| Item | Who | Notes |
|---|
| Discussion of Princeton's Finding aid system | Amy, Beth, Esther, Paloma | - Liked the integration of digital content and ability to sort results
- How are comments intended to be used? Moderated? No parameters present. More work for staff?
|
| Discussion of Briscoe Center public service moving to the Benson | Stephanie Malmros, Carla, Amy, Esther, Beth | - Through next December
- Items paged every half hour
- Appointment based
- Smaller space: fewer reference materials
- Beth: other projects on hold? Stephanie: exhibits will be conducted at LBJ, must functions can continue
- Beth: biggest improvement? Stephanie: Reading room up to date, dedicated classroom space, flexible spaces, exhibit space
- Front desk staff have been getting some complaints- researchers don't care about exhibit space, feel it is unnecessary
- More finding aids are now available online for researchers
|
| Skype call with Alexis Antracoli, Archivist, Mudd Library, Princeton University | Alexis, Paloma | - Introductory info:
- Works at Mudd manuscript library, which is part of rare books and special collectins
- Took job in July 2015
- Oversees technical services, digitization and electronic records
- Paloma question: Background of project? Alexis answer:
- Mudd converted to EAD in around 2006
- New site was launched in 2012
- Old site had less functionality, displayed EAD
- New site: better functionality, allows access in a variety of ways, can look at finding aids whole or use search to find stuff at each level of description.
- Can easily attach digital items to finding aids
- Can do on-demand digitization and then attached items to finding aid
- Can sort on date, title, box #'s, etc.
- Simple and advanced search
- Topics page
- Use eac-cpf records (data is pulled from finding aids automatically using a script written at Firestone)
- Involved in SNAC and want to do more with that, but no specific plans yet.
- Paloma question: Is SNAC data pushed or Pulled? Alexis answer:
- Not sure. Are biog/hist notes even worthwhile?
- Ex. Woodrow Wilson. He was president of Princeton, but most biog/hist notes about him won't focus on this.
- Paloma question: How was finding aid project coordinated? Alexis answer:
- Two main repositories, Firestone and Mudd, with separate technical services units. Two teams collaborated with systems. Total of 4-5 people plus systems worked on project.
- Created a proposal and then met 2/month to develop the site
- A lot of data cleanup was involved
- EAD goes through normalization and cleanup
- Processing:
- Staff use Archivist Toolkit for processing- creates a skeleton description at collection and series level
- Try to get inventories up front from donors
- Students enter data into excel and use stylesheet to transform excel into EAD
- Don't enter a lot of data directly into Archivists Toolkit, which cuts down on processing time
- Once created, finding aid is normalized (esp. dates), then validated against in-house schemas
- Two schemas: looser one for older descriptions, stricter one for new descriptions
- Then finding aid is uploaded and commited to site
- Each component of the finding aid has its own url- normalizer adds this as a data attribute to each component
- Paloma question: Best practices of authorities and taxonomies? Alexis answer:
- Authorities applied in archivists toolkit (subjects and names module)
- Currently working on cleaning up names using open refine
- Data from Archivists Toolkit will be moving into Archives Space and want to cleanup before migration.
- Processing archivists can apply subjects freely, use LCSH, AAT, genre/form - which is esp. useful for born-digital items
- University has files on alumni, fac/staff etc. which is very siloed and not searchable through the finding aid system
- trying to get indexes into EAD so they're findable on the finding aid site
- Some data my not be fitted to EAD, and would work better as EAC-CPF ex. birth/death dates, associated departments etc.
- University archives thinking about adopting EAC-CPF for this, but project is a few years out
- Paloma question: How does commenting function? Policies? Alexis answer:
- Idea was to get people to provide information about collections
- wound up getting a lot of reference questions which are passed onto public service. Also a lot of spam.
- Not used as originally conceived.
- No guidance is provided on how to use system.
- Maybe a newer iteration of site can add more guidance on how to use comments.
- Once in awhile someone points out a mistake, but it's rare.
- Paloma question: Future improvements to site? Alexis answer:
- Not sure what would replace current system.
- Possible improvements:
- Hard to tell if a finding aid includes digital content
- Easy to overlook pdf version on page
- Like California Digital Library system- makes it easy to search for digital content
- Left tree view is a little clunky- needs better usability
- Looking at some UX improvements, incl. user testing and google analytics- need to figure out priorities
- There is also a committee on born digital, authorities and data modeling: considering moving away from EAD to a different data model altogether.
- There is also an ArchivesSpace subcommittee
- Paloma question: Are you members of ArchivesSpace? Alexis answer:
- Yes, haven't migrated yet, will start with accessions and born digital content.
|
| Post skype discussion | Paloma, Jennifer, Beth | - Surprised to hear they are considering moving away from EAD
- Benefit of ArchivesSpace is ability to export EAD/EAD3
- Some interest in continuing discussion of data cleanup projects/methods/tools - next meeting?
- Current project to do data cleanup on TARO - 40+ repositories, various tools and processes involved.
- Beth: Architecture library also working on data cleanup: figuring out what metadata they want, then will begin actual cleanup work.
- Looking at access and restriction areas- can we all use similar or standard terminology?
- Privacy and confidentiality data is siloed
- Jennifer: Possible to compile US-level public safety/gun laws document, list any laws that affect public service?
- Steve: HRC is looking at museum collection management systems (Past perfect etc.) but ArchivesSpace would make sense for archives
- Beth: Architecture is interested in ArchivesSpace
- Jennifer: Fine arts finding aids are in pdf format, not in EAD. Would like to get them into TARO
- Discussion of Excel to EAD tools
|