Project Site Home > Content Workflow

 Content Preparation

This page walks you through the delivery and processing workflow for partners. In addition to specific steps that partners should follow, we have provided links to resources that can help you prepare materials.

Selection

Content selection for the WDL is determined by partners in conjunction with WDL staff. Please nominate your materials using the WDL Content Proposal Form.

• The form will ask you to indicate a quarterly delivery window.
• Submit a separate form for each content delivery.
• Proposals for deliveries may be submitted at any time.

A Content Selection Committee and several specialized working groups have been established to focus on selection and collection development.

• Content Selection Guidelines developed by the Content Selection Committee.
• Mesoamerican Codices Working Group
• Report from the Chinese Content Selection Working Group (PPT)

Media Preparation

When preparing your media files, please keep in mind the following WDL guidelines:

• Media Standards
• Filenaming Guidelines
• Preparing Your Content (PPT)

Please check through your files for these common problems:

• Color targets -- Please use at least one color target for each item. This helps us with color management since we do not have access to the original item if we suspect color issues.
• Resolution -- We prefer color tiffs at 300 pixels per inch (118 pixels per centimeter) at 100% of the original size.
• Compression -- Please use lossless compression, such as LZW, over lossy standards such as JPEG.
• Cropping -- Please crop to just beyond the item edges. Do not leave large areas outside the item.
• Skewing -- Please fix any skewing issues.
• Missing files -- Please check for missing files. This is a surprisingly common problem.

Metadata

When preparing your metadata, please keep in mind the following WDL guidelines:

• WDL Descriptive Metadata Element Set
• WDL Element Mapping to Standards and Detailed Instructions (Word)

Please also check your metadata for the following:

• Abbreviations -- Please do not use abbreviations. It is very time consuming to hunt down the meanings of abbreviations, particularly in languages other than English. If an abbreviation appears in an original title, please send us a glossary with the full definition.
• Roles -- Please add roles to names, wherever known.
• Dates -- Please use Common Era (CE) dates or provide their equivalent.
• URLs -- Please provide a stable URL (not one that expires) for the item if it exists.
• Copyright -- If you are sending items that may have copyright issues (for example, published in 1923 or after), please provide a justification for why you believe it is in the public domain for our records.

The WDL accepts metadata in several standards. Please use one of the following standards or use the WDL Metadata Spreadsheet (Excel). Do NOT send Word documents. We cannot import them.

• MARC (XML & Binary)
• Dublin Core (XML)
• MODS (XML)
• TEI (XML)
• UniMARC (binary)

Please use the following authority files and controlled vocabularies for metadata consistency:

• Personal and corporate names: Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)
• Creator roles: MARC Code List for Relators
• Additional subjects: Library of Congress Authorities and/or Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM)
• Topics: Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)
• Place names: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)
• Language names and codes: ISO 639-3 Code Tables

Some tools that may be of interest:

• MARCEdit -- a free desktop MARC editing tool
• Koha -- an open-source server-based Integrated Library System with cataloging module

Review

The partner review step takes place later in the production workflow so partners can see and review the metadata and descriptions of the items as they will appear on the WDL website.

Once descriptions and metadata are complete for a given set of content, the WDL team will send the partner contact an e-mail with a link to the Partner Review Site along with a Partner Review Feedback Form for the materials. The Partner Review Site:

• will have item-level displays available in English;
• will not be “live” or accessible to the public;
• will be identical to what will appear on www.wdl.org, pending partner edits, corrections and comments.

The accompanying Partner Review Feedback Form includes a section with questions from the WDL team as well as a feedback table. Please answer all questions there as best you can. For the feedback table, please:

• review the records for accuracy and clarity;
• pay particular attention to transliteration of names or place names (if applicable);
• specify any changes needed to the institution name, custodial unit or collection;
• note changes or corrections in the table in the corresponding item row, for example:

  WDL Identifier:	Changes needed? (Yes/No)	Comments
  5678	Yes	"Some of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs date from about 1899" should read "Some of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs date from about 1905".

• make sure that your review is final and authoritative -- corrections and changes made later (after translation into the six WDL languages) are expensive and time-consuming.

We are asking that reviews be completed within two weeks. Once the review is complete, the English records will be sent for translation into the other six WDL languages.