Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using Metadata To Mitigate The Risks Of Digitizing Archival Photographs Of Violence And Oppression, Claudia A. Mallea

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Questioning the archival imperative of access, this research article discussed how descriptive metadata can be used to contextualize and problematize digitized archival photographs, which are often inadequately described in the digital environment. Beginning with literature review of atrocity photos and their use and digitization to discuss the risks inherent to disseminating photos of or born from violence. Review continued into the digital environment and the risks inherent to making difficult archival collections accessible online and the conflict between the right to privacy of the individuals represented in archival materials and the archival imperative to provide access.

Expanding on the recommendations …

Review Of Making Your Tools Work For You: Building And Maintaining An Integrated Technical Ecosystem For Digital Archives And Libraries, Ryan Leimkuehler

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Making Your Tools Work for You by Max Eckard introduces readers to the concept of systems and data integration. Eckard walks readers through how to approach system integration and highlights various tools and techniques to make an integration project successful. The book hits its climax with specific case studies that any reader would find valuable.

Review Of Metadata For Digital Collections: A How-To-Do-It Manual, Elyse Fox

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Metadata for Digital Collections: A How-To-Do-It Manual, Second Edition by Steven Jack Miller.

Review Of Metadata, Greg Reeve

Journal of Western Archives

Review of the third edition of Marcia Lei Zeng’s and Jain Qin’s monograph Metadata. Metadata is the definitive guide to the metadata landscape for information professionals in the Information Age.

Scaling Up Video Digitization At The University Of Maryland Libraries: A Case Study, Elizabeth M. Caringola, Pamela A. Mcclanahan, Robin C. Pike

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

In 2015, a team at the University of Maryland Libraries collaborated on a pilot project to digitize 100 VHS tapes from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange collection and, in doing so, established organizational workflows for video digitization and access. After completing the pilot phase of the project, staff who worked on the project published a case study in this journal that articulated a question echoed throughout that process: “Is this enough?” Enough descriptive metadata? Enough technical metadata? Enough storage space? This article will reflect on the pilot project, detail how the digitization specifications and workflows established during the pilot project …

Teaching Archival Research Methods Through Projects In Ethnohistory, Veronica L. Denison, Alyssa Willett, Alexandra Taitt, Medeia Csoba Dehass

Journal of Western Archives

During the spring semester of 2015 and the fall semester of 2016, two cohorts of students at the University of Alaska Anchorage learned archival research skills as part of their methodological training in the course, Ethnohistory of Alaska Natives, which subsequently led to the development of further individual research projects. As part of the course, students provided metadata to folders within an archival collection. This article explores the semester long projects, including the hardships of finding and using culturally appropriate metadata, lessons learned, and the impact the project had on students, the archivist, and instructor.

Using Captions And Controlled Vocabulary To Describe Visual Materials As An Alternative To Digitization, Eric Willey

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

This article describes an Illinois State University Research Grant funded project which created newspaper style captions and controlled vocabulary terms for visual materials. These materials were not intended to be digitized, and a guide separate from the finding was created including that metadata to improve access. The collection described consisted of materials donated by Lois Lenski, who donated her collection to institutions across the United States. Student workers were hired with grant funds to provide the metadata, and difficulties, successes, and outcomes encountered during the project are described..^[1]

^[1] Eric Willey, et al. “Guide to the Graphic, Scrapbook, and …

Review Of Ethical Questions In Name Authority Control, Itza A. Carbajal

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control is a new and thoughtful addition to the metadata and cataloging field of study and practice. Consisting of eighteen essays written by a number of libraries, archives, and information scholars, this edited volume investigates and responds to a number of ethical questions regarding name authority control.These include topics such as the privacy of the creator, use of geographic names for contested lands, critique of the use of gender in authority control systems, as well as considerations around multilingualism, to name a few. While the title mostly appeals to a particular field of work and …

“Who’S Driving The Bus?” Or How Digitization Is Influencing Archival Collections, Kathelene Mccarty Smith, David Gwynn, Beth Ann Koelsch, Jennifer Motszko

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Archivists who work directly with unique collections, as well as librarians and other professionals who coordinate digitization, generally agree that access should be prioritized. However, each group has its own goals, standards, and timelines that may conflict with those of their colleagues. The push to maximize access to collections may, in some cases, go so far as to influence collecting policies. Is the lure of rapid digitization affecting best practices of arrangement and description? If online access to the collections is the ultimate goal, and if each stakeholder has a different perspective on how best to accomplish this, who decides …

Review Of Putting Descriptive Standards To Work, Katy Sternberger

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

For a thorough understanding of current descriptive best practices, consult Putting Descriptive Standards to Work, edited by Kris Kiesling and Christopher J. Prom, with modules written by Cory L. Nimer, Kelcy Shepherd, Katherine M. Wisser, and Aaron Rubinstein. This volume covers modules seventeen through twenty of the Trends in Archives Practice series from the Society of American Archivists. The book provides readers with the context and the applied examples needed to explore the possibilities of descriptive standards.

Microfilm, Manuscripts, And Photographs: A Case Study Comparing Three Large-Scale Digitization Projects, Emily Lapworth, Sarah Jones, Marina Georgieva

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This article is a case study comparing three large-scale digitization projects at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries: the Culinary Union Workers Local 226 Photographs, the Nevada Digital Newspaper Project, and the Entertainment Project. The authors compare the project management, workflows, and decision-making related to the many aspects of digitizing special collections and archives materials. The projects used both outsourced vendors and in-house labor and equipment to digitize microfilmed newspapers, mixed-materials manuscript collections, and photographic prints and negatives. Roles and responsibilities; grant funding; copyright, privacy, and confidentiality; arrangement; formats; and metadata are all discussed in relation to large-scale …

Creating Community: Drawing On Staff Expertise To Break Down Silos In Academic Libraries, Lori Birrell, Marcy A. Strong

Collaborative Librarianship

A discussion of the strategies and outcomes behind a special collections and metadata collaboration effort at the University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries, to make finding aids more discoverable and interoperable. Through the use of a project charter and specific goals, the project managers sought to create buy-in and build a culture of teamwork amongst the participants, resulting in both improved finding aids and a model for collaborative work across departments.

Nineteenth-Century Depictions Of Disabilities And Modern Metadata: A Consideration Of Material In The P. T. Barnum Digital Collection, Meghan R. Rinn

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The Library of Congress subject headings have been examined in the past for their classification of subjects relating to race, gender, and sexuality. Overlooked is subject headings that relate to disabilities. In the course of creating records for the archival and object material that form the P.T. Barnum Digital Collection, the project discovered the imperfections of the Library of Congress subject headings, and the need to develop standards and protocols for the material. This resulted in a balance of language that respects the preferences of living communities and their best practices, and the existing language in the Library of Congress, …

Utilizing Student Workers At The Digital Library Of Georgia, Mandy L. Mastrovita, Donnie Summerlin

Georgia Library Quarterly

Libraries and archives have become increasingly reliant on student employees to perform duties essential to the daily work of making cultural heritage materials accessible to patrons. This article details how students are recruited, trained, managed, and mentored from the perspective of supervisors at the Digital Library of Georgia. Topics discussed include hiring procedures, training techniques, work assigned to undergraduate and graduate students, the handling of archival materials, digital imaging, metadata, and social media. The article will also examine methods for creating a rewarding and educational work environment for students that promotes the library profession.

From Accession To Access: A Born-Digital Materials Case Study, Cyndi Shein

Journal of Western Archives

Between 2011 and 2013 the Getty Institutional Records and Archives made its first foray into the comprehensive ingest, arrangement, description, and delivery of unique born-digital material when it received oral history interviews generated by some of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. project partners. This case study touches upon the challenges and affordances inherent to this hybrid collection of audiovisual recordings, digital mixed-media files, and analog transcripts. It describes the Archives’ efforts to develop a basic processing workflow that applies the resource-management strategy commonly known as “MPLP” in a digital environment, while striving to safeguard the integrity and authenticity …

Metadata And Lasting Collaborative Success, Felicia J. Williamson

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

Libraries, archives and museums (LAMs) have been creating metadata of various types (catalog records, archival finding aids, museum inventories, etc.) in one form or the other since their foundation. They have also been struggling as historically unique organizations with the best way to capture and manage metadata so that it can be used to organize their collections and provide increased access to users. In recent years, there has been a push to apply metadata standards to enable greater information sharing between LAMs – especially those with a common research or regional focus – and create online exhibits that reach new …