Upper Mississippi
Valley Digital Image Archive
Project History
The Upper Mississippi Valley Digital Image Archive began
in February, 2002, with conversations between the founding
partners of the consortium: Augustana College Special Collections,
the Davenport (Iowa) Public Library Special Collections,
and Musser Public Library in Muscatine, Iowa. Members of
those institutions present at the beginning and responsible
for the organization of the project were: Jonathan Miller
(former Director of Augustana College Library); Jamie Nelson,
Special Collections Librarian, Augustana College Library;
Amy Groskopf, Special Collections Librarian, Davenport Public
Library; and Peter Press, Director of Musser Public Library.
Two major goals of the project were: 1) to improve access
by creating a workable system of retaining, cataloging and
managing a searchable database of historic photographic images,
and 2) to demonstrate how the cooperation of multi-size,
multi-type institutions can result in a versatile, high-quality
resource of benefit to the larger community.
One of the first decisions to be made was to choose a geographic
region to represent the scope of the archive. We decided
to concentrate our efforts along the Iowa-Illinois border
from Nauvoo to Galena on the Illinois side of the river,
and from Burlington to Dubuque on the Iowa side.
We also decided that it would be in the best interest of
the project to hire a full-time Visual Images Cataloger.
But first we needed to secure proper funding for a trial
one-year project.
With a plan in hand, the project partners gathered the financial
resources necessary to start the pilot project. Each institution
contributed $5,000 toward the first year costs. Additionally,
we received $25,000 from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust
and another $25,900 from the State Library of Illinois.
A determination was made that Augustana College should administer
the contract with the project librarian with direct supervision
provided by the Augustana College Special Collections Librarian.
A nation-wide search for a project librarian, experienced
in visual image cataloging, was conducted. Candidates were
interviewed and the project librarian, Louise Svehla, was
hired in January 2003.
A scanner, computer workstation and appropriate software
was purchased and the project librarian and partner librarians
began to familiarize themselves with the equipment and the
database software. Each institution also created a priority
list of images to be scanned and cataloged with an initial
goal of completing a total of 1,000 images by the end of
the pilot year, 2003.
In October, 2003, the project was awarded another grant of
$34,457 grant from the Illinois State Library. Again, each
institution pledged another $5,000 for the second year of
the project. The grant from the Illinois State Library allowed
the project to continue in 2004 with the addition of three
more institutions: the Putnam Museum in Davenport (Iowa),
the Rock Island Historical Society (Rock Island, IL), and
the Galesburg Public Library (Galesburg, IL).
Scope of Collections
The Upper Mississippi Valley Digital Image Archive
eventually will consist of a searchable database of thousands
of digital images from local history collections covering
the 1860s through the 1950s.
AUGUSTANA COLLEGE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS holds manuscripts,
photographs, ephemera and published materials documenting
the history of the college, the surrounding area, and the
region known as the Upper Mississippi Valley. The photograph
collection contains approximately 60,000 images, many taken
by an avocational local historian and amateur photographer,
John Henry Hauberg. The images contributed to the Upper Mississippi
Valley Digital Image Archive by Augustana College Special
Collections are particularly strong in depicting the growth
and development of Rock Island and Moline, river transportation,
Native Americans, and the natural landscape. Additional inquiries
about Augustana College Special Collections can be directed
to specialcollections@augustana.edu.
DAVENPORT PUBLIC LIBRARY’S RICHARDSON-SLOANE SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS CENTER has extensive local history and genealogy
collections, and also serves as the archives for the City
of Davenport. It holds a variety of photo collections, including
the Chamber of Commerce/Bawden Brothers, Hostetler Studio,
Quad City Times, the Free Studio, and other miscellaneous
items numbering some 60,000 images. Most images are of Davenport
and Scott County, Iowa and range in dates from the 1890’s
to the 1970’s. For further information about the Special
Collections Center visit our web site at www.qcmemory.org
or contact us by email at specialcollections@davenportlibrary.com
MUSSER PUBLIC LIBRARY holds approximately 55,000 images of
Muscatine and the surrounding area in the OSCAR GROSSHEIM
GLASS PLATE NEGATIVE COLLECTION as well as other photographs.
Oscar Grossheim lived and worked in Muscatine all his life.
His career spanned the early development of the art of photography.
Beginning in 1877, as a boy of fifteen, Grossheim was apprenticed
to a local photographer where he learned to make tintypes.
Along with his older brother, Alexander, the Grossheims opened
their own studio in 1886, using the newest technology: plates
of glass, instead of tin, with photographic emulsion on one
side. After six years, Alexander left the partnership and
Oscar continued with his own studio until his retirement
in 1954. Of special interest in the collection are the photographs
of store window displays, the pearl button industry, and
local life of the time along the river. For more information
and contact info, please see www.muscatinelibrary.us
Technical Information
After several weeks of research and discussion, the following
standards for scanning and metadata were adopted for the
project.
Scanning
Images are scanned using a Microtek ScanMaker 9600XL with
Transparent Media Adapter (TMA). This is a flatbed scanner
with a scan area up to 12 x 17 inches.
Scanning software is Microtek ScanWizard Pro, version 3.09.
Images are scanned at high resolutions and saved as uncompressed
TIFF files. Both color and black & white images 6 x 8
inches and smaller are scanned at 1200ppi; larger images
are scanned at 600ppi. The file size typically ranges between
20-50MB per image (although color images can be much higher).
These master files are not edited in order to retain the
quality of the original raw scan.
Master files are temporarily saved on the local hard drive.
The original, untouched scan is saved in a folder until it
is moved to compact disc. A second copy is saved in a separate
folder for editing and uploading into the cataloging software.
Master files are burned onto Mitsui Gold Archival Quality
compact discs for long-term storage. A second disc, a standard
silver compact disc, is created as a ‘use’ copy.
Any reproductions or derivatives will be created from this
second copy.
Before an image is loaded into the digital management software,
it is checked for quality, and may receive minor editing
for Web display. Editing is completed in Adobe PhotoShop
7.0 and may include adjustments to brightness/contrast and
color levels.
Derivative images -- display and thumbnail JPEGs -- are automatically
created using a batch process when TIFF images are loaded
into the cataloging software. Display images are 800 x 600
pixels, and thumbnail images are 140 x 120 pixels.
Metadata
CONTENTdm uses Dublin Core for metadata. We have modified
the field names to meet our needs, but most fields are mapped
to a Dublin Core element.
The Subject field has controlled vocabulary. We start with
Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM
I and TGM II), and add terms from Library of Congress Subject
Headings (LCSH) as appropriate. For local personal, corporate
or geographic names, we consult a local newspaper index,
and Library of Congress Authority File. If a name is not
found, it is created following rules in Anglo-American Cataloguing
Rules, Second Edition, 2002 Revision (AACR2 2002), and added
to the controlled vocabulary list.
| Field Name | Dublin Core Mapping |
| Title | Title |
| Photographer | Creator |
| Studio Name/Location | Creator |
| Date Original | Date |
| Date Range | Date |
| Description | Description |
| Location Depicted | Coverage |
| Time Period | Coverage-Temporal |
| Subject | Subject |
| Notes | Description |
| Ordering Information | None |
| Image Number | Identifier |
| Repository | Source |
| Repository Collection | Relation |
| Physical Location | None |
| Object Description | Format |
| Type | Type |
| Digital Reproduction Information | Format |
| Date Digital | Date |
| Acquisition | None |
| Restrictions | Rights |
| Publisher | Publisher |
| File Name | Identifier |
| Date Record | Created Date |
| Record Created By | None |
| Date Record Modified | Date |
| Record Modified By | None |
|