We're trying to decide what to do with these, and I'm interested in hearing from others if they've gone through the same process.
These multipage PDFs were loaded into ContentDM with this option of creating compound objects. CDM pretends that the file is split up into individual pages, allowing for page-level indexing and user navigation. Here's an example: http://cdm.reed.edu/u?/reedhisttxt,36177 I can explain more about what these are and why we're needing to make decisions about them, but I'm assuming that some people already know what I'm talking about (?). This also leads into something else I'm trying to work out, which is when users want and expect PDFs and when they want and expect something like an image-based manuscript viewer with zoom. I think it is clear that ETDs should be PDFs, and medieval manuscripts should be in a image-based viewer, but we have a lot of stuff in between. A course catalog from 1911 seems good for an image-based viewer, but it seems unnecessary to display a born-digital PDF course catalog from 2009 in an image-based viewer. But conceptually, they are the same thing. Is it the age of the thing? Is it the original format of the material? If anyone has or knows about user testing around this distinction, or even anecdotal feedback, I would appreciate hearing about it! -- Laura Buchholz Digital Projects Librarian Reed College Library 503-517-7629 laura.buchh...@reed.edu