Meeting Minutes for 06/18/2019

Digital Archive Committee Minutes
June 18, 2019
1:00 PM

Round Robin Project Discussion (all)

• Bud Werner
  • John reports that after two years of working on their Three Wire Winter project that it is finally completed.The project includes 24 issues, and 200+ oral histories.​They are looking for a new project.
• EVLD
  • Mathew is working two projects.  Received a large collection (475 images) of photographs from the Johnson family, which are being added to the archive. Also, received a large donation of newspapers from the 1920s and 1930s, including the Eagle Valley Enterprise and Holy Cross Trail, which are being processed.
• Fort Lewis 
  • Tyler is working on entering reports from a couple of local researchers, one is an archeological report and the other is a report documenting the rural cemeteries in La Plata county.
• Mesa County
  • Elizabeth reports that they are working on their ongoing projects of the Studio Lounge, the Oral History, and the Veterans Remember projects. 
  • They are working on recording a local cowboy poet reading his poetry.
  • There is a podcast in Mesa County that started a few months ago interviewing different people around town about things that are happening now.
  • They are hoping to get these podcasts on to the archives.
  • Elizabeth is working with the people who produce the podcast to get the correct information and files sizes.
• Pitkin County
  • Carol is still working on the Hall of Fame project. 
• Salida
  • Joy reports that the last time she reported the Salida Museum was considering donating their negative to the library.  The museum did donate the 30,000 negatives with the history of Salida. Joy opened a twitter feed about the project. 
• Vail
  • Jo reports that Lynn is working on the Vail Valley Voices project. Lynn is organizing the physical archive items as they come in to the library, and she is working on cleaning things up.  

Updates from Pascal

• The DPLA work that Pascal demonstrated at the last meeting is now live for the HUB to ingest.
• DPLA ingest is at the end of June, and we should see the results sometime in July.
• Brandon reminded the group to check their content, and Pika toggles for contribute to DPLA.
  • Check your collections and objects
  • Contact Brandon with any questions

Other Topics

• Alysa asked about born digital content in digital archive
• Steamboat Springs has a digital collection they would like to move into Islandora for discovery in Pika. 
• Alysa wondered if Marmot could find a way to add websites as a digital  object to Islandora
  • The development team needs to look into how they would make these items display since, they will be migrated using the 'Web Archive Solution Pack' for Islandora.
  • Here is a Youtrack ticket about the issue - https://marmot.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/D-2851
• Brandon has this on his radar 
  • He has to work with the development team to see what needs to happen on the Islandora side to get that content type added to the system.
  • Brandon and Pacal will make this a priority to schedule a meeting to figure out this process.
  • They will update Bud Werner on their progress for this project.

Metadata Subcommittee Group Meeting (minute 14:28 on the recording)

• Metadata document meeting priorities 
  • The group voted on the priorities for each meeting
  • June Meeting
    • Best Practice doc for each entity type
    • Formatting data entry
  • July Meeting
    • Best practices for enriching entities
    • Understanding the roles of entities
  • August Meeting
    • Outline when to use an entity and when to use an object
    • Subjects (Local or LC)
  • September Meeting
    • Reduction of duplicate entities
    • Creation of metadata (pre-planning)

Digital Archive Metadata Doc

Best Practices for Entities  

• How to use the metadata pieces to form the best practices on how to use shared entities.
• Create standards for how entities are created.
• Outline how to edit a shared entity.
• Alysa and John mentioned the last time the committee worked on these standards, they really focused on the display name.

Person 

• John mentioned that all the information in the Marmot Metadata section of the Marmot Add a Person Form (login required) if it existed, was in the display name.  
• Alysa added information from their staff instructions to the best practices document about the display name. The example showed how to accommodate family name, given name, maiden name, and nickname.
  • Alysa pointed out that their example mirrored what they saw in a genealogy database.
• A note is included regarding pets.  Any images that prompts the creation of pictured entities can sometimes contain animals that can be identity in an article. Animals are entered as people entities. There was talk about having a more appropriate relationship attributed to them, like a pet affiliation. Right now, they are all children of their owners. 
  • The biographical information field can be ignored unless it is a pet for clarification purposes. The user might find it odd that a person has a pet listed as a child.
• The first requirement should be that a search is conducted for duplicate entities.  This should also be the first rule for any entity.  
• Searching for as much information as you can find about the person entity is a really good start, before adding or creating the entity.
  • Get as much biographical information such as who they married, and their children.
  • Indepth research can also help to uncover any errors in the original object such as the spelling of a name, or other errors that were conveyed by a family member or third party.  Put these errors in a note in an article or interview based on that research. 
• There was a suggestion that the best practices document and the Instructions for Adding People should be combined into one document.  
  • It was suggested that for every field in the Instructions for Adding People document would have suggestions for how to fill out the field (especially the display name, because this is the thing that helps everyone know exactly who we are looking at without having to dive into the full entity record).
  • Under the people field you could have [Given Name] [ “Nickname”] [(Maiden)(Family Name)] 
  • It was suggested that the examples be in both the documentation and on the actual form.
  • Also, we need to consider when a person wants their nickname or stage name (i.e. Cher,  Lady Gaga) to be displayed without the quotes. Sometimes performers will not give their real name, or want it displayed.
  • In the Marmot Metadata section fields include the family name, given name, middle name, and maiden name, none of this data displays.  
    • Sometimes we do not want these fields to be searchable.
    • Elizabeth had a performer who went by one name for one band, and a different name for another band.
    • Elizabeth tries to put as much extra information in the notes field.
    • Does this type of situation warrant two entities for each stage name that includes a family member relationship.
      • Do we need another relationship for same or alias?
      • Wondering if this becomes a situation when we do allow duplicates?
      • This information could be added to the Marmot Metadata alternative name field. 
      • There should be an option on the form to request how you want the name to display in Islandora.
      • Elizabeth used the same PID number but a different display name in the object form instead of the entities form to identify the same person with two different display names. She used just one name for the person entity.
      • Alysa wondered if we want the display name in Islandora to meet the conventions, and you can add as many alternate names as you want.  You would connect the person entity to the object to meet the person’s request. However, if you go to that person as an object, the connected person entity in Pika will display the name you typed into Islandora.
      • Elizabeth agreed, and mentioned she told the artist that he had to pick one name.
      • Band members who want to be identified by their band name,  but do not want their names included are entered as an organization and not a person.

• At the next meeting the best practices for the following entities will be discussed:

  • Place 
  • Event 
  • Organization

• The subcommittee group was encouraged to add information to the document in between meetings, making sure to highlight the new information.  

Next Meeting is July 16, 2019 at 1 p.m.