Meeting Minutes for 08/27/2019

Digital Archive Committee Minutes
August 27, 2019
1:00 PM

Summary of last metadata subgroup discussion

• The subgroup started working on the best practices for the naming format for place
  • A good practice is to use a maximum of 2 commas to name a place
  • This would generally be enough information to tell someone a location
    • City or Town: Name (City or Town), County, State
    • Business: Business, City, State
    • Rivers, Lakes, Landmarks in some cases this would apply to oceans, but in Colorado, there are no oceans, so this body of water was not included
    • These would also use the maximum of 2 commas 
    • I.e. Yampa River, Colorado, USA
      • For some bodies of water, only one comma was used
      • Colorado River, USA (this is for bodies of water that cross multiple places)
      • If an event occurred in a specific section of the Colorado River, you might want to put where the event occurred, and USA (i.e. Colorado River, Grand Junction, USA)
• Titles: how to indicate an Academic Record or Military Service
  • Discussed whether the title should be a person’s final title that the person held within the military 
  • Would it be a best practice to list what the person’s title was at the time the image was taken, or if it was best to list their last standing title
  • It was discussed preferring the last rank, unless it was important to the image that the title the person held at the time was listed
  • Alysa mentioned that the struggle was the difference of adding a title to the name field in an entity vs how would a person when they attach that entity to an object rewrite the name of the field, since you are still pointing at the same thing
  • What they agreed on was that in the entity record you just want to put their name in the name field, and use the subsequent fields within an entity record to talk about ranks, and other things they did in life
    • If they held the title of royal highness, general, esquire, or reverend could be mentioned somewhere in the entity record field 
    • You can put the rank/title in the name descriptive field for that entity, but the rank/title would not go in the actual entity record
    • In an object record, you can put the person PID information under role, but under the creator name you can put that person with their title
      • This can also be done using the related person or organization person PID, and the name field as well - these fields will also link to the Person Entity

• The Digital Archive Metadata document for the best practices is open for anyone to view.  You can request edit access to be part of the metadata subgroup

Other Topics

• In the last meeting, Brandon had mentioned that Marmot is working on creating some “How-Tos” for some of the more elaborate collections within the archives
  • Brandon demoed how the image map works for a collection like the Vail Quilt (minute: 14:13;22)
  • Brandon noted that the image map setup can be used for multiple different things 
  • Marmot will document how the image mapping is built
• Ashley wanted to let the group know that Chris in the Software Development department has been doing some work with Google Analytics
  • Some of the enhancements that Chris has done allows for the ability to track Archive traffic by the ownership of the object regardless of the Pika site
  • This will let you know how frequently your objects are getting accessed with ownership
  • Chris will be demoing his work at MUG
  • There was a request to have Chris’ MUG session recorded
  • Ashley replied that we will have slides available, and Chris is working on building documentation
  • Ashley also mentioned Chris would be happy to do a one-on-one session 
  • Tammy mentioned that recording is not always successful at MUG, so we do not publicize the fact we will record a session.  We can try to record Chris’ MUG session, but with no guarantees
  •  Brandon mentioned the on-demand training options that Marmot is creating
    • Maybe Chris can offer this as an on-demand training
    • Mary suggested that Chris could also demo it at one of the Digital Archive meetings
  • Action Item: Brandon will talk to Chris about demoing Google Analytics for archive tracking at the next Digital Archive meeting
• Tyler asked the group if a purpose and scope statement existed for the Marmot Digital Archives
  • This is more of a big picture to help guide individual libraries to help make decisions on what to add to the archives
  • Alysa knows that there is no documentation on purpose and scope for the archives
    • When the archives were first created, it was the goal of the archive was to show that this could be more than a traditional archive, and it could also be an archive of impermanent work with an endless list
    • It was also a derivative of the Mesa County Public Library former director’s vision to digitize everything to make it available in their catalog
    • The concept was to make the archives as unique as possible, but nothing was ever written down 
  • Brandon shared a product description for the Marmot Library Network Digital Archives that will be shown to prospective libraries looking at different services that Marmot provides
    • This document shows what the archives offer essentially, but he was not sure if it was enough information to answer Tyler’s question about the purpose and scope of the archives
    • This information would be someone’s first introduction to the archives
  • John mentioned that he would look at the archives as one or all three of these ways
    • First and foremost, there is something in your collection that is worth digitally preserving and making accessible
    • Great opportunity to have information for a very specific population in your community
    • Finally, as a means of collaborating with another institution like a museum or cultural heritage institution with something they want to make available 
    • Alysa mentioned that a project is whatever is important to your institution can be added to the archive
    • Alysa remembers that Fort Lewis wanted to show value for her library by partnering with an outside organization, and showing what the library could do with the archives
      • Alysa mentioned to Tyler that she might want to ask if that is still the mission at the Fort Lewis library
  • Tyler mentioned that she will create her own purpose and scope if she needs it for her work
    • She was wondering about some situations when libraries want to add content that is more specific to certain groups in their library, like faculty 
    • Tyler was told that the materials she wanted to add were not appropriate for the archives, so it might be those materials that could be specified in a purpose and scope statement
  •  When Brandon first took over the archives, he directed libraries who just wanted to store content, but could not share it,  to other resources
    • The sharing aspect with the participating members is the priority task that he was given
    • We do not want the archive to become like Google Docs storage
    • It is not just storage, it is archival content that is shared, and people find value in the content
    • If the goal of the archive is changing, it should be something that is discussed during these meetings
  • Alysa mentioned that in the beginning when they were working on the architecture of the archives, they certainly ran into situations where a library did not want to share their materials, like student capstone projects
    • Capstone projects are only available to the student at a certain school, and not intended to be shared
    • In the purpose and scope document, we do need to outline what would be important regarding the stuff we do not share
  • Action Item: Tyler will work on a few sentences that cover the purpose and scope of the archives that will be discussed at the next meeting
• John shared that their reference department has been harvesting obituaries and death notice information from 1990 - 1986
  • He was thinking about what is going to happen to all this information, and will it ever be added to the archives as person entities, so they are not keeping information in two different databases
  • He knows that they can take genealogy database information and include them in an entity as they create them, but maybe it is time to think about whether to create person entities for the burial death notice and obituary records they have been creating  
  • Alysa wanted to know if this could be added to a Marmot punch list 
    • She thinks it would be great if every person who is in the genealogy database was an entity in the archive, and the genealogy database went away, and the archive becomes both
    • Matthew from Eagle Valley uses the genealogy database, and he would be in favor of combining the two because patrons are confused about which database they need to search
  • Action Item: Brandon will write an email to the group to have people check with staff who are adding content to the genealogy database and confirm that they would be okay with this content being moved over to the archive
    • Brandon needs to look at the backend to see about the format, and how complicated this process might to pull the content from one system and load it into the Islandora system
    • Marmot has done batch loading in the past, so the system is capable of batch load processing

Metadata Subcommittee Group Meeting (minute 39:21;26 on the recording)

Digital Archive Metadata Doc
Best Practices for Entities  

• Brandon asked if there was anything that needed to be discussed about the information from the last meeting
• Alysa suggested that there be more descriptive information added to the Rivers, Lakes, and Landmarks instead of just examples
  • Some kind of sentence that explains that we understand that a river, land, or landmark might cross more than one state and if that is the case, you would list the example Colorado River, USA.
• Alysa also wanted to talk more about naming conventions for places
  • Our entities are our controlled vocabulary, so she wanted to make sure it is okay to have multiple listings for the same entities
    • For example, Colorado River, USA; Colorado River, Colorado, USA; Colorado River, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, USA
• Brandon had a question along those lines, would we do the same thing with places like we are suggesting for titles with the military information
  • For the display name, you could have a little more description
  • John asked Brandon if he meant the display name connected to the object and not the entity display name 
  • Brandon confirmed that John was correct
  • John did not have any issues with that as long as it is associated with the object, and when you click on it you are taken to the entity
  • Alysa pointed out that when you create a subject heading (which is essentially an entity), and a person clicks on it expecting to see the one entry,  they will get a lot of hits
  • Alysa might encourage people to have a separate entity for something like Colorado River, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, USA, if that was important to your collection
  • The entities would pull those collection materials together
  • Alysa suggested this sentence for the rivers, lands, and landmarks, “It is okay to include a state or city name, if you need it for your collection.”
  • John suggested getting some geolocation information to point the user to that specific spot
  • Elizabeth asked if there was a way to link them as parent and child, so people know we are talking about the same river, and not rivers that have the same name
  • Alysa and John like the parent and child relationship idea 
  • If you are going to create something that is a division of the main artery, then adding the parent/child relationship is a really great idea
• On the development side, there would need to be work on the display of those relationships 
  • Right now, it displays as parent, child, or sibling, so we would have to find some geographic-specific language
  • For place, we would just need to have the parent/child display not showing, so this might be an enhancement request
  • Brandon added the role of child under the related place, and added a Place PID,  to see how it would display the information
  • Brandon found where the terms for parent and child were listed for Islandora, but also noticed more terms that do not display
  • Alysa mentioned that something had to be developed in Pika for the parent and child terms to display
  • Brandon suggested that the group should come up with some descriptor names for the parent/child relationship when it comes to a place, or an event
• Action Item: Brandon will look into how to get the parent/child (or similar terms) to display in Pika for the related place roles.
• Next meeting the group will discuss Event and Organization best practices
  • Jill from Gunnison gave a lot of input on events during the original Metadata Subcommittee group meetings, so Brandon may want to ask her to join the group
• Creator Role of Lecturer
  • Marmot added the new role of lecturer to the Marmot Master Form

Next Meeting is September 17, 2019, at 1 p.m.