The trial archive website has been put together using html code (the basic language for setting up websites). This may not be thought of as the best way of approaching this task - it may be better to use a software package for creating websites. Ideally this should be considered before the archive gets much larger and more complex.
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