B. Changes to NEH grant goals and schedule

During the administration of the project, changing circumstances required that project goals and schedule be pragmatically modified.  Six primary changes were made:

1. As previously mentioned, the project start was delayed 12 months to allow for completion of grants obtained prior to the NEH grant.

2.  Collection substitutions: When the grant proposal was written and collections selected for processing, the Western History Collection did not have a Photo Curator.  Agostino Mastrogiuseppe, curator for more than 20 years, had died in the fall of 1996.  Jennifer Thom was not hired until February 1998. One of the collections proposed, the Joseph Sturtevant collection was on a long-term loan to the Library. Although the Denver Public Library had housed, cared for, and provided access to the collection since the 1970's, it did not own the material.  Upon discovery of this fact, and unsuccessful negotiation with the owners, we arranged with NEH to substitute new items.  The new items included:

• several rare and fragile photo albums
• oversize prints from western surveys
• cased tintypes, daguerreotypes and ambrotypes

This materials substitution resulted in a completion delay that was approved by NEH.

3.  Develop program to convert MARC records into ARGUS format. The Library creates MARC records for use in the public access databases.  The Colorado Historical Society has an ARGUS database that is used by staff.  In the initial proposal, we hoped to use the already existing ARGUS information to streamline the MARC cataloging process.  In addition, we would convert the MARC records to ARGUS format so that the CHS staff could include the new, expanded records.  We encountered several problems with this plan.  The first was a closer examination of information contained in the ARGUS database.  For the photography collection, few materials selected for digitization had item level cataloging records.  We were able to include all the relevant information in the ARGUS record in our cataloging templates.  Conversations with ARGUS staff were not promising.  New versions of the program were in the planning and testing phases and there was little interest in building conversion programs.  Currently, CHS has access to the information through the CARL Web system, but not in the local ARGUS database.

4.   Camera Construction Delays.  The Library’s digital camera was custom designed to meet the quality standards already established for its photographic material as well as best practices promoted by the Library of Congress for the scanning of maps.  It also has features to meet the care and handling needs of the artifacts to be processed.  In order to design and build the camera, our technical advisor and consultant, Raymond Clark, worked with several subcontractors to fabricate parts and modify software.  Due to contractor schedules and the need to go back to the drawing board when parts did not meet expectations, this process took proximately 18 months longer than anticipated.

5.  Duplicate William Henry Jackson Images: In the grant proposal, the original goal was to digitally unite the William Henry Jackson collection’s of the Denver Public Library and the Colorado Historical Society.  The Library would process the its sample albums and the Historical Society would process their glass plates.  The plan was to eliminate duplicate items and select the best version from either collection. As we began to closely evaluate the collections, we discovered that eliminating duplicates would be extremely difficult and time consuming.  Many of the landscape items were very similar, had the same titles, and often were “details” of a larger image.

In addition, when we had a print in the Library’s collection and a glass negative in the Historical Society’s collection, selecting the “best version” was not an easy matter.  Although the glass negative was the earliest generation and may have more visual information, these plates did not accurately reflect the intended final product.  In order to drop in a more dramatic sky, Jackson had painted over or ground out portions of the negative.  The resulting scans are often bizarre.  We determined that the researcher was best served by showing both versions of the image.  The comparison would also assist scholars who were trying to understand Jackson’s working style.  Visit our William Henry Jackson Collection page for more information.

6.   Develop software for public access photo kiosks.  The original plan was to provide kiosks from which the public could access the photo database at the Colorado History Museum.  As plans for a communication link between the Library and the Museum were developed and the web site was developed, this plan was replaced by superior options.