Santa Monica College Corsair Sails Into the Digital Age
Santa Monica College Corsair Sails Into the Digital Age
By Steve Hunt, Systems Librarian, SMC
Santa Monica College’s student newspaper, the Corsair, has been digitized and is now available online through the California Digital Newspaper Collection at UC Riverside (http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=q&l=en&puq=CRS) The Corsair is the first community college newspaper to be included in the collection. This project was funded in part by a grant from the SMC Foundation to newspaper advisor and journalism professor Saul Rubin. “This has been a large undertaking involving collaboration between the library and the journalism departments, the Foundation, and UC Riverside, and will be a great resource for the Santa Monica community,” said Dean of Learning Resources Mona Martin.
The Corsair is a unique local history and institutional resource which began publication in 1929 with the founding of the College. The library’s Corsair back file is made up of over 14,000 pages in 98 bound volumes spanning 1929 – 2010. The older issues have become very fragile, with the pages crumbling upon turning. Recognizing the importance of preserving these issues, librarian Steve Hunt worked with Professor Rubin to research options for the digitization of the collection, which allows users to search the text of each article.
Libraries considering digitization projects should look at several issues. A small digitization project that involves primarily images or photographs can be done in-house, at low cost. A desktop scanner and a PC could be used to create the digital images, which could then be imported into one of several open source digital repository software products such as Omeka (http://omeka.org ) , Greenstone (http://www.greenstone.org) or Dspace (http://www.dspace.org ). If a digitization project involves large numbers of items, or items in large sizes or items that are primarily text then it may be time to consider outsourcing. Rather than invest in expensive equipment and lighting it is more economical to contract out with a company that has this equipment and expertise.
There are many companies that do digitization, however most are geared towards the needs of the medical, insurance and legal fields. It is harder to find digitization companies that work with libraries. Libraries materials are more likely to be in odd-sizes, may include photographs, negatives, slides and other materials. Our materials are more likely to be in poor condition or require special handling. A digitization partner should be asked about their experience working with library, museum and archival materials. After much research, SMC decided to partner with Backstage Library Works (http://www.bslw.com) to digitize the Corsair.
Another consideration is how the data will be made available. There are a variety of free and fee based software choices for making digital content available. It is important to make this choice before digitization begins because the vendor will format the digitized data for the intended software platform. Institutions can run the software locally, or remotely. One example of a hosted solution is OCLC’s ContentDM (http://www.contentdm.org) which uses software licensed by OCLC to provide access to content. Another software vendor is Veridian (http://www.veridiansoftware.com) which provides the software used by the California Digital Newspaper Collection.
Digitization of collections is a complex process involving many decisions, but with careful planning a library can give new life to old resources online.