Quality Assurance QA

Quality Assurance Procedures / Methodology
QA Statistical Sampling Chart
QA Summit in NYC

The purpose of this wiki page is to develop a single BHL voice on QA to strengthen our case in our relationship with IA on this issue and ultimately improve the overall quality of items in the portal.

List of QA issues by Institution

SI

NYBG

AMNH - AMNH began doing in-house QA after the Summer 2009 NYBG QA summit meeting. Though we had limited staff available for QA, because there was the assumed necessity to get as much right as possible, our library decided (with the assistance of volunteers and interns) to QA every scanned book, beginning with our first cart, and then send out a cart of books that were determined to have egregious errors once enough volumes had been accumulated. This procedure was based on given assumptions during the conference call with Robert at IA during the NYBG QA summit, where the question was brought with him up as to what would IA be willing to do (if anything) regarding re-scanning if errors were found some 2-3 years down the road. His answer appeared to state that items/submissions for rescanning would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but that he would not at that time give a solid "cut-off" date as to when works would not be re-submittable.

On December 13, 2011, we presented IA with a spreadsheet containing seventy-seven volumes which we considered to have major issues involving missed pages, pages with information cut-off, clarity, possible calibration errors, etc. On January 27, 2011 Stacy at the Princeton IA scanning facility sent us the document back with notes from Robert (he had checked apx the first 1/3 of the list), and called us stating that Robert (1) disagreed with some of the issues we brought up, especially regarding scanning clarity, and more importantly, (2) he said the age of the books that we presented in the spreadsheet (re: the time frame they were scanned--mainly 2008-2010) were far too old for them to be willing to re-scan them for free: It was a straight-up "no go". I mentioned during this phone call how at the QA summit that Robert did not appear in the conference call to set a specific deadline on getting materials re-scanned, but Stacy stated that the standard rule they were working by was a 30 day turnaround between the time the library received the books back and reported any QA issues to them. In severe cases, leeway could be as given as long as six months, but that was the limit.

What this meant, for us personally, was that after the NYBG meeting had been completed and we had decided to start on-site QA procedures at AMNH, that all 14 or so carts we had sent to IA at that point were already beyond the 30 day re-submission date, and only half of them were still within the six-month "extreme situation" time-frame. Obviously, if we had been more aware of hard dates/deadlines, the in-house follow-up QA procedures on our part would have moved forward in an extremely different manner than it did.

As of 1/30/2012 the 50 books with the worst QA issues are to be sent to SIL for scanning via the BHL FedEx account.

MBLWHOI

MCZ

MOBOT

FIELD

NHM

QA relative to Ingested works

I agree with Connie that we should treat the publishers as valued customers and strive for max quality. Is it possible to develop a new QA methodology specifically for the ingested materials? Considering BHL staffing concerns, would we then need tohave our dedicated BHL technicians at SI focus on this with support from other institutions?
Reaching a consensus on this issue should certainly be a goal of the NYC trip.

BHL HARVESTING, IA UPDATING DILEMMA