CDLR Publications Aspect: Access to Scottish Parliamentary Election Candidate Materials 1999 Alan Dawson Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XH July 2002 alan.dawson@strath.ac.uk This article was published in Assignation, Volume 19 Number 4, 2002.

Background

In simple terms, the Glasgow Digital Library (GDL) seeks to create, collect and provide access to digital content that is about Glasgow, in Glasgow or for Glasgow, but will not duplicate work done elsewhere. Put more formally, the GDL is a distributed digital library based in Glasgow which aims to produce a coherent digital learning and information environment, through development and implementation of a common collection development policy and an agreed technical and inter-working infrastructure.

Information Environment

As well as creating and managing original content, a crucial part of the purpose and philosophy of the GDL is to develop an information environment based on international standards which will:

• allow separate collections to be searchable individually (e.g. Aspect), as a whole (e.g. the Glasgow Digital Library), or as part of a larger collection (e.g. the GDL and the National Grid for Learning Scotland and other digital resources).
• ensure compatibility with international standards for resource description and cross-searching.
• enable GDL resources to be visible worldwide and discoverable by those with no prior knowledge of their existence.
• allow collections of digital objects to be assembled and presented in different ways, e.g. to be browsed via different indexes and headings or tailored for different audiences.

The standards currently being used by the GDL include:

The GDL is collaborating with the National Library of Scotland and Glasgow University to extend the LCSH subject vocabulary to include additional British and Scottish terminology, so that it becomes more suitable for use by British projects.

The Aspect collection

The Aspect project was set up to create a digital archive of the ephemera - leaflets, flyers, postcards and newsletters - produced by candidates and political parties for the first Scottish parliamentary election in May 1999. Aspect is based on the collection of election ephemera held by the Andersonian Library at the University of Strathclyde, which is acknowledged to be a unique record of a key event in Scottish history. As well as providing widespread access to the collection, the digitisation will help conserve the original materials, which may be subject to deterioration through loss and damage.

As well as digital reproduction of original materials, Aspect includes transcriptions of the text of many of the leaflets and supplementary information on the political process and the election results. The collection is of relevance to a range of users, including students and researchers of political science, history, Scottish affairs and communication, as well as politicians, civil servants, journalists and the general public.

Aspect currently holds over 1200 images of election literature. Coverage is extensive but not complete - source material is available for around 70% of constituency candidates (234 out of 339) and for all but one of the 19 registered parties that contested the election.

Within the Aspect collection, materials fall into several categories, including:

• literature relating to a single candidate standing in one of the 73 constituencies
• literature relating to a group of candidates from a single political party, in one of the eight electoral regions
• general literature relating to a single political party, at regional or national level
• documents relating to the election as a whole

Content Management

In order to enable efficient content management and flexible user access, data about all electoral candidates, all constituency and region results, and all available literature was entered into a relational database, which enables the data from a single source to be re-used in different ways:

• Generation of multiple sets of Web pages, to enable browsing via different indexes (parties, regions, constituencies and candidates).
• Generation of controlled metadata embedded within each Web page, to enable discovery by Internet search engines and harvesting by collaborative projects.
• Generation of catalogue records in MARC 21 format for uploading to a Horizon database, to facilitate cross-searching with other local and distributed collections.
• Generation of metadata in MARC 21 or Dublin Core format for uploading to the OCLC CORC service (Collaborative Online Resource Cataloguing), to assist international attempts at improving description and discovery of Internet resources.

Currently this flexibility is achieved by using an Access database and Visual Basic programs, though future migration to a larger system is probable. The success of this approach is, as ever, dependent on a consistent and disciplined approach to data entry and editing.

Browsing and Searching

Aspect is available for browsing at http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/aspect/. There is a separate Web page for each constituency candidate, with thumbnails for every available image. The highest number of images for any single candidate is 25 (from nine publications), by the Conservative Party candidate for Stirling. Despite this effort he only came third in the constituency, but was successfully elected as an MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament) from the Mid Scotland and Fife electoral region (56 out of 129 MSPs were elected via this system of proportional representation). As well as the constituency candidate and index pages, there are indexes for each electoral region and each party, as well as a full alphabetical index of candidates, so the Web interface offers far more than a simple collection of digitised objects.

The search facilities are still being refined, but in the short term only the metadata will be searchable (e.g. names of candidates and constituencies). Currently only a small proportion of the literature is available in searchable text form (as well as image format). The OCR process (optical character reading) takes little longer than the image scanning, but the essential proof-reading and editing take much longer, particularly as the original materials vary widely in size, colour and readability. There is also substantial duplication of content, as major parties quite reasonably have standard publications with minor variation between candidates. It is therefore the independent candidates that offer unusual claims and promises in their election manifestos. One candidate claimed to "give away most of what I earn ... I have five shirts and two pairs of shoes", while another promised to "wear white make-up every day ... and purchase a new cloak for the opening for the Scottish parliament." Neither candidate was elected, but at least their words now live on in digital form, and will do so for the foreseeable future.

Future Plans

The GDL is exploring possibilities for further development and funding of Aspect, as it has significant development potential, for teaching and learning as well as for research and public information. Although the 1999 election was unique in being the first Scottish parliamentary election for 300 years, there is another one due in 2003 that could be recorded in similar fashion. The Scottish Parliament Information Centre is fully supportive of the Aspect project, but some politicians may be less enthusiastic about having past claims and promises readily available for all to see. However, even if no further development takes place, the Aspect collection will remain as an important reminder of a significant event in Scottish history, as well as just one element in a bigger coherent collection.