Presentation by Katrina Pescador The San Diego Air & Space Museum houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of aerospace related materials in the world. The collection includes books, documents, films, photos, periodicals, manuals, drawings, and other archival materials. Over the past several years, the Museum has reviewed and revised its processes for cataloging, organizing, and digitizing these collections, as well as improving connectivity. The Museum adopted national cataloging standards and practice, insured consistency for the various types of materials, developed digitizing standards and procedures, and made other changes to improve both productivity and efficiency. The digitization project allows for greater public access to the collection and assures the materials will be preserved for future use. By making these resources more accessible to researchers through a variety of online services, digitization has dramatically enhanced worldwide awareness of the Museum’s collection.

1. Welcome to the
Katrina Pescador
Director of Library & Archives

2.  Books (18,000 titles)
 Periodicals (600 titles)
 Films and videos (8,000)
 Manuals (8,000)
 Still images (over 2.5 million)
 Drawings (10,000)
 Special Collections (230 personal &
corporate papers)
 Maps (1,000)
 Flight Logs (500)
 Oral Histories (600)

3.  Three full-time staff members
 One full-time grant funded staff member
 35 volunteers

4.  Increase and improve user accessibility
 Preserve assets for future generations
 Standardize and improve consistency
 Improve efficiency and productivity
 Raise awareness of collections

5. Fragmented listings (excel, word, filemaker Pro,
Mac, & card catalog – refer to next slide
Organization began with SDASM’s secondary
sources (books & periodicals)
Purchased an Integrated Library System 2007
Converted card catalog into MARC

8. Non book records were converted to Excel, and
customized search fields were developed for each
type of material following national cataloging
standards and practice.
Separate listings for each material type in several
formats
Standardize cataloging for consistency
Develop basic keyword lists for subject and aircraft
to improve search results

10.  Plan ahead and coordinate
 Determine appropriate fields (MARC
equivalents)
 Write instructions for adding data to Excel
sheets
 Select appropriate keywords
 Edit sheets before uploading to AeroCat
 Add link after digitizing
 Be consistent!

13.  Rapid Capture Station for photos
 600 DPI Tiffs/Jpegs
 Before 60,000 images in 10 years using a flatbed
scanner.
 With the Rapid Capture Station this number
has more than doubled: 70,000 images
digitized in one year!
 Need large digital storage capacity and back
up!
 Digital Asset Management System (DAMS)

16.  Over 100 million views
 Increased exposure and revenue
 Public has given us incredible feed back
 Corrections and info
 Internal use by staff
 Tags and comments
analyzed to improve
account
 One person added
50,000 tags! Sample tags

17.  Online catalog, AeroCat: http://s92006.eos-
intl.net/S92006/OPAC/Index.aspx
 Public online cataloging sites (OAC)
 Public photo and video sites (Flickr and
YouTube sites)
 SDASM website
www.sandiegoairandspace.org
2-4 can be searched by online search engines

18. Completed 2-year project to process 200 special
collections of personal papers and corporate
records.
Finding Guides Listed on:
Online Archive of California (OAC)
SDASM website
AeroCat
Flickr (once photos are digitized)

19.  Create document in Word
 Convert in Archivist Toolkit into EAD and
MARC
 Upload to OAC, AeroCat, and SDASM website

20.  Differences between databases (OAC &
AeroCat) refer to next slides for formats
 Problems transferring data across systems,
even when in MARC format
 Conversion of Archivists’ Toolkit records into
OAC and AeroCat requires additional editing
 Problems with Archivists’ Toolkit
 Archivists’ Toolkit no longer supported

25.  Flickr – over 185,000 images
www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives
 YouTube – over 1,500 films
www.youtube.com/user/sdasmarchives
 Facebook
 Library blog
 Twitter
 Pinterest

26.  Flickr views average 100,000 per day
 Flickr comments and tags continue to be of
high value
 In four years, received over 100 million views
on Flickr
 In one year, received over a million views on
YouTube and continues to grow

27.  Remote requests have increased by three-fold
 Onsite visitors have remained the same
 Income from photo requests have doubled
 Museum website visits have increased by 71%

28.  Simplify the process (volunteers)
 Standardize and be consistent
 Plan in advance (coordination)