Biz of Digital — Coordinating Coordinates: Adding Plat Books and Plat Maps to Our Digital Repository By Nicole Smeltekop (Special Materials Catalog Librarian, Michigan State University Libraries, 366 W. Circle Drive, Room W108C, East Lansing, MI 48824; Phone: 517-884-0818) <nicole@msu.edu> Column Editor: Michelle Flinchbaugh (Acquisitions and Digital Scholarship Services Librarian, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250; Phone: 410-455-6754; Fax: 410-455-1598) <flinchba@umbc.edu>
Abstract In 2019, the Michigan State University Libraries Map Library identified a collection of plat books published by W. W. Hixson as a good candidate for our digital repository. Published in the 1920s-1930s, the MSU Libraries collection of these plat books covers nearly every county in Michigan. In addition to adding the books to the digital repository, the Maps Librarian was very interested in adding the page-level township map metadata into the Big 10 Academic Alliance Geoportal. This presented the digital repository team with various challenges; mainly, how to parse book-level MARC metadata for the book as well as page-level metadata in spreadsheets into functional MODS and Dublin Core (DC) records. This paper details our decision process and workflows for handling the complexity of page- and book-level metadata in preparing the plat books not only for our local digital repository, but also for the consortial geoportal. The XSL stylesheets described in this paper are available here: https://github.com/MSU-Libraries/PlatMapMetadata
Overview The MSU Libraries Digital Repository provides access to born-digital and digitized library material, including newspapers, books, journals, images, and maps. The repository is a local instance of Islandora 7, an open-source digital repository software that combines Drupal, Fedora 3, and Solr.1 In 2018,the digital repository team (RepoTeam) began adding digitized sheet maps to the repository. The following year, the Map Librarian selected a set of plat books published by W. W. Hixson for the digital repository. The Hixson plat book collection spanned most Michigan counties and included townships (or portions of townships) on each page. Rather than only including book-level metadata, the Map Librarian also wanted to include page-level metadata, so that each township was described as well as the overarching county. This would allow each township map to be findable in the Big 10 Academic Alliance Geoportal, a collaborative geoportal that utilizes coordinates in the metadata for finding resources from across the thirteen Big 10 universities.2 The digital repository utilizes both Metadata Object Descriptive Schema (MODS) and Dublin Core (DC) records to populate item pages and provide data for searching. We also use both metadata standards because the Michigan DPLA hub requires MODS records, while our library discovery layer requires Dublin Core. To create both metadata types, team members write Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) stylesheets that convert various source metadata into MODS. Then, a standard XSL stylesheet, used for all the repository collections, converts the MODS to DC. Typically source metadata begins as MARC records or Excel spreadsheets that the team converts to XML. The XSL to create page-level MODS records needed to pull information from
Against the Grain / February 2022
both the book-level MARC record and the page-level metadata spreadsheet to make page-level metadata. RepoTeam made decisions for how to best provide access, considering the plat books needed to be described as both books and individual pages. Because the covers did not contain information beyond the title of the book, the team decided to not create metadata and not display the covers of the books as individual items; instead, the covers were included in a downloadable PDF of the entire book (excluding blank pages). The link to the full downloadable PDF was available on each township page description.
Workflow RepoTeam requires stakeholders to coordinate and complete the creation of digital images and metadata prior to taking a project. For the Hixson plat books, the pre-work was divided between the Map Library staff and the cataloging team. Map Library student employees scanned the book pages and added page-level metadata to a shared Google spreadsheet. The students added the following information: • County covered by the book • OCLC number • Call number • Page title • Township • Range • Bounding coordinates of township map (acquired systematically using a tool in ArcGIS called “Add Geometry Attributes” that quickly calculates the min/max X and Y data for a polygon) • Map library filename • Barcode • Item record number (from the catalog) • Scanner initials The Map Librarian and I devised instructions for various irregularities, such as if a page did not include a title or if the page contained advertisements rather than a map. While the Map Library employees completed the page-level metadata and scanning, the cataloging team undertook cataloging the plat books. There are many Hixson plat book catalog records in OCLC, but the records lack many details to correctly identify the edition (such as descriptions or date ranges). This is largely because the Hixson books themselves lack differentiating details between various editions — most importantly the date of publication. The catalogers estimated the date of publication by researching the history of roads depicted in the maps . With no way to verify
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