1. Missouri Digital Heritage:
Missouri’s State Wide Digital Portal
(www.missouridigitalheritage.com)
Haiying Qian
Missouri State Library
Haiying.qian@sos.mo.gov
CALA MW 2010 Annual Conference, May 22, 2010

2. Outline of Topics
• Birth of Missouri Digital Heritage (MDH)
• Highlights of digital collections
• Outreach
• Collaboration
• Usability study
• Future plans

3. The Birth of MDH
• Formerly Virtually Missouri
• MDH was established by the Missouri Office
of Secretary of State (SOS) in July 2007
• Large format scanners purchased
• Collections transition to CONTENTdm server
• Officially Rolled out April 2008

4. MDH Structure and Collections
• Formerly Virtually Missouri linked collections
• About 80 digital collections on CONTENTdm
server
• Missouri State Archive’s SQL databases
• Exhibits and lesson plans
• Federated search

9. Outreach
Outreach letter / Letter of Intent sent
Digital Collection Coordinator site visit / appraisal
LSTA Digital Imaging Grant / In house digitization
State Librarian and State Archivist evaluate and
approve collections to be added to MDH
In house digitization at Digital Imaging Center

10. Collaboration Across State
Regional digitization collaboration Projects
Ozark Region Kansas City region
St. Louis Region Southeast Missouri
Example: Community and Conflict Project http://www.ozarkscivilwar.org/

11. Collaboration Across State Agencies
Signature project of MO Secretary of State
Administrated by Missouri State Library and
Missouri State Archive
Partner with State Historical Society of Missouri

12. Challenges
Different Culture and Concepts
library vs. archive practices
access vs. preservation, archival master
Policies and Procedures
different chain of command
workflow
Project Management
MDH Management Team
MDH Working Group
Digital Imaging Center

13. Challenges
Technical Difficulties
mesh different data sets, SQL database & CONTENTdm
granularity vs. lowest common denominator
Political Entities
everything has to go through communication dept.
low priority
IT Support
firewall, large project ftp timeout
staff turnover
compete with other projects on IT support

14. Usability Study
Contracted with Information Experience Lab
at MU School of Information & Learning
technologies
Usability Study from Jan. – June 2010
web statistics review
comparative review
focus group studies

15. Comparative Review
5 digital project comparables
Georgia • first impression
Maine • design/layout
Arizona • functionality
Denver Public Library • special features
South Carolina Digital • content

16. Usability Study- Focus group studies
Genealogist (done)
Researcher/ Librarians (done)
Teachers/Students (in process)
First Time Users (drafting questions)

17. Usability Study
Wrap Up in June, 2010
Preliminary results from comparative review
and genealogist focus group
great content, but categorization confusing
navigation is cumbersome, not intuitive
federated search not effective, have to use Google
exhibits confusing
huge banner
lack of dynamics

18. Future Plans
Civil War Sesquicentennial promotion
Civil War Portal on MDH
Federated search improvement
Web redesign based on usability study
EAD Finding Aids
Multi-site server and metadata harvest?

19. Questions