Access Versus Accuracy:  A Case Study of Preservation 
Techniques at The Pre-Raphaelite Critic Web Site

Thomas J. Tobin • English Department • Duquesne University • Pittsburgh, PA 15282
	
	Over the past eight years, librarians and research archivists at Cornell University have been working toward defining a set of “best-practices” standards for the digital preservation of original documents in research archives.  In 1996 Anne Kenney and Stephen Chapman of Cornell’s Department of Preservation and Conservation published Digital Imaging for Libraries and Archives, which deals with the practical aspects of setting up a large-scale research archive of materials.  Implicit in the assumptions of this and practically all other publications on the electronic preservation of primary documents is that the archivist commands substantial budgetary and staff resources in order to accomplish his or her objectives in creating an archive for his or her college or university.
	However, there are many reasons that smaller, less-comprehensive research archives might be feasiblly created by individual Victorianists; such projects necessarily entail few staff members and relatively small funding.  I shall use my own fledgling preservation archive, The Pre-Raphaelite Critic, as an example of such a project.  
	The purpose of this talk today is threefold.  First, it is intended to bring the existence of a scholarly resource to the attention of those who might most benefit from its use.  Second, it is somewhat of a cry for help; I assume that some of you in this room have already encountered many of the problems I currently face, and I’m always happy to hear advice on how I might continue to inprove my work.  Third, this talk will illustrate, at a very general level, some of the benefits and pitfalls of taking on the task of web archiving on a small scale; I will also show how an individual researcher might most effectively modify the recommendations of larger organizations in order to construct a “mini-archive” of Victoriana.
	A very large archival digitization project, such as the “Studies in Scarlet” project, sponsored by the Research Libraries Group, has to maintain many very rigid guidelines for set-up and operating procedures.  The “Studies in Scarlet” project involved millions of dollars and nearly a dozen participating institutions, and their final collection of data arranged around the central theme of 19th-century family law contains “close to 400,000 digital images” (Digital Collections)--as their boilerplate text states, it is “the only database of its kind, and the most comprehensive digital collection on 19th century family law. . . in existence” (Digital Collections).  
	There are, however, severe drawbacks to creating and managing such a large site.  Most of the participating libraries and government agencies had the funding and time available to appoint full-time project overseers, whose full-time jobs entailed only the administration of the collection process and the integration of sources from disparate physical collections.  Also, such a large-scale project needs to be funded from sources outside academia, which as we all know too well, are more and more difficult--yet more and more necessary--to obtain in the face of university budget cutbacks.  
	Further, most of the “how-to” literature on creating useful databases of text, sounds, and images is aimed at the researcher or group whose resources include large amounts of skilled work-hours available for the project.  The 1997 “Museums and the Web” conference guidelines for database creation assume that the reader’s organization “already [has] extensive manually indexed collection systems,” and that implementing these guidelines will require hundreds of thousands of dollars (Blackaby and Sandore).  This assumes that the primary archivist is a librarian: not necessarily a given.  This also creates a double bind, in which funding can be obtained most easily through the “wow” factor of the new uses of technology, but only after one has a project with which to do the “wowing.”
	Small research archival project fill this “wow” void, and handily sidestep many issues that might prevent a small academic department or a single researcher from looking seriously at web-based projects.  A smaller-scope research archive accomplishes many of the goals of a larger, more ambitious project, and can be a stepping-stone to obtaining more funding and work-hours for a larger project.  The benefits of a small project, in addition to reducing the amount of seed funding and labor needed, are many.
	The Pre-Raphaelite Critic, the first page of your handout, started as a graduate-student exercise in which I wanted to teach myself HTML coding, and has now grown, over the past two years, into a respected scholarly site, recognized by scholars at the University of Virginia, Indiana University, The William Morris Society, and elsewhere.  Also, working with a relatively small amount of data provides a single researcher ample opportunity to do good bibliographic research; on the the second page of the handout, you will see only the first page of my comprehensive index to periodical articles dealing with Pre-Raphaelitism.  The web has allowed me the flexibility to cross-index almost 600 items by author,  article title, magazine title, and  date. 
	Victorianists in general are in an especially good position to put together small projects such as this one for several reasons.  An archive the size of mine, with fewer than one thousand documents, can easily be put together, with a commitment of about three hours per week, in about two years, and using under $5,000 dollars in costs.  It can be, as mine was and is, a learn-as-you-go process, affording the archivist an opportunity to brush up on new skills while providing a needed service to the academic community.  The thrid page of the handout shows how different media can be incorporated into a small site; a web archive can contain sound files, as well as the traditional pictures and text.
	Web archiving provides end-users with three very attractive advantages:  access, search capabilities, and help in finding what they want.  Access via the web is instantaneous and allows end-users to navigate through a collection with minimal assistance from you.  This is one of the key attractions of setting up a web archive--it both saves the original sources from unnecessary deterioration and allows patrons to find what they want more quickly and with fewer demands for help from staff.  Michael Grossberg explains that “through the normal. . .  methods, you wouldn’t be able to” find sources like those in the “Studies in Scarlet” project, 
but there was a lot of newspaper coverage at the time, and there were published transcripts [of trials], . . . so finding out about them means going to different repositories.  This is difficult to do logistically and financially, and it’s virtually impossible for most students. (“Studies”) 
One of the major decisions to be made about access is whether to put up facsimiles of the actual sources, to provide only text equivalents, or to do both.  In the case of works of art and sound recordings, this issues is moot, but factors to consider with textual sources are whether the visual text itself has research value (see the fourth page with the Punch parody, and the fifth page of Holman Hunt sketches), or whether the original source’s value lies in its content (as with most of the articles in my own collection).
	Most useful to end-users, and most often overlooked by web site planners is the help function.  How much built-in assistance you can provide to patrons is the most determining factor in ease of use for your site.  Traditionally, users expect to see some kind of list of frequently asked questions about what the data are in your collection, how to find specific data, and whom to contact for further information.  The sixth page shows one of the Millais watercolors currnetly housed in a drawer at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard--my site provides access to this otherwise invisible piece of artwork.  The last page of the handout shows the back of Burne-Jones’ Venus--a sight no gallery director or librarian would ever let you see, and to which the user is pointed by help-text functions. 
	A web archive does not consist solely in putting “fun” stuff up on your site.  In order to maintain an archival database, you  may wish to consider feedback forms that ask the user questions about how to improve the site, and what other content would be useful to patrons; an example of this can be seen on the first page of the handout: the mailing list I have created in order to keep interested scholars informed of new features at the site, and which allows them to make comments and suggest improvements.  This feedback is especially useful in planning the development and expansion of a site, as it allows you to listen directly to the needs of your clientele.  For instance, the National Preservation Office of the British Library mandates “an instructional programme to provide guidance and training” (Digital Remit) for any web archive under its auspices.  A final way in which to get feedback about your users is to install a hit counter which tracks the number of times people use your site.  Many programs exist that will track and long all data about your users, but unless you want to get mired down in assessing demographics (which you might), a simple hit counter can be a powerful tool to show funders that your site attracts attention and is used consistently.
	All of these suggestions require a much more detailed analysis than I am able to provide here; the best source for learning the technical aspects of digital archive creation and management is Anne Kenney and Steve Chapman’s Digital Imaging for Libraries and Archives, which is most useful if you keep in mind the large scale of the projects it addresses (do you, for example, have a spare $55,000 lying around for a sheetfeed scanner?).  The kind of archive that is most productive depends also on your interests; however, I have one final suggestion, based on my admittedly limited experience with my own work.  A magazine-and-periodical-article archive is especially useful for titles produced before 1900, as even the most diligent OCLC wizards have yet to reach back very far before 1980 in digitizing and cataloguing older documents.  A call to the OCLC is much appreciated, and they can help you with setting up a standard format for your archive, as well.
	This talk may sound like a marketing pitch for small projects, and, to some extent it is.  In the current academic climate of “do more with less,” traditional sources of funding are increasingly difficult to obtain.  I’d like to conclude, then, with a short overview of the ways in which web archiving can benefit your scholarship, your department, and your institution.  Although acceptance of web archiving as “counting” toward promotion and tenure is only slowly gaining ground in academia, the kinds of awards that can accompany a small archival project do count, as my in-house NEH challenge grant shows.  Also, the interdisciplinarity of major projects can benefit from “farming out” small components to experts whose interests are most suited for narrow work, and working in collaboration with one’s peers also opens up the opportunity to share limited physical resources, the opportunity for training and experience for grad assistants, and the possible involvement of community members outside academia--each of which is good publicity not only for one’s department, but good press for one’s academic institution as a whole.  
	Further, little technical training is needed for individual projects, so long as the host institution agrees on a uniform set of standards for archiving processes.  Thus, while a small research archive such as The Pre-Raphaelite Critic is not, as Grossberg claims about “Studies in Scarlet,” “a project that turns rhetoric into reality” (“Studies”), it can be a profitable, useful, and, dare I say fun way to get your departmental scholarship noticed by your institution, and to provide a needed service to your peers at the same time.  Although I realize that this talk has been heavy on the “web” and light on the “periodical,” the focus of my research is solidly in Victorian periodicals, especially as they comment upon the Pre-Raphaelite cirlce of painters and poets. Currently, fourteen of the articles listed in the web indicies are linked to the full text of the reviews they represent; more are coming soon as part of my dissertation project.  I invite you all to visit The Pre-Raphaelite Critic from time to time; your comments and suggestions will help this project to grow.

Works Consulted
Blackaby, Jim and Beth Sandore.  “Building Integrated Museum Information Systems: Practical Approaches to Data Organization and Access.”  Museums and the Web Conference, Los Angeles, CA.  16-19 Mar. 1997.  Online.  University of Illinois--Urbana.  Internet.  9 Apr. 1998.  Available http://images.grainger.uiuc.edu/papers/mweb215.htm.
Digital Collections Project--”Studies in Scarlet.”  Online.  Research Libraries Group.  Internet.  9 Apr. 1998.  Available http://lyra.rig.org/strat/projdcp.html.
“Digital Remit.”  Online.  National Preservation Office of the British Library.  Internet.  9 Apr. 1998.  Available http://www.bl.uk/services/preservation/digital.html.
Eaton, Fynnette L.  “The National Archives and Electronic Records for Preservation.”  Preservation of Electronic Formats & Electronic Formats for Preservation.  41-62.
Ester, Michael.  Digital Image Collections: Issues and Practice.  Washington, DC: Commission on Preservation and Access, 1996.
“Harvard University Libraries Preservation Mission Statement.”  Online.  Harvard College Library Preservation Services.  Internet.  9 Apr. 1998.  Available http://preserve.harvard.edu/about/mission.html.
Kenney, Anne R. and Stephen Chapman.  Digital Imaging for Libraries and Archives.  Ithaca, NY: Department of Preservation and Conservation, Cornell University Library, 1996.
Kenney, Anne [R].  “The Role of Digital Technology in the Preservation of Research Library Materials.”  Preservation of Electronic Formats & Electronic Formats for Preservation.  1-22.
Literature Online Home Page.  Online.  Chadwyck-Healey.  Internet.  9 Apr. 1998.  Available http://lion.chadwyck.com.
McClung, Patricia A.  Digital Collections Inventory Report.  Commission on Preservation and Access.  Washington, DC: Council on Library Resources, 1996.
Preservation of Electronic Formats & Electronic Formats for Preservation.  Ed. Janice Mohlhenrich.  Fort Atkinson, WI:  Highsmith Press, 1993.
“Studies in Scarlet.”  RLG News 40.  Online.  Research Libraries Group.  Internet.  Available http://lyra.rlg.org/rlgnews/news40.html#dcptech.
Weibel, Stuart.  “A Proposed Convention for Embedding Metadata in HTML.”  Online.  OCLC.  Internet.  2 Jun. 1996.  Available http://www.oclc.org:5046/~weibel/html-meta.html.
Willis, Don.  “The Resolution factor in Preserving Page-Based Materials.”  Preservation of Electronic Formats & Electronic Formats for Preservation.  109-118.