Management Plan Collaboration Model Working Groups Preservation

Ownership & Access Issues Union Database Metadata Sharing

Management Plan Index
The University of Southern Mississippi has a record of success in digitization and has taken a leadership role in developing the Mississippi Digital Library. Thus far, USM personnel have completed much of the digital production at the USM Libraries' digital lab. Each partner repository has the opportunity to send a representative to take part in a steering committee for the state's digital library, and each has a repository leader to coordinate work at each site. Task forces in such areas as metadata, copyright, EAD, and selection promote standardization and plan training workshops. Diane DeCesare Ross (Curator of Manuscripts, Archives, and Digital Collections at USM) serves as the current director of the Mississippi Digital Library.

Colloboration Model
 The Mississippi model for digital collaboration is centralized and more narrowly focused than that of other states funded by IMLS, such as Colorado or Alabama . Previously funded efforts have sought to link together locally based digitization projects. They focus on building infrastructure and expertise at organizations across their states, encouraging each to build for itself a sustainable digitization program. In addition, these efforts have been extremely inclusive, in terms of subject matter to be incorporated under a single grant cycle.

This approach has served Colorado well, and other states have emulated it with positive results. However, it is an inadequate match for Mississippi, a state with perennial budget challenges that ranks near the bottom in several categories for funding of educational and cultural institutions. While it is a laudable goal to create an environment in which each repository has the ability to carry out the entire digitization process on its own with instructional support, it is based on an assumption that the repositories have a base level of funding and infrastructure to achieve the goal. It presupposes that sound intellectual control already is in place for the materials to be digitized. It assumes that each individual repository's dedication of resources toward becoming expert and equipped to digitize will not seriously impair its ability to successfully fulfill other fundamental aspects of its mission.

With the Mississippi Digital Library, partners are developing a shared infrastructure, to encourage each repository to contribute according to its means, and to minimize the duplication of effort and expenditure through centralization of the most resource-intensive aspects of digital production. USM Libraries has established a digital production lab, invested in a database system for digital assets, has a preservation storage system in place, and has developed a methodology for addressing Intellectual Property and Privacy concerns. Organizations such as Tougaloo College, Jackson State University, Delta State University, and others bring archival and subject expertise along with valuable primary source collections. Each partner may help to guide the Mississippi Digital Library as a whole through representation on the program steering committee, each will decide whether materials are to be captured in-house or sent to USM or another central location for imaging, and, naturally, each repository will maintain control over selection.

For the first phase of the Mississippi Digital Library, the partners have chosen to focus on a single subject of singular significance in the interest of building infrastructure and a feasible collaborative model upon which the collaborative group may base subsequent digitization projects. The inclusive nature of the Colorado program is highly desirable, but, unfortunately, it is unfeasible for a state that will first need to establish a model for surveying collections and providing intellectual control over primary sources through an archival description and through a resulting union EAD database.

In summary, the Mississippi Digital Library's collaboration model one in which a wide range of repositories are able to participate according to their means and organizational priorities. In this model these repositories build a well-developed knowledge of selection and related issues to form their own digital strategies within the context of a digital network. Infrastructure-building is centered in a few locations where the state can leverage existing commitments to maintain high quality in all aspects of the digitization process in a way that is economically sustainable.

Working Groups Index

Task forces in such areas as metadata, copyright, EAD, and selection will promote standardization and plan workshops. These working groups will be involved in problem-solving for the current grant effort, but they will also be involved in the larger question of sustainability for a continuing statewide digital library after the initial grant project is over.

Preservation Index
The participants will manage preservation of digital files by providing each member repository with archival master files and descriptive records for all items contributed to the project by that repository. There also will be a central offline archival storage system to provide added assurance that the digital assets will endure through time. This central system already is in place, and it provides magnetic drive storage with DVD and magnetic tape backups.

Ownership and Access Issues Index
In addressing ownership and access issues, participants will incorporate a multi-layered approach to rights management. Each descriptive record will include rights management metadata. The digital archive will present its derivative access images in a lower-resolution view quality, insufficient for print reproduction for publication. Digital banding and/or watermarking will also communicate ownership information.

A database will provide union searching and access for the digital assets captured as a result of the project. For the Mississippi Digital Library, each item within the database will prominently display the name and/or logo of the repository that owns the item.

Union Database Index
An XML-capatible database will provide union searching and access for the digital assets captured as a result of the project. Each item within it will prominently display the name and/or logo of the repository that owns the item.

Metadata Sharing Index

The collaborative group will participate in national and regional bibliographic and metadata efforts, including OCLC and the AmericanSouth.org metadata harvesting project. The AmericanSouth.org effort uses the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) protocol to allow metadata providers to make records available for collection by the metadata harvester. The harvested metadata becomes part of a regional union database.