Project Title:

EPHEMERAL CITIES: A model for developing an historical digital atlas based on three Florida cities

Description and Activities:

From Gainesville to Key West, a sense of place gives meaning to our lives. Your great grandfather bought a citrus grove in Eustis; mine worked in the pencil factory near Way Key now Cedar Key.  Where we're from, where we're going all revolves around places with names.  The social fabric of modern cities reflects the rich mosaic of activities of past inhabitants.  Historically, place identity and place attachment have been associated with the development of peoples' attitudes, values, and beliefs.-

The purpose of Ephemeral Cities is to provide an interactive, Web-based model project that encourages citizens of all ages to explore the evolution of their cities.  Internet connectivity and relevancy of geographic information are identified factors in ameliorating the prevalent geographic illiteracy found in students in the U.S.    Ephemeral cities is designed with those factors in mind and with a intended long term outcome of creating city-based learning communities that will not only use the atlas, but contribute digital objects to enrich the exploration process for others.

Using the latest GIS (geographic information system) functionality, the project will develop digital city atlases using historic and modern map imaging technologies.  City directories, newspapers, and other place-related data and objects found in libraries, archives, museums, and agencies will be linked to the maps providing an historic "sense of place."  This model project will concentrate on three key Florida cities: Gainesville , the site of the largest state university; Tampa , the West coast hub of commerce and finance; and Key West , a winter haven for tourists.   Two snapshots of each city will be developed: one from the mid-1800s and one for the early part of the 20^th century.   The partners for this project include  five libraries and one cooperative library unit: University of Florida, Florida International University, Alachua County Library District, May Hill Russell Public Library of Monroe County Public Library, University of South Florida Libraries, and the Florida Center for Library Automation; four museums: Alachua County Historic Trust/Matheson Museum, Inc.,Gainesville, FL, Key West Art & Historical Society, Key West, FL, Tampa Bay History Center, Tampa, FL,  and the Henry B. Plant Museum, Tampa, FL; and two public records offices: Alachua County Clerk of the Court, and City of Key West.  The University of Florida will subcontract with the Florida Center for Instructional technology, University of South Florida to create the educational modules.

Objectives:

1. Develop a scalable project architecture employing geographic information system (GIS) functionality to link city maps, city directories, documents, databases, and images of period cultural objects.  The system architecture will permit the integration of additional cities and digital objects as interest in the project develops beyond the original partners.
2. Select 2,500 historical objects each for Gainesville , Tampa , and Key West .  Digitize, and create standards- compliant images and metadata.
3. Hold a "My Town" event in each of the three cities. During this event, citizens will be encouraged to bring in their own historic period artifacts for digital capture and sharing as part of this project.
4. Create 10 educational modules based on appropriate Florida Sunshine Standards [http://www.firn.edu/doe/menu/sss.htm] and the eighteen National Geography Standards [http://www.ncge.org/publications/tutorial/standards/] for use in classrooms, and 5 independent instructional modules for interested citizens.
5. Promote the use of "Ephemeral Cities" and facilitate the development of similar atlases for other Florida cities and for similar efforts in other states.

Anticipated result:

"Ephemeral Cities" will engage learners of all ages in exploring the historic geographies of cities and comparing them to modern metropolitan areas.   The developers envision this as a community based project that will offer extensive collaborative opportunities far beyond the period of the grant and will provide universal Web access to unique historical items held in isolated repositories throughout Florida .  As learners use this site, it is expected that they, in turn, may want to contribute personal items from their own city experiences to the project.  The "My Town" event will encourage citizen contributions and involvement.   If widely adopted, Ephemeral cities model will form the basis for a Florida digital city atlas facilitating the development of city-based learning communities throughout the state.  The potential for a national city atlas is already developing as many states have digital versions of the Sanborn maps, and map servers are becoming more prevalent in library settings.

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, tragic fires swept through wooden structures dominating many American cities.  By the later half of the 19^th century, American insurance companies supported a thriving insurance map business.   The most famous of these was created by D.A. Sanborn and became known as the Sanborn National Insurance Diagram Bureau.  This company employed surveyors in each state and standardized the map-producing process.  Maps were drawn at a scale of 1 inch = 50 feet.  By the 1930s, the company had surveyed 13,000 towns with populations over 2,000.  Rich in structural details, the early maps are considered primary sources of information on the changing character of America 's cities.  Today, these maps provide valuable historical details to architectural historians, environmentalists, genealogists, economists, urban planners, historians, urban restoration specialists, environmentalists, students, and others.  These standardized maps, with a recognized consistency in data representation, serve as the digital baseline for this project, while offering future scalability and interoperability of this model for all Florida cities and for cities across the country.

Sanborn maps for Gainesville for 1884 and 1903, for Tampa for 1884 and 1903, and for Key West for 1889 and 1899 will be georectified to provide historic base layers.  This will permit associated digitized historic objects to be referenced spatially to sites on the maps.  Modern thematic layers of roads, county boundaries, rivers, etc. will create comparative layers of modern city geographies.  By manipulating layers, learners will discover the vicissitudes of city development: prominent thoroughfares were renamed, redirected, relocated and/or obliterated and major features such as foundries, grist mills, and stables were replaced by schools and hospitals. 

Each of the selected cities is located near a state university library and each of the three academic libraries in collaboration with one or more partners will be responsible for creating a "sense of place" for that city.  Three City Partnerships have been formed for this project.  The Gainesville Partnership consists of the University of Florida Libraries , Alachua County Historic Trust/Matheson Museum, Inc., Alachua County Clerk of the Court, and Alachua County District Library.  The Key West Partnership consists of Florida International University Libraries; the Monroe County Board of Commissioners, Division of Community Services, Library Services; City of Key West ; and the Key West Art & Historical Society.  The Tampa Partnership consists of the University of South Florida Libraries , the Tampa Bay History Center , and the Henry B. Plant Museum .  Twenty five hundred digital objects will be created for each city.  Intended to capture the city's character at the targeted years, the digital items will include museum artifacts, photographs, postcards, brochures, letters, official records, etc. These items will be drawn from the collections of the partnering institutions.  Existing digital collections, e.g., Heritage Collection, Alachua County Library District [http://heritage.acld.lib.fl.us/ ], the Ancient Records database, Alachua County Clerk of the Court [http://www.clerk-alachua-fl.org/Archive/default.cfm], and the Florida Heritage Project [http://palmm.fcla.edu/fhp] will also be integrated.  Cigar makers, bakers, hat cleaners, and county jailors will again populate the static wood, adobe, and steel buildings rendered on Sanborn maps. 

National Impact

A National Geographic–Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey of 56 geographic and current events questions was given to more than 3,000 18- to 24-year-olds in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and the United States. ["Survey Reveals Geographic Illiteracy," Bijal P. Trivedi, National Geographic Today, November 20, 2002. URL: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1120_021120_GeoRoperSurvey.html]

The findings indicated "about 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map."  A Gainesville Sun article "Young Americans don't know geography," [November 21, 2002 ] noted "When asked to find 10 specific states on a map of the United States , only California and Texas could be located by a majority of those surveyed."

"Several perhaps interrelated factors affected performance—educational experience (including taking a geography course), international travel and language skills, a varied diet of news sources, and Internet use. Americans who reported that they accessed the Internet within the last 30 days scored 65 percent higher than those who did not." ["Survey Results: U.S. Young Adults are Lagging," National Geographic-Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey. URL: http://geosurvey.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/highlights.html]

Similar concerns were raised by the 2001 geography assessment administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress to approximately 25,000 students at grades 4, 8, and 12 in the nation.  Its report indicated that "only 21 percent of fourth-graders, 30 percent of eighth-graders, and 25 percent of twelfth-graders performed at or above the Proficient level for their respective grades. These levels are identified by NAGB [National Assessment Governing Board] as those at which all students should perform." ["The Nation's Report Card: Geography 2001," June 2002, by Andrew R. Weiss, Anthony D. Lutkus, Barbara S. Hildebrant, and Matthew S. Johnson.  URL: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main2001/2002484.asp]   A review of the statistics indicates that the majority of students are functioning at a Basic level that "denotes partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at a given grade." Interestingly enough, Internet use was also found to be a significant factor in positively influencing geographic literacy.

In commenting on the National Geographic-Roper survey, Nick Boyon, senior vice president for international research at RoperASW, said  "When geography and life intersect, people pay attention," and Roger Downs, head of the geography department at Pennsylvania State University in State College, added "Wouldn't it be nice if parents also read atlases to their children?"    Columnist Bill Maxwell writes "Your home tells you where you are and who you are" and echoes bioregionalist Wendell Berry reflections "Our identify… is defined to a large degree by our sense of place, our sense of home...."  ["A lingering sense of place," by Bill Maxwell. Gainesville Sun Opinions, Wednesday, December 11, 2002, p.13A]

The creation of "Ephemeral Cities" is intended to engage independent learners of all ages in discovering a "sense of place" for Florida cities.   While exploring the changing urban geographies of Florida 's cities, learners will become aware of the ephemeral nature of cities, understand that cities reflect the mosaic of cultural backgrounds of their inhabitants, and explore how place identity affects their own identities.   By focusing on Roger Down's "intersection of geography and life" and using the Internet as the vehicle of communication, this project intends to reinvigorate interest in Florida urban geography and to serve as a model for similar efforts across the state and country.   At least one of the educational modules will draw users beyond Florida 's borders to explore the homelands, cities, and origins of Florida 's 18^th and 19^th century urban dwellers and the livelihoods they brought to Florida .

Adaptability

The model proposed in this project can be adapted by cities throughout Florida and the country. 

All components of the "Ephemeral Cities" project will be documented and made available freely over the Web.  These will include the technical specifications for hardware/software architecture, digitization plan, metadata and metadata tools, educational modules, and promotional pieces.

Design

Because geographic literacy is correlated positively to Internet use and geographic information system (GIS) technologies provide an interactive approach to geography, the developers believe that this project has the potential to engage learners of all ages in map use and by extension geography related activities.  By integrating digital versions of historic information sources: newspapers, city directories, and images, with modern metropolitan GIS layers for roads, county lines, etc. unlimited opportunities for exploring cityscapes are created.  (Attachment A shows a sample of the geographic information integration that will be developed in this project.)

Product 1
Develop the " Ephemeral City " architecture including hardware and software components, integrating existing historical digital collections, and the Web interfaces to the project.

Responsible parties:
GIS Coordinator, University of Florida Libraries ; Staff of the Digital Library Center and the Systems Department, University of Florida Libraries ; Staff of the Florida Center for Library Automation; all partners offering digital collections on remote servers

a. Define, purchase, and install needed software and hardware for map server and creation of appropriate vector layers

The GIS Coordinator, UF Libraries will use mapping tools available with ERDAS Imagine 8.5 software to identify points on the six sets of selected Sanborn maps that can be aligned to a real-world coordinate system; thereby creating historic map images that can be used in a GIS system.  All map images and associated thematic layers such as roads, county boundaries, etc. will be served from the UF map server.  Under the supervision of the GIS coordinator, GIS technicians will be hired to create the appropriate site-specific linkages on each of the Sanborns selected for this project.  Lookup tables of the coordinates will be developed for use in populating descriptive metadata associated with the digital objects.  Additionally the South Florida Water Management District is paying for the early maps for Miami and Ft. Lauderdale to be georectified and added to the project.  (Please see project proposal and letter in Attachment G.)

b. Program functional interfaces between maps, textual databases, and digital objects

Integrating the functionality of the atlas components will be the responsibility of the System Programmer who will be hired with grant monies.  Under the direct supervision of the PI, and in collaboration with other partner members, the System programmer will develop the specifications for the necessary databases and file structures and the scripting/programming needed to connect remote digital object collections and databases to the underlying map layer.

The system architecture will integrate the functionality of: 1) UF Map Server holding Sanborn images and the current thematic layer data; 2) Full text city directories, newspaper articles, and textual objects residing on the textclass server at FCLA and digital images of still graphics including photographs, postcards and museum objects residing on the imageclass server at FCLA; 3) Ancient records are on a server at the Alachua County Clerk of the Court Office; and 4) the Heritage Collection of photographs, Alachua County Library District served from its own server.

c. Develop an online ingesting mechanism that will facilitate remote submittal of historical digital objects and metadata to the project.

The System Programmer will develop a publicly available online template for submitting historical digital objects and accompanying metadata.  Based on Dublin Core fields, this template will be tested during the current grant and refined as necessary.  It will be the ingestion mechanism for permitting public participation in building this project.   It will be used during the "My Town" day event will be held at each of the three cities. (See description of "My Town" day under Product #4)

d. Create the Web interface for the project.

The Web interfaces will be designed cooperatively by the Florida Center for Library Automation, the System Programmer, the GIS Coordinator, and the staff at the Digital Library Center .

Product 2 Select, digitize, and create standards-compliant historical digital objects with appropriate metadata and/or markup.

Responsible parties:
University of South Florida, Florida International University, University of Florida and all partners and the Florida Center for Library Automation.

1. Hold a preliminary planning meeting of all partners to establish communication lines, review participant obligations, and establish work deadlines and reporting.
   
   At the beginning of the project, all key partners will meet in Gainesville for a two-day workshop to review grant activities, responsibilities, and timelines.  Grant funding for this meeting will include travel and a per diem state rate for lodging and food.  This meeting will be hosted and facilitated by the University of Florida in conjunction with the Florida Center for Library Automation.

1. Define selection criteria for digitization of still graphics, textual materials, and museum objects.  Review scanning and metadata standards used in the public university cooperative digitization project "PALMM."
   
   At the initial meeting, selection criteria will be defined, scanning and metadata guidelines and standards reviewed, and production schedules established.  The PALMM standards are based on current best practices and national interoperability standards compliant with IMLS and NSF initiatives.  (PALMM digitization and metadata standards and guidelines are available at http://palmm.fcla.edu/strucmeta/standres.html)  The specific digitization plan for this project may be found in Attachment E. These standards have been used for all digital objects contributed to the Florida Heritage project.  By June 2003, metadata for digitized texts of a previously funded IMLS grant "Linking Florida's Natural Heritage" will be available for Open Archive harvesting.
   
   FCLA has developed an MXF Metadata client that creates Dublin Core/OAI compliant records.  This client will be used in the Ephemeral Cities project. Metadata elements include subject schemes for education and man-made cultural objects.  Cultural object keywords will be selected from Blackaby, Greeno and The (American Association for State and Local History) Nomenclature Committee's The Revised Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging: A Revised and Expanded Version of Robert G. Chenhall's System for Classifying Man-Made Objects.  Metadata from curriculum supporting sites such as AskERIC [http://ericir.syr.edu/Virtual/Lessons/lpform.shtml], Federal Resources for Educational Excellence [http://www.ed.gov/free/index.html], the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse [http://www.enc.org/] , Florida Online Encyclopedia, and the Florida Geographic Alliance will also be reviewed.
   
2. Digitization of selected objects
   
   A summary list of the collections that will contribute items for digitization can be found in Attachment B.
   
   Although each of the academic libraries has flat bed scanners, all partnering institutions do not.  Grant funding will supply each partnership with one digital camera system, one computer workstation, and one flatbed scanner to be used on grant activities.  One Project Technician will be hired for each partnership and will travel between agencies to prepare digital objects as needed.
   
   Each of the three partnerships will be responsible for providing 1000 graphical objects, e.g., photographs, postcards; 250 items or 1,000 pages of textual materials, e.g., brochures, pamphlets, books; and between 30-50 digital images of cultural period objects.
   
   The Digital Library Center , University of Florida Library will digitize two sets of Sanborn maps for each city.  It will also outsource the digitization, text conversion, and markup for the newspaper runs and city directories that are selected and the 250 textual items selected by each partnership.  ByteManagers and iArchives are the two vendors of choice for full text conversion and markup.  They have established performance records including the Utah newspaper project.  Both were asked to provide sample work for a set of newspapers, the results showed 100% accuracy in text conversion and their prices are among the lowest quoted.  The digital images and full text created will be served and archived at the Florida Center for Library Automation.
3. Serving and archiving digital objects
   
   The Florida Center for Library Automation will serve derivative images and metadata from appropriate textclass and imageclass servers.  Master uncompressed TIFF images will be archived and migrated as technologies evolve.

Product 3 Create and test 15 educational modules

Responsible parties:
Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of South Florida

a. The Florida Center for Instructional Technologies will develop and pilot 15 educational modules

The Florida Center for Instructional Technology has created an extensive educational site "Florida Then & Now" [http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/florida/lessons/lessons.htm] for Florida 's social studies teachers.  Fully developed educational modules include: a reading passage, teacher notes, reading strategy, student questions, and student activity sheets.   Educational modules for Ephemeral Cities will follow the same structure, although pre and posttests will be included.

The specifications for design and content are set forth in the Partnership Statement (in this application) between the University of Florida Libraries and the Florida Center for Instructional Technology.

b. Complete digital object metadata with instructional attribute fields

Each metadata record for historic digital objects will include data on lesson plans, themes, and learning standards for Florida .  These attributes will be filled in as the objects are incorporated into formalized educational modules.

Product 4 Hold a "My Town" event in each of the three cities to encourage citizen participation in creating Ephemeral City digital collections.

Responsible parties: 
All city partnerships

Each city partnership will be responsible for planning a "My Town" event at an appropriate city site, preferably the public library or historical museum, where citizens will be asked to bring an historical artifact to digitally contribute to the project.  This event will occur in the spring.  All of the partnership members will be responsible for scheduling, equipment setup, and manning the event.  Non-paid volunteers may be recruited as needed from the community.   Metadata and digital image capture will occur at the event and be submitted to FCLA for serving and archiving as part of the Ephemeral Cities project.  Equipment purchased through this grant will be used at the event.  The Alachua County Historic Trust/Matheson Museum, Inc., Gainesville has agreed to create publicity pieces that can be adapted to each city event as needed.

See examples of Gainesville and Key West publicity.

Product 5: 
Promoting the use of "Ephemeral Cities"

Responsible parties:
Grant manager at UF in conjunction with the Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of South Florida and all partners

The grant manager in conjunction with the Florida Center for Instructional Technology will identify state educational networks, mailing lists and newsletters that will receive notification of this project.  In addition, local GIS organizations will be alerted to the availability of this resource. The Florida Geographic Alliance will be contacted and asked to disseminate project information to Florida 's geography teachers.

Salary cost sharing by key partners is detailed in the budget.    Because the interest in developing this project is wide spread, several institutions are providing various resources gratis.  All of these institutions have signed partnership agreements as part of this packet.  Their contributions are listed below.   The total value is estimated at $30,000.

Alachua County Clerk of the Court

James Powell, Ancient Records Manager, selects, digitizes and makes available 600 documents from the Clerk's public records; assists the system programmer in remote launch of search URLs as part of this project. 

Alachua County District Library (ACDL)

Nance Lempinen-Leedy, Project Coordinator and Adult Services Manager of the District, will coordinate the project related aspects at the Headquarters Library, supervise other library staff affiliated with the project, and liaison with project partners.

Bobby Ruth Powell, Project Librarian, will select 200 items to include in the project, research images, write image description, and assign descriptors and subject headings.  She will work with the Project Scanner, Project Cataloger and report to the ACDL Coordinator. 

Virginia Fettes, Project Cataloger, will catalog the 200 items.

Jeff Dreisin, Project Scanner, will scan and quality control the images of the 200 items following established procedures.

Monroe County Public Library , Key West , Florida

Anne Layton Rice, Library Administrator and onsite Project Coordinator, will provide local coordination of item selection for digitization. 2000 pages of textual materials and 215 still graphics will be made available and scanned. She will coordinate the selection of items from the two other Key West partners: City of Key West and the Key West Art and Historical Society.

Henry B. Plant Museum , Tampa , Florida

Cynthia Gandee, Director, will select items from their collections for digitization and provide necessary information to create the metadata.  She will provide onsite space for scanning and/or digital camera capture.

Tampa Bay History Center , Tampa , Florida

Robert S. Blount, III, President and CEO, will select items from their collections for digitization and provide necessary information to create the metadata.  He will provide onsite space for scanning and/or digital camera capture.

Key West Museum of Art and History, Key West , Florida

Claudia Pennington, Executive Director, oversees staff members to select artifacts, historic photographs and archival materials for the Ephemeral Cities project.

Norman Aberle, Curator, runs data base search to identify objects in KWAHS collection from the 1889-1899 period.  He then locates the objects (in our museums or in archival storage) for the imaging process.

Brewster Chamberlin, registrar, prepares archival background information to assure  historical accuracy on each of the selected items.

Prior to this project, the University of Florida has created high-resolution scaleable color images of the 6,500 Florida Sanborn maps created between the 1860s and 1923 and has purchased an appropriate map server ($5,335) that will serve the thematic layers including the Sanborn images associated with this project.  The State University Libraries Digital Projects Planning Committee that oversees the development of collaborative university library digital projects [PALMM] has allocated $12,000 for the production of the city directory database associated with this grant

Project personnel include lead project coordinators for each city partnership.  Each lead coordinator is at a major academic library and possesses extensive experience in collaborative digital projects.  Supporting staff at each academic library has the requisite knowledge and skills to perform all functions associated with digitization and metadata creation.  All are participating in the PALMM  (Publication of Archival, Library, and Museum Materials) (http://palmm.fcla.edu) initiative started by the Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA) and have adapted common best practice standards for digitization and metadata creation.   Currently there are fourteen active PALMM projects, covering topics ranging from herbarium specimens to juvenile literature.  The Florida Heritage Collection (http://palmm.fcla.edu/fh/) is a collaborative project of all public university libraries.   The Florida Center for Library Automation serves the academic libraries by managing their collections of digital texts, images and other media and will serve the same role for this project.

The city partners include museums, city records offices, and libraries.  Each participating organization will have a project coordinator.  These individuals are records managers, museum directors/curators and librarians with expertise in curating their specific collections. 

The GIS Coordinator for the project has a Master's Degree from the University of Florida 's Civil Engineering Geomatics program (Survey and Mapping) and 14 years of experience managing GIS and remote sensing projects.

Technical support for the project will come from the Florida Center for Library Automation and the Systems Department at the University of Florida Libraries .  These computer groups have extensive experience in database development and maintenance, Web interfaces, and serving of digital materials.

(Attachment C contains resumes of key personnel.)

Ephemeral Cities will use the IMLS Outcomes Based Evaluation system.  A variety of assessment and evaluation tools will be used: some will quantify use, others will provide a quality review of particular procedures and other aspects of the project with the intent to make the final project usable, extensible for current and future partners, and of value to students, educators, and the public.  Final focus groups will be conducted by each partnership to determine the experiences of the participants.

(Attachment D contains the Evaluation Plan.)

The grant team will disseminate information on this project using the following avenues:

1. Create and distribute notices of the project to appropriate electronic mailing lists,
2. Present the project at appropriate IMLS and digital library project meetings including state, national, museum, archive, and historical society conferences,
3. Publish articles in the professional journals and newsletters of library, museum, historical and archival societies,  and
4. Develop hardcopy publicity to be sent to Florida historical societies and libraries encouraging their adoption of a city to help build Florida's historical city atlas beyond the granting period. 
5. The Operations Manager and the developer of the education modules will develop and distribute introductory material targeted at K-12 teachers in Florida.

Many states have already digitized Sanborn maps for their cities.  Because these maps provide a standard historical base for all U.S. cities, the system architecture designed in the Ephemeral cities project can be adopted by any city/state that is interested in building a city digital atlas.  Because the system is designed to encourage citizen contributions, the project developers believe that city learning communities will grow over time.  The "My Town" event is expected to initiate a community awareness and interest in the project.

In Florida, all public state universities participate in the Florida Heritage project (http://palm.fcla.edu/fh/): a digital collection of texts and still images on Florida's history, culture, arts, literature, and natural environments.  The Florida Heritage project is funded on a yearly basis and many of the digitized items will be suitable for linking in Ephemeral Cities.  Because the South Florida Water Management District is contributing monies to expand the project to include early maps of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, both the University of South Florida and Florida International University have agreed to spend their 2003/04 Florida Heritage funding ($7,500 each) to continue the building of the Ephemeral Cities digital collections.   Florida International University has already indicated an interest in selecting items for digitization from the Wolfsonian collections (http://www.wolfsonian.fiu.edu/index.html) to further the project.