Case study: a book-oriented digital library

Elizabeth Lew
LIS 7410 / Spring 2011
Dr. Wu
elew1@tigers.lsu.edu
Michigan State University Library’s Feeding America:
A Case Study
Feeding America is a library of 76 cookbooks digitized from the Michigan State
University Library‟s print collection. These 76 were carefully chosen from 7,000 books
related to culinary arts in the library‟s holdings, based on their historical significance
(Longborne). Browsing the collection by publication date reveals that the oldest
cookbook in the collection dates from 1798(Amelia Simmons‟s American Cookery, and
the newest from 1922 (Bertha M. Wood‟s Foods of the Foreign-Born in Relation To
Health).
Content Creation
Once chosen, the 76 cookbooks were digitized and transcribed. Those in good condition
were scanned on a color flatbed scanner at 400 dpi, in 24-bit color, and compressed as
.TIF files. Those in brittle condition were scanned by an overhead scanner and saved as
600 dpi in 1-bit color .TIF files, though the FA‟s site does not specify whether these were
compressed (Digitization). The .TIF masters were then converted to .JPG images of each
scan, and PDF versions of the complete texts. Users can download these versions
directly from the FA site. However, if users wish to acquire copies of the .TIF masters,
they are available upon request.
Typists then transcribed the texts from PDF using Note Tab software. According to the
FA website, project overseers chose to use Note Tab because “it produces only ASCII
text and has tag libraries which can be customized by editing one of the .clb files
accompanying the program. A miniature tag library has been created for the cookbooks,
containing only page breaks, paragraphs, font styles, and an ISO-LAT1 character menu”
(Digitization). The typists produced two copies of each text, which proofread against
each other by using software to compare the two transcriptions.
Metadata
Once transcribed, the text of each cookbook was then encoded using XML and a DTD
formulated especially for the Feeding America project.
The entire transcription file for a single cookbook (including the element) is
enclosed in the the wrapper element assigned to each individual work.

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Attributes for this element include: type (example values are: famous, restaurant, charity),
chefschool, histperiod, region, ethnicgroup, occasion (example values include: weddings,
Thanksgiving, winter, etc.). (Encoding)
Project overseers decided to use Dublin Core standards to organize resource description
for each work. This description, based on Dublin Core’s 11 elements, is located at the
beginning of the file, before the cookbook’s body text, and marked by the tag.
(Encoding) Dublin Core elements include: contributor, coverage (“The spatial or
temporal topic of the resource”), creator, date, description, format, identifier, language,
publisher, relation, rights, source, subject, title, and type. (Dublin Core)
Other metadata is located throughout the cookbook‟s body text, marked by the
element. The Feeding America DTD also allows for , , and
elements under the element. Beneath these elements,
and elements can be used for edibles and non-edibles, respectively. Still
further, the FA DTD also provides for sub-elements such as (to mark
uncommon processes mentioned in the text such as “braise” or “poach”; “stir” and
“roast” are too common to note), , and (these would mark
textual mention of uncommon tools such as “ramekin” or “double boiler”, but not
“spoon” or “dish”). (Encoding) Elements that describe the herarchy of sections of each
cookbook from the largest to smallest can be described by “class1”
and “class2” attributes, which use defined values (like a very small controlled vocabulary
thesaurus) to describe types of food. Examples of possible values include:
“eggcheesedairy”, “soups”, “fruitvegbeans”, and “meatfishgame”. (DTD)
Interface and Pages
The Feeding America portal displays links to the interactive parts of the website in a
horizontal tool bar laid out along the top of the page. Below it, news and updates, along
with sample images from the collection, fill the main portion, and right side of the page,
respectively.
The top tool bar is comprised of 8 links: Home, The Project, The Authors, Browse the
Collection, Search the Collection, Museum Objects, Glossary, and Partners.

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The Project provides a description of the Feeding America project, where much of the
background information in this paper was gathered. This area describes the scope and
nature of the collection, as well as the process of digitizing, coding, and building the
Feeding America portal. This section also provides press links and a 15-minute video
describing the collection and why some of the 76 books were chosen to be digitized.
Browsing
The Authors, Browse, Museum Objects, and Glossary pages are all presented similarly:
as menus, with a brief description of the contents of the list at the top of the page, and
directly beneath, the alphabet laid out as a menu, with each letter linking to the section of
the list body that corresponds with that letter. Below the alphabet menu is the beginning
of the alphabetized list, which can be entirely scrolled through as well.
The Glossary is a list of culinary terms, and does not provide opportunity for much
further interaction. The definition of each term is given directly after the alphabetized
entry, and only a few entries link to a different page.
Each entry listed in the Browse, Authors, and Museum Objects Pages all provide links to
unique pages for each entry. The author menu allows users to browse an alphabetical list
of cookbook authors. Each entry is also a link to a unique page created for that author,
containing a reference to the cookbook she/he authored, as well as a brief biography. The
Objects page allows users to browse an alphabetical list of cooking instruments housed in
the Michigan State University Museum. Likewise, each entry is also a link to a unique
page created for each instrument. Object pages include a photo of the utensil as well as a

description of the object‟s history and purpose.
Author browse menu
Object browse menu
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The Browse page is devoted to the cookbooks. Initially, the list of entries (each
formatted as cookbook title, author, and date of publication) is arranged alphabetically.
However, there are links at the top of the page to view versions of the list arranged by
date, and by interest. Arranged by date, the list is broken up into groups of three-year
intervals. Arranged by interest, the list is broken up into groups such as “Diet, nutrition,
health, health movements, vegetarianism; Charity and Church cookbooks; Hotels,
restaurants, etc; Markets and produce; Military cooking; Regional American Cooking:
Midwest, Northeast, South and Border states, and West; Ethnic Influences: African,
Asian, Creole, English, French, and so on. Each of these interest pages in turn pulls up a
short list of related titles. These lists are hand-coded, and not sets of retrieved results.

Searching
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The Search Page offers 4 options for searching: Book Author, Book Title, Recipe Name,
and Ingredients. The search function does not provide an option to browse results,
whether or not a query was successful. Author, Title, and Recipe searches all allow the
use of search strings, like “chocolate cake” (Search Help). They also allow searching by
partial name. For instance, an author search for “Merritt” will retrieve a link to “Farmer,
Fannie Merritt.” Keyword searching also works for books and recipes. For example, a
title search for “Creole” retrieves links to both Cooking in Old Creole Days and La
Cuisine Creole. A recipe search for “Creole” retrieves links to titles such as “Entrecote
Creole” (which is some sort of steak), “Sauce Creolle”, and “Baked Tomatoes, Creole
Style.”

Pros and Cons
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The retrieval mechanism is adept at identifying words in the middle of a phrase, title, or
word. This is useful, especially if the user can remember a useful keyword that happens
to be not at the beginning of a title. However, this quality can be frustrating, as it may
pick up keywords that are actually parts of other words, and might be unrelated. For
instance, a search for “Pie” will return results for “Pumpkin Pie” (useful), as well as
“Artichokes Stuffed with Meat (Carciofi ripieni di carne) (not useful).”
Another problem with the Feeding America retrieval mechanism is that there is no
thesaurus to funnel synonyms into a single search keyword. A search for crawfish
returns recipes for “Ecrevisses en buisson. Boiled Crawfish”, “Ecrevisses Bordelaise.
Crawfish a la Bordelaise”, “Oeufs brouisses aux queues d‟ecrevisse. Scrambled Eggs
with Crawfish Tails”, “Omelette Celestine. Omelet with Crawfish or Lobsters”, “Bisque
of Crab or Crawfish”, and “Crawfish Bisque”. Meanwhile, a search for crayfish turns up
a completely different set of recipes: “Crayfish Bisque a la Creole”, “Crayfish Bisque. A
Creole Dish”, “Crayfish Soup or Bisque”, “Crayfish-Broth for Purifying the Blood”, and
“Crabs and Crayfish”. Separate searches for recipes using one ingredient with two names
pulls up two separate sets of results for each name.
The Feeding America search engine cannot interpret Boolean logic. A search for
“‟chocolate‟ NOT „cake‟” rendered a syntax-error screen, while a search for “chocolate
NOT cake” yielded a blank result screen.
There is no way to do a generalized keyword search (i.e. across multiple fields). Even
though each text has built-in metadata to mark its “value” content, or subject (or
aboutness), the only way to find a resource by topic is to browse the list by topics of
interest. These lists rely on hand-coding, not search results, to present relevant titles.
Because of this, a user might be able to search for all books with a certain keyword in the
title, but would miss certain that share the same subject, but which do not have that
keyword in the title. So, for instance, a user might search for “sweets” and come up with

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Seventy-Five Receipts [sic] for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, but miss Chocolate and
Cocoa Recipes by Miss Perloa. The only way to find something by topic or subject is to
use the Browse page. However, even the Browse-by-interest page for “Baking &
Confectionary”, which includes the above two titles, does not include The Complete
Confectioner. Relying on the Feeding America library‟s Search options to find an item
based on subject may result in bad recall because of the lack of across-field searching, as
well as the apparent lack of a thesaurus to funnel search terms into a controlled
vocabulary. On the other hand, relying on the library‟s Browse pages means tolerating a
certain amount of human error.
It is odd that the FA library would not allow searching by topic, considering that its DTD
allows for subject assignment at multiple levels of each book‟s structural hierarchy
(chapter, section, sub-section, recipe, etc.). Similarly, the library‟s browse function does
not take advantage of the aforementioned topic-driven metadata either, as the browse-byinterest
lists are hand-coded.
Comparison
The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections‟ History of Science and Technology
digital library is also a book-oriented digital library. Like Feeding America, History of
Science creates both a “digital facsimile” of an original print book, as well as a
transcribed full-text version using OCR. History of Science also follows Dublin Core
standards, but uses TEI (a derivative of SGML) as its markup language. (Guidelines)
The History of Science And Technology collection also offers browse and search options.
Like Feeding America, the Browse option offers a list of available titles, each entry also
serving as a link to a separate webpage.
However, History of Science‟s search interface provides far more search options. As
with Feeding America, keyword search for “crawfish” and “crayfish” renders two
completely different sets of results. Unlike Feeding America, however, if the user is
aware of both synonyms, she can compose a search that will retrieve results for both
terms at once because History of Science allows Boolean searching using a graphical
interface. History of Science also allows users to formulate proximity searches through a
graphical interface, which Feeding America does not.
One of History‟s drawbacks is that the collection holds at least two copies of any text
(scanned images, and the transcribed text), only scanned versions are available to users
via the website. I am confused by the decision to not make the transcribed text versions
available to users if they exist.

University of Wisconsin Digital Collections’ History of Science and Technology proximity search interface
Conclusion
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I was struck by how simple Feeding America’s search mechanisms are. Because I work
mainly with library interfaces, I am accustomed to Boolean search capabilities, proximity
searching, controlled vocabularies, and across-field searching. Feeding America provides
none of these features. However, looking at the collection from the perspective of a
library professional rather than a library user, it may have been wise to keep the
collection’s search mechanisms basic. The collection, after all, is comprised of a mere 76
works. Users might be able to browse and search the collection as it exists with a fair
amount of success and accuracy. The site’s retrieval abilities might be improved by
adding the above-mentioned features, but perhaps not enough to justify the institution
investing the time and effort to build these mechanisms for such a small collection.

Works Cited
“Digitization” Feeding America. 2004. Web. 22 Feb, 2011.
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/project/project_digitization.html
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“Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1”. Dublin Core. 2011. Web. 22 Feb
2011.
http://www.dublincore.org/documents/dces/
“Encoding Guidelines” Feeding America. 2004. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.
< http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/project/project_encoding.html>
“Feeding America Cookbook .dtd”. Feeding America. 2004. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.
“Feeding America Search Help.” Feeding America. 2004. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/searchhelp.html
Gilliland, Anne J. “Setting the Stage.” Introduction to Metadata: Online, version 3.0.
2008. Web. 22 Feb 2011.
http://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/intrometadata/setting.
html
“Guidelines for Markup of Electronic Texts.” University of Wisconsin Digital
Collections Center. 16 Feb 2007. Web. 22 Feb 2011. <
http://uwdcc.library.wisc.edu/resources/etext/TEIGuidelines.shtml>
Longborne, Jan. “Introduction.” Feeding America. 2004. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/intro_essay.html