Contentdm and Digital Resource Management

Contentdm is a collection management tool for digital objects: documents, photographs, media, and multidimensional realia. It provides tools for the organization and mangement of digital resources over the Web including cataloging, metadata, thesauri creation and maintenance, and presentation through a public catalog.

As part of my sabbatical leave, I am working to lay the foundation for the consolidation of access to campus resources with a focus on Contentdm.
Library planning agendas since 2001 have indicated the need to fully explore the wide range of information resources on campus and integrate them into a single access path. The Library is positioned to take a leadership role in this integration. Time and staff restraints have limited our ability to achieve this goal.

So many divisions and departments of the college have existing resources that need to be considered. Just recently, we discovered 40 years of our Courier archives in the Journalism division: 56 linear feet of boxes chronicling the newspaper's contributions including each negative shot for each issue, contact sheets, and documentation for each issue. Many of the photos have not been seen since the issue was published. It is a rich collection of our college's heritage. The collection was moved a few weeks ago to our College Archives in the Library. This is one representative collection the is a top candidate for digitization and indexing.

Other collections include archival as well as departmental resources: art slides collections, digital music collections, photograph collections and back files, application software, and historical archives.

This summer, a college assistant prepared the groundwork for a demonstration collection: hundreds of photographs were scanned and added to the Contentdm
database. Metadata was provided when it was available and now the collection consists of the following categories:

Administrative Services
--Administration
--Business Services
--Presidents

Biography
--Campus pictures
--Faculty and Staff
--Unnamed photographs, undated portraits and photographs

Board of Trustees

Campus Photographs by Year
1937-1950
1960-1980
1990-2000
2000-

College Pictures by subject:
Alumni
art
Awards
Communication
English
House Building
Library
Life Sciences
math
Miscellaneous (to identify)
Music
Nursing
Occupational Services
Physical Education (Men)
Physical Education (Women)
Physical Sciences
Social Sciences
Student Activities
Theatre
VIP
Unnamed, undated
Creveling Collection (including numerous personal family as well as college
connections as Student government and OMD)
OMD
Tournament of Roses


The College Archives policy outlines what is collected by the Library. Many of these items could be converted to digital format:
Academic division documents
Accreditation Reports
Administrative division documents
Administrative Memoranda
Alumni Notes and Reunions
Annual Reports
Annuals/Yearbooks
Architectural renderings and building documentation
Associated Student Body resources
Awards
Biographical information/obituaries on staff in all media (The local newspapers are
scanned for PCC biographical articles. Cataloging has biographical scrapbooks).
Board of Trustees (policies, minutes, biographies, elections
Budgets 1945-
Campus Programs (EOPS, CWS, Foreign Students, etc.)
Child Development Center
Class Schedules 1959-
Classified Senate
Collective bargaining
College Calendars
College Catalogs 1924-
College Committee Reports
College Newspaper
Commencement Programs
Council of Department Chairs Reports and Minutes
Dean’s List
Departmental newsletters and publications
Directories
Enrollment Reports
Faculty publications (published books and reports)
Faculty sabbatical leave reports (cataloged)
Faculty Senate Minutes and Reports
Founding Memorabilia (t-shirts, pins)
Goals
Graduation
History of the college
Instructional Division Documents
Instructional Support Divisions Documents
Management Association
Official bulletins
Oral histories
Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA)
PCC Periodicals
Photographs
Planning documents
Policies and Procedures
Press Releases
Program brochures
Retirees
Salary Schedules
Statistical studies of students and graduates
Student organizations documents
Student Services divisions documents
Teacher Load Reports
Textbook lists

In the last few weeks I have been working on the thesaurus as well as the Campus Survey that will help me identify the digital objects to be considered for a repository plan.