Digital Collections Assessment and Outreach, SPEC Kit 341 (August 2014)

Ochoa, Marilyn N.; Taylor, Laurie N.; Sullivan, Mark V.

SPEC Kit 341: Digital Collections Assessment and Outreach · 115
DUKE UNIVERSITY
ROAD 2.0: Digitizing Outdoor Advertising. Final Report
http://blogs.library.duke.edu/digital-collections/files/2011/04/NARA-FinalReport1.pdf
NAR09-RD-10017-09 Digitizing Outdoor Advertising Final Report
6
The ROAD 2.0 portal page
(http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/outdoor_advertising/) was viewed 7,401
times, with a peak of 724 views on July 20, 2011. These figures include traffic to
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/outdoor-advertising/ as the site was
available at either location during the first several months of the project. We are
encouraged that the ROAD 2.0 portal was visited more frequently than most of our
existing digital collection portals: compared with other digital collections at Duke
University Libraries during this period, ROAD 2.0 was the ninth most popular digital
collection (of 40 in our common discovery &access application), as measured by
portal page views.
However, there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to helping
potential users discover these materials. For instance, pageviews for four of Duke’s
advertising digital collections portals surpassed the ROAD 2.0 portal’s 7,401 during
this period: Ad*Access =177,590 pageviews Emergence of Advertising in America =
70,500 pageviews AdViews =33,145 pageviews and Medicine &Madison Avenue =
10,930 pageviews.
Likewise, while most of the digitized items from ROAD 2.0 were viewed at least once,
and there were several items that were viewed over 100 times, nearly 38% were
never viewed by a single user during the year (see APPENDIX 7: ROAD 2.0 Item
Pageviews). These numbers suggest that we need to do a better job promoting the
collection to potential users in the future, as well as enhance our discovery &access
application so that our pages (portals as well as items) are better optimized for
discovery by search engines.
Our web analytics search data corroborates a conclusion drawn from our user survey
responses: there has been slightly more interest in finding materials by geographic
region than by particular products or companies, and the landscapes that surround
the advertising in the photographs are as compelling to researchers as the ads
themselves. (See APPENDIX 10: ROAD 2.0 Frequent Search Terms.)
Finally, our statistics on post-search site interactions support survey feedback that
indicated users felt their searches were successful and were satisfied with the
relevance of the materials they were discovering on the site. Users who performed
searches usually viewed multiple pages of results, opened item pages, and stayed on
the site for several minutes before leaving.
4. Promotion of Collection &Project Documentation
Launch of the ROAD 2.0 digital collection was promoted to advertising-industry
publications and websites as well as to archival organization, and through the Duke
University Libraries’ and Hartman Center’s online and print media outlets. Persistent
information about the project and the ROAD 2.0 collection are available through the
digital collections website,
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/outdooradvertising/about/.

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SPEC Kit 341: Digital Collections Assessment and Outreach · 115
DUKE UNIVERSITY
ROAD 2.0: Digitizing Outdoor Advertising. Final Report
http://blogs.library.duke.edu/digital-collections/files/2011/04/NARA-FinalReport1.pdf
NAR09-RD-10017-09 Digitizing Outdoor Advertising Final Report
6
The ROAD 2.0 portal page
(http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/outdoor_advertising/) was viewed 7,401
times, with a peak of 724 views on July 20, 2011. These figures include traffic to
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/outdoor-advertising/ as the site was
available at either location during the first several months of the project. We are
encouraged that the ROAD 2.0 portal was visited more frequently than most of our
existing digital collection portals: compared with other digital collections at Duke
University Libraries during this period, ROAD 2.0 was the ninth most popular digital
collection (of 40 in our common discovery &access application), as measured by
portal page views.
However, there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to helping
potential users discover these materials. For instance, pageviews for four of Duke’s
advertising digital collections portals surpassed the ROAD 2.0 portal’s 7,401 during
this period: Ad*Access =177,590 pageviews Emergence of Advertising in America =
70,500 pageviews AdViews =33,145 pageviews and Medicine &Madison Avenue =
10,930 pageviews.
Likewise, while most of the digitized items from ROAD 2.0 were viewed at least once,
and there were several items that were viewed over 100 times, nearly 38% were
never viewed by a single user during the year (see APPENDIX 7: ROAD 2.0 Item
Pageviews). These numbers suggest that we need to do a better job promoting the
collection to potential users in the future, as well as enhance our discovery &access
application so that our pages (portals as well as items) are better optimized for
discovery by search engines.
Our web analytics search data corroborates a conclusion drawn from our user survey
responses: there has been slightly more interest in finding materials by geographic
region than by particular products or companies, and the landscapes that surround
the advertising in the photographs are as compelling to researchers as the ads
themselves. (See APPENDIX 10: ROAD 2.0 Frequent Search Terms.)
Finally, our statistics on post-search site interactions support survey feedback that
indicated users felt their searches were successful and were satisfied with the
relevance of the materials they were discovering on the site. Users who performed
searches usually viewed multiple pages of results, opened item pages, and stayed on
the site for several minutes before leaving.
4. Promotion of Collection &Project Documentation
Launch of the ROAD 2.0 digital collection was promoted to advertising-industry
publications and websites as well as to archival organization, and through the Duke
University Libraries’ and Hartman Center’s online and print media outlets. Persistent
information about the project and the ROAD 2.0 collection are available through the
digital collections website,
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/outdooradvertising/about/.

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114 · Representative Documents: Assessment Reports and Instruments
DUKE UNIVERSITY
ROAD 2.0: Digitizing Outdoor Advertising. Final Report
http://blogs.library.duke.edu/digital-collections/files/2011/04/NARA-FinalReport1.pdf
NAR09-RD-10017-09 Digitizing Outdoor Advertising Final Report
5
Analysis of User Survey Responses
There were 66 total responses to the survey. Forty-eight responses (73%) were
complete and so were used to develop analysis. The remaining 18 responses (27%)
were partial responses (started but abandoned before the end of the survey) and
thus were excluded from analysis. Of the total 48 analyzed responses, 26 (54%)
included additional feedback. A detailed analysis of responses to survey questions is
appended to this report, along with complete listings of the additional feedback users
provided (see APPENDICES 3-5).
Overall, responses to the survey were very positive, with most users reporting high
degrees of satisfaction (see APPENDIX 4: Detailed Analysis of Responses to ROAD
2.0 Survey). Of the users seeking particular images, 86% were satisfied (either
“very” or “somewhat”). Likewise, 83% of users doing topical research reported
satisfaction. While the site’s ease of use was generally rated favorably, it is worth
noting that slightly more respondents felt it was “somewhat easy to use” (20, or 42%)
than “very easy to use” (19, or 40%).
The types of users and uses identified were also insightful, as they indicated to us a
higher percentage of casual users than we might have expected (see APPENDIX 4:
Detailed Analysis of Responses to ROAD 2.0 Survey). It was also surprising to learn
that of the respondents doing topical research, the majority was apparently not
researching the signs, billboards, or advertising depicted in the photographs. Though
there are too few responses to generalize, it is worth noting that geographical place
names figured prominently among the research topics. (See APPENDIX 3: ROAD 2.0
Users’ Research Topics for all user-supplied responses to this question.)
Slow load times, difficulties navigating between several images at once, and
insufficient description of outdoor advertisements’ locations were all cited as
negative aspects of the site (see APPENDIX 5: ROAD 2.0 Users’ Additional
Feedback). It is likely that the site’s unresponsiveness was a primary factor for the
users who expressed difficulty or dissatisfaction using the site, given the prevalence
of comments that cited slowness as a problem. Slow load times have been
problematic for all of Duke’s collections during this assessment period, but
development is underway to speed up the application by the end of summer 2012.
Some of the navigation features requested by users (grid view and category-specific
slideshow) were actually already possible in the application, so these may not be
presented clearly enough in the interface.
Web Analytics
We used Google Analytics on all pages of the ROAD 2.0 website in order to measure
user interactions with the site and the digitized items within. Statistics were collected
for the period April 18, 2011 to June 27, 2012, covering the entire lifetime of the
website to date. A project launch timeline (APPENDIX 6: Timeline of Web Statistics)
contextualizes the dates during which web statistics were gathered. A more complete
breakdown and discussion of these statistics, analyzed in summary form below, are
appended to this report (see APPENDICES 7-11).

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SPEC Kit 341: Digital Collections Assessment and Outreach (August 2014) resources

116 · Representative Documents: Assessment Reports and Instruments
DUKE UNIVERSITY
ROAD 2.0: Digitizing Outdoor Advertising. Final Report
http://blogs.library.duke.edu/digital-collections/files/2011/04/NARA-FinalReport1.pdf
NAR09-RD-10017-09 Digitizing Outdoor Advertising Final Report
7
Promotion
The portal was released in April 2011, and heavily promoted through a press release
and postings with a variety of trade journals, blogs, and listservs (see APPENDIX 12:
ROAD 2.0 Press Release). News of the ROAD 2.0 digital collection appeared as a
cover article in the Summer 2011 Hartman Center Front &Center newsletter. It was
also posted on the Center’s Facebook page, the Duke University Libraries home page
as a news article, and the David M. Rubenstein Library’s blog, The Devil’s Tale.
The ROAD 2.0 digital collection was promoted to academic groups such as the
Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing (CHARM), Business
History Conference, American Academy of Advertising and through the H-Announce
listserv. The press release was also distributed to the Society of American Archivists’
(SAA) Archival Outlook magazine, the Society of North Carolina Archivists’ (SNCA)
newsletter, and the Business Archives Section of SAA.
Documentation
Documentation of project work is described below and in the appendices.
Documentation for this project can also be accessed publicly through the project
website: http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/outdooradvertising/about/.
Cost Assessment
This project sought to produce digital images for less than $5.00 per scan. As shown
in Table 1 above, actual digitization costs were lower than expected, and the rapid
pace of digitization allowed us to scan more images than originally planned. The
result was an average cost of $3.54 per image, well below our goal of $5 per image.
Table 2: Planned versus Actual Digitization Expenses
Budget Category Planned
Expenditures
Actual
Expenditures
Notes
Digitization Assistant
wages
$33,333.50 $23,337.50 0.5 FTE 20 hour/wk
Digitization equipment $2,500.00 $2,500.00 Zeutschel planetary scanner
Contract digitization
services
$11,640.00 $19,141.71 Vendor digitization of slides
Shipping costs $250.00 $257.09 Shipping slides to vendor to
digitize
Cost share: staff salaries $49,706.00 $38,973.07
Fringe benefits $17,410.35 $13,278.93 Cost share +appropriated funds
TOTAL DIGITIZATION
COSTS
$114,839.85 $97,488.30

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Page 9Survey Results click to expand contents

Page 71Representative Documents click to expand contents

Page 73Digital Collections Homepages click to expand contents

Page 85Digital Project Selection Criteria click to expand contents

Page 95Outreach and Assessment Guides click to expand contents

Page 107Assessment Reports and Instruments click to expand contents

Page 147Marketing Plans click to expand contents

Page 155Promoting Digital Collections click to expand contents

Page 169Lesson Plans and Classroom Resources click to expand contents

Page 177Works Created from Digital Collections click to expand contents

Page 185Job Descriptions click to expand contents

Page 195Selected Resources click to expand contents

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