12:59:34 Right. Deb says we should start recording so I'm going to hit record and then I think I'm going to start the webinar. And then I think we're going to need to wait a minute or so until all of the attendees funnel in and then.
12:59:53 Bridget can do her thank yous to Crowley.
12:59:57 Great. Good. Thank you.
13:01:08 Okay, it looks like the attendees have slowed down a little bit so how about we get started.
13:01:14 Thanks everyone for coming today to s nine institutional repository and archives partnerships and futures. My name is Bridget counselor and I'm the university archivist at George Washington University in Washington DC, and I will be the moderator today.
13:01:28 the session was originally scheduled for Harrisonburg last April, and I will introduce the speakers who will give their presentation, then we'll have time at the end for questions.
13:01:41 First Merrick wishes to thank the sponsor of the session, the Crowley company as a manufacturer scanner distributor and digitization services provider.
13:01:46 The Crowley company has served public and private archives for over 40 years, and provides digitization solutions for all collection types and unique needs, visit www dot the Crowley company.
13:01:58 com to learn more on our complete range of solutions.
13:02:02 We will also be utilizing the live transcript for this session for accessibility purposes. And if you would like to hide the subtitles, simply click the live transcription button at the bottom of your application, and then click Hide subtitle.
13:02:17 And if your zoom application is not maximized. you may need to click on the three dots or more icon to turn off the subtitles throughout the session please use the q amp a feature or the chat box to pose questions to the panel, and I will relay those
13:02:32 questions to the panelists to close out the session.
13:02:36 Today, I am joined by former colleagues from Marshall University. Just gonna stop that.
13:02:43 Lori Thompson is an associate professor and head of the Special Collections department with University Libraries at Marshall University. She received her ms in library science from the University of Kentucky in 2013 and her MA in history from Marshall
13:02:56 University in 2008, her current research interests include adapting existing University software to fit archival needs and developing an oral history archive of LGBT q Huntington, she serves as the co chair of the Center for study of ethnicity, and gender
13:03:12 and Appalachia, and as vice president of the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Foundation, Inc.
13:03:32 Lindsey m Harper is an associate professor archivist and records management librarian, with the University Libraries at Marshall University. She received her ms in library science from the University of Kentucky in 2017 and her MA in psychology from Marshall
13:03:34 University in 2015.
13:03:34 Her research interests intersect the Information Science and Social Psychology fields and include areas, such as data sharing social media and equity, diversity and inclusion in the LIS profession.
13:03:46 Her most notable works can be found in library trends. Journal of documentation and the International Journal of information management.
13:03:53 Elizabeth James is an assistant professor and archivist and digital preservation librarian at Marshall University. She received her ms in library and information science with a concentration in archives management from Simmons University.
13:04:06 Her research interests include the intersection of primary source literacy and archives literacy, teaching with archival materials in the classroom on and offline and scalable digital preservation solutions for institutions of all sizes.
13:04:21 And the fourth speaker is Gretchen Ray beach, who is the catalog and Digital Services Librarian at Marshall University, which includes being administrator to the institutional repository, Marshall digital scholar.
13:04:32 She has a BS in education with a library certification, Ms. ls from Clarion University of Pennsylvania, 91 and 92 Gretchen's interests and research has been focused on making Special Collections accessible, and she says she has quote the best of both
13:04:46 worlds cataloging at 1736 book, and add adding digitized material to the institutional repository.
13:04:53 Now Gretchen Europe.
13:04:57 Good afternoon.
13:04:58 In 2011, Marshall University Libraries created an ad hoc committee to study establishing an institutional repository.
13:05:09 Elizabeth. Moving on. There we go.
13:05:13 We wanted to facilitate the collection, preservation and dissemination of the intellectual output of the students, faculty, and administrative offices.
13:05:23 We considered it a digital storehouse for the university, which there was not a central location for digital materials at that time.
13:05:32 Special Collections and Archives were represented represented on the committee, so their materials were included from the beginning, we imagine not just PDFs, but also video and audio files.
13:05:45 So Marshall digital scholar, was born.
13:05:48 Moving on.
13:05:51 Our objectives in the beginning, global visibility content in a single location self archiving store and preservation, storing and present, preservation of digital assets including unpublished and great literature, where the main objectives that fit with
13:06:07 the mission and vision statements of the university. The committee had always stated that preserving records of the university was a priority.
13:06:18 Moving on, in Special Collections and Archives. These were some of the first collections that were designated as a priority.
13:06:28 At this time commencement programs have been added from 1872 the president. They've been downloaded 9426 times.
13:06:40 The Board of Governors meeting minutes have been added from 2001 to the present, and they've been downloaded 5086 times the Parthenon, which is the student newspaper is still being scammed, and has been added, but we have from 1959 to the present, which
13:06:58 has been downloaded 127,388 times.
13:07:05 And finally the thesis and dissertations have been downloaded over 1.7 million times, and has the number one downloaded paper in the system, which is the innovation, innovative success, that is Apple Inc.
13:07:22 Moving on.
13:07:26 Things that the committee never imagined when we present our findings in 2011.
13:07:32 The university received the r two designation, and Marshall digital scholar was mentioned in the recommendation report.
13:07:41 Faculty Senate passed the resolution for all faculty to submit their research papers to the IR that we would work with outside organizations. We have professional organizations such as the West Virginia Library Association and the Society of the American
13:07:58 fight directors, we've become their archives for their newsletters.
13:08:04 And this semester I'm on sabbatical and I'm working with local organizations to archive, their newsletters, and I just received permission from the general federation of women's clubs in West Virginia, which is a state organization to archive their newsletter.
13:08:21 Open Access textbooks have been added and are being adopted by our faculty to help students with their costs.
13:08:27 And there are many Special Collections and Archives activities, and my colleagues will be discussing one of them today.
13:08:34 Thank you very much, and Lori Thompson will be speaking next.
13:08:41 Thank you, Gretchen. So Gretchen provided an overview of the institutional repository.
13:08:47 It is my job today to kind of talk a little bit about the history of special collections at Marshall.
13:08:53 The Special Collections department is relatively new in the history of Marshall University was not developed until 135 years after Marshall academies creation in 1837.
13:09:05 The Special Collections department was created as a direct result of a library accreditation review in the 1970s that indicated that Marshall libraries did not offer any unique collections to researchers at our institution.
13:09:18 Moving on.
13:09:21 The Special Collections department was created, and only included three full time faculty librarians and two full time staff positions, which I'll talk a little bit more in a minute.
13:09:33 Special Collections librarians began to develop the University Archives, as well as curate a manuscript collection that would provide unique research materials to the students, faculty and community.
13:09:45 The collecting focus for the manuscript collection specifically was predominantly in local history and genealogical in nature. However, in an attempt to grow a department rapidly, they rarely said no to a donation, no matter the item for nearly 35 years
13:10:01 the department clicked along with zero changes in the library and ranks as you can see on the graph, the curators collection specialist archivist, and then an archivist to from 1972 to 2013 we're pretty.
13:10:14 The same.
13:10:17 All three faculty in the original department were involved in genealogical and family history research.
13:10:24 They belong to such organizations that focus specifically on genealogy such as the DVR, and the Mormon Church. So therefore genealogical research became the department's bread and butter, moving on it.
13:10:36 During this time, they focus their finding eight efforts on manuscript collections that received increased usage for family history research. Many of the fighting age were created to eight and tracking family names and included limited of any description
13:10:50 of the items contained within these finding aids were typed.
13:10:55 Sometimes in house within the Office of the archivist or manuscript librarian.
13:11:00 It is important to note that the three librarians were the only members of the Special Collections team that we're answering reference requests. They were the experts after all.
13:11:16 without the need of a finding eight. It wasn't until the early 2000s, that our website contained three stub records about each collection which is viewable on the screen.
13:11:34 each pocket of the alphabet. Moving on. And in 2005, the longtime archivist retired and a new archivist not De Bruyne who many of you might know from there I was hired.
13:11:44 He inherited the oversight of the University Archives, but the manuscript duties were left to the collection specialist and the curator. However, in 2013, all of that changed collection specialist librarian retired in June, and immediately in August,
13:11:59 the long time curator have passed away taking 45 years of institutional knowledge with him.
13:12:05 Needless to say not inherited a mess.
13:12:09 So you can see on the right hand side of the screen I've listed how much change took place and just just in 2013, since 2013 in our department much different than the first 40 years of of the department.
13:12:22 During this time, Gretchen my colleague who spoke a moment ago, joined the department, physically to assist in cataloging our books, but she was quickly thrown onto the reference desk to assist in answering reference request that gang to librarians fresh
13:12:38 out of graduate school, including myself, and to alleviate the stress began allowing graduate assistants to also pull Reference Desk duties.
13:12:47 I want to note that it has been standard procedure for our department to have Reference Desk hours from eight to 430 Monday through Friday. So it was a pretty tall task, but none of us, none of us knew how to find materials in the manuscript collection,
13:13:00 as I said most of the institutional knowledge was no longer here.
13:13:05 We had finding agent binders, finding aids on floppy disks, finding aids on personal computers, finding aids and personal email, finding aids that were non existent, and none of them were located easily or in one location.
13:13:18 Moving on.
13:13:21 So, the department had been using past perfect.
13:13:28 I guess we can go ahead and move on. Sorry Elizabeth.
13:13:31 That was my finding aids moving on.
13:13:33 The department had been using past perfect software for a while as our content management system, but mostly in house it was not something that was available to the public.
13:13:44 For over about 10 years we were digitizing images and placing them into past perfect around 2018 past perfect began offering web access. At that time, this seemed to be the best answer for us to include are finding age in.
13:14:00 Unfortunately the metadata in past perfect system was less than perfect always intended to be used in house or metadata was lacking for most of our records.
13:14:10 As you can see, a wreck archive record on the left.
13:14:12 Still again very much a stub record a very small scope and content, noting that even under the finding age, tab there was no finding it available, and it included only one search term.
13:14:25 We were able to add that finding link to the server for our finding age, but data contained within the finding age were not searchable. So on the record on the right, it's a little bit better.
13:14:36 We do have a finding a that's linked, that can be searched.
13:14:41 However, you'll notice the subject and search terms are complicated at best.
13:14:46 So there had to be a better way.
13:14:49 When that retired and again we were facing a change in staffing. I had an epiphany. maybe we should be putting them in Marshall digital scholar was.
13:15:01 Excellent, thank you so much Lori. To give you an idea as to where I fall in this timeline, I started in April 2019, and began the implementation of the project that I'm talking about, or that we are all talking about today, in June 2019, this was, in
13:15:17 fact, my first project at Marshall, and my first academic archives job.
13:15:23 So, my presentation in fact to even get this position involved in assessment of existing digital access platforms. So I walked into a department, with no sense of collection management or ability to locate or search any of their materials.
13:15:45 So, you all now have an idea of where we started and what some of the initial goals were for Marshall digital scholar was for Marshall as an institution.
13:15:57 But I'd like us to zoom out a little bit and think about what access is and what we prioritize when we make these materials available online.
13:16:07 We all know that access isn't just putting things online. When we put materials online, whether finding aids or digitize collections, we're making conscious decisions and contributing to a broader information ecosystem.
13:16:20 We have to decide where we want our materials to fall within that broader framework. For instance, do we just want our images available as thumbnails on a page with no search capabilities, or do we want robust options for searching.
13:16:35 How will our users respond to and use multiple facets and avenues for searching. What metadata choices are we making an RV incorporating a critical view of existing standards and vocabularies.
13:16:48 We can even ask something as simple as is our virtual collection space welcoming, or is it intimidating to our users.
13:16:55 If our goal is to be truly accessible to all community members who may have never been to an archive in person or might not even know what the word archive even means we need to incorporate those values into the text use on our access platforms to situate
13:17:11 our users within our virtual Reading Room.
13:17:14 The main access issue we sought to remedy was the fact that nobody, not even our staff members could easily search our collection, without significant institutional knowledge, the priority for this project was getting finding aids inventories and other
13:17:28 access documents available for the public and staff members alike.
13:17:35 Marshall University is an academic archive located in Appalachia and primarily documents the state of West Virginia and the surrounding region. Similarly, most of our users are from Appalachia or researching Appalachian topics, most often related to genealogy
13:17:51 family or local history as those are collections strengths.
13:17:57 As such, our core audience, usually consist of Appalachian people and specifically West Virginians as a region state whose history has been plagued by extractive practices of both natural resources, and people.
13:18:10 We must be uniquely aware as to how state demographics and history impacts usage of archives by our primary users. For instance, when we put things online, we are implicitly creating a barrier
13:18:26 for some of our users who may not have access to reliable broadband internet or have a device capable of using the website or platform that provides access to our resources in West Virginia, a substantial portion of the rural population does not have
13:18:41 access to reliable internet, even if they do have the devices through which they could access these sites and materials.
13:18:50 While approximately 92 to 93% of individuals in urban settings have reliable mobile and broadband access only 65% of rural individuals to do. This means that we are, whether knowingly or unknowingly limited and who are potential users are as an institution
13:19:07 we have to decide whether we're okay with that. And there are elements of privilege that we must be aware of when moving access fully online in a state where digital literacy cannot be assumed.
13:19:18 This is why part of our access goals involved picking a platform.
13:19:22 Marshall digital scholar, which is an implementation of the presses digital common software.
13:19:30 Picking a platform that has built in search engine optimization techniques to bring content to where users are finding it through search engines like Google.
13:19:40 Similarly, Digital Commons has a particularly robust voluntary product accessibility template or V Pat with that indicates substantial compliance with web accessibility standards for one small example, all text is automatically applied to images based
13:19:55 on the title field.
13:19:59 While my colleague Lindsay will expand on the actual putting things online process. I want to discuss some of the preparatory work involved and going from all paper or scattered digital finding aids to all digital versions.
13:20:11 It was a little bit more complex than just scanning or going into the shared drive.
13:20:16 I did, in essence, a rough inventory at the collection level which involves scouring storage areas expression files and sometimes the boxes housing collections to find remnants of inventories, or finding age that nobody remembered existed.
13:20:33 Some of these found findings ranged from skeletons, which you can see here, to hidden gems that were sometimes as detailed as the item level. I also discovered a significant amount of value added materials, such as transcripts of correspondence and some
13:20:48 collections that will allow us to enhance metadata for future digitization projects as a small department. we are acutely aware that metadata maintenance is a continual iterative process by having, even our bear and minimal finding aids and inventories
13:21:03 online, we can get a better sense of whether users would benefit from an improved finding aid, with additional information, or determine what might not be used because it has so little information, such as you see here.
13:21:17 For this project we emphasized access over perfection and did minimal editing prior to posting, where some collections had multiple finding aids I had to complete a spot check of a few folders and each collection to determine whether the material stated
13:21:31 to be in a collection we're actually in it based on the finding eight available, but I didn't do a detailed check for every single collection. Otherwise, I would still be completing the project today, these checks took no more than five to 10 minutes
13:21:44 and allowed me to do basic due diligence to ensure we weren't providing blatantly incorrect information about our holdings.
13:21:52 So, what does this access look like. I am currently displaying the landing page for one of our more minimally described collections. What's invisible on this page is how the user gets to it.
13:22:04 For instance Digital Commons allows users to conduct Full Text searches of any documents that is has undergone optical character recognition or is just default readable such as my Microsoft Word document, the language on this page is partially static
13:22:20 and based on existing institutional policies for instance we prioritize having an explicit access statement on the landing page of each collection and within the finding aid itself that states exactly how users can contact us and use these materials.
13:22:38 It's absolutely critical that people know where to find us, especially since our core population is often unfamiliar with archives.
13:22:46 As you might guess, we previously did not have a formalized system for users to call collections for beyond directly contacting us, which isn't a huge problem because all of our collections are stored in one space in the building that we currently inhabit.
13:23:02 However, coded times have forced us to change this approach, and we currently currently use live count which allows users to make appointments and insert textual requests of particular collection or subjects for no context services.
13:23:16 This is likely an approach that we will retain and we will be able to batch edit the instructions for how to do this into the access and use section of digital comments in the future.
13:23:27 So, with that said, I am going to do a brief screen sharing exercise so you can take a look at our institutional repository.
13:23:38 So, This is the ubiquitous homepage.
13:23:44 Digital Commons has a pretty similar format, at most institutions and ours is no no different. So University Archives and library special collections are pretty front and center in terms of materials.
13:24:01 So let me go to the next page. So this allows us to put archival materials and library and Special Collections materials in the context of other scholarly output by the university, which allows us to legitimize our work in a certain sense, part of this
13:24:20 project involved reorganizing the existing digital assets that were available on Marshall digital scholar, because, as you may have guessed, the previous digital organization left a little something to be desired and didn't quite make sense.
13:24:41 With the department's goals. So, we are able to remind people that we exist and that we are a real and excellent Academic Resource.
13:24:52 Additionally, anything added to our guides to manuscript collections which is finding aids is actually automatically added to our library's discovery layer which means that students searching our databases not only get published materials, but are also
13:25:09 connected with relevant finding aids and digitize materials that are uploaded to Marshall digital scholar. This means that we don't have to create individual Mark records for important to the library's catalog which is absolutely critical for a smaller
13:25:22 staff.
13:25:25 So, um, some of the broader categories that we have are, for instance digital collections. And many of these are in flux and have occurred since we planned our original presentation as well as the ability to search our collections which we can break this
13:25:41 down into manuscript versus University Archives, or other collections such as our Appalachian map collection, among others.
13:25:52 And additionally we can contextualize our collections with teaching and learning resources that are vital to connecting our materials to non scholars and scholars have like one thing that's particularly strong about this platform is that it has an implicit
13:26:09 One thing that's particularly strong about this platform is that it has an implicit hierarchical search. So, if you search at this level you are searching, everything that falls within library special collections.
13:26:21 Similarly, if you search guides to manuscript collections you are only searching our finding aids, so it actually creates a really robust structure.
13:26:29 It's obviously not the most visually appealing. However, we decided that that was something that we were will willing to deal with since most people don't usually browse finding aids like they might browse books on a shelf.
13:26:44 In fact, this particular project which is uploading finding aids was the focus of our original Merrick 2020 presentation.
13:26:53 So later I will discuss some of the projects that were in 2020 considered future but are now considered part of the past or the present.
13:27:03 So as you might guess, this hierarchical structure allows for the colocation of varying formats and asset types and provides a permanent URL that is linkable from our website and has the capability to track downloads in a robust way.
13:27:18 and I'll talk a little bit more about that.
13:27:22 So, we again can have just a really straightforward landing texts that orient individuals with what they're supposed to see here and again. Prioritizing access, of how to get in contact with us is huge.
13:27:41 So to give you an idea as to what the individual pages look like.
13:27:50 As I mentioned previously, it has default text related to rights access and use, as well as a recommended citation, and a link for any digitized images that are available and past perfect will be able to change this field in the future to link directly
13:28:07 within digital comments to digitize materials that are uploaded in this in this platform. But essentially, this gives users the ability to take a look at the abstract or the scope and content note and get an idea as to whether they would like to download
13:28:24 this finding aid. And you can see that there are 136 downloads and 70 abstract views. So it gives us some more detailed information about how people are using our materials.
13:28:39 So, this finding aid didn't or this platform did not just spring into being and these materials didn't just spring into being on it.
13:28:48 So, I will be transitioning over to my colleague Lindsey who will discuss the collaboration between Special Collections and scholarly communications and technical services for the workload flow of uploading finding aids.
13:29:03 Awesome, thank you so much Elizabeth, especially for that brief tour of Marshall digital scholar, I wanted to correct the intro real quick that said I was an associate professor I'm still an assistant professor and the Special Collections department at
13:29:15 the time during this collaboration though I was working as a staff librarian in the digital technical scholarly communications department here at Marshall, where I worked with Elizabeth closely on this project.
13:29:26 Before I delve into the specifics, I thought I delve into what makes the project of this scale successful, the first of which includes some of my previous experience working part time in a special collections department.
13:29:37 The detail is important is important because it gave me a deeper understanding of the basics and fundamentals, including what defining it is how they are used, and also kind of having an awareness of the unique needs of these specific researchers.
13:29:53 It's important to note that you don't have to have experience in a special collections department to collaborate across departments on a project system.
13:30:00 However, it does help another contributing factor to make this any project like this successful involves administrative support without support from our Associate Dean, who was my supervisor at the time, we probably would have taken a lot longer to complete
13:30:14 this project. Further, access to resources, such as archival materials on Elizabeth and for rehousing materials and appropriate access to technology on my end for keeping files organized, or pretty vital.
13:30:28 Finally, Elizabeth and I use each other's strengths to complete this project, creating an equitable ish workload distribution between a faculty and staff member working together in two separate departments, moving on this chart isn't overly simplified
13:30:44 version of our process working together on this project as Elizabeth described the first steps involved locating whether there was an existing finding a for collection.
13:30:53 The second step involved verifying whether the finding aids were correct. The third step involved creating editing or modifying said finding aids, my work on this didn't really come into play until the fourth box it says handoff completed finding aids.
13:31:07 My plan is to walk you all through the lower portion of this workflow to get an idea of what this process looks like on my side of the screen. It is my hope that this can be a useful demonstration of potential collaboration between some of you all and
13:31:19 other departments that your own institutions. Moving on.
13:31:25 Before I speak to our specific workflow, I thought I'd share with you an example of what an entry looks like we're all pretty good at using metadata, as professionals in the archives field, so I'll only speak to a few of these components, especially as
13:31:37 it pertains to how we were able to turn a traditional institutional repository into more of a content management system for Special Collections materials.
13:31:45 I'll be describing the images that I've added throughout my portion of the presentation for accessibility reasons. The image on this slide includes an example of what it looks like on the back end of our repository, when updating and existing entry.
13:31:58 Although the image is small, there are 16 separate metadata components included on each entry that I'll get into a little bit more in detail shortly, not pictured in this image or the sections for comments and recommended citations, creating a template
13:32:12 to make a traditional be press series more archives friendly involved working with RB press support person Sophie. Sophie worked with us to create custom fields that Elizabeth pointed out earlier that service very useful for the creation of this project
13:32:26 fields such as the rights field, the access and use field, the past perfectly field, and the accession number field. Further, Sophie was also able to add finding aid as an option under document type, rather than having like an article or book listed,
13:32:41 or something like that. And this specific descriptive wording allowed us to maintain best practices within the archives field, while using a platform that wasn't intentionally designed as a content management system for archives materials.
13:32:54 Moving on.
13:32:58 Elizabeth and I will work so Elizabeth and I were able to work together on this project completely virtually working together virtually isn't really a big deal now in 2021, especially given the way that we have all shifted our work modalities, over the
13:33:10 last year as a result of it. However, when we completed this project in mid to late 2019, working together in an entirely virtual format was a very innovative strategy for librarians at Marshall, the image you see to the right of this slide is a demonstration
13:33:25 of how Elizabeth and I shared files with one another. This image contains a list of PDFs, with four digit codes, which is our obsession numbering system, followed by the title of that particular collection.
13:33:37 Because Marshall has access to OneDrive, which is a cloud storage program by Microsoft. Elizabeth and I were easily able to transfer large sets of information to one another.
13:33:47 This way we didn't have to send hundreds and hundreds of individual emails with attachments or worry about flash drives going missing. This method allowed Elizabeth, to share.
13:33:57 800 plus finding aids with me over the course of nine or so months, using technology that we already had access to through our own institution, that's a win win as far as the budget goes.
13:34:09 Plus, it allowed her to maintain additional copies of these finding aids, ensuring that we would always have backup or to you when needed.
13:34:16 So over the course of this project, Elizabeth sent me seven fairly large batches of finding a place that I would be responsible for uploading to Marshall digital scholar, as I was creating metadata for the first round of finding aids, my colleague was
13:34:29 doing the work again to process the second round defining aids, so that top half of the portion of the workflow that I shared with you earlier. She was again completed, once I finished, or was nearly finished with my portion she would send me another
13:34:42 round called second batch, a folder that she named second batch, and we repeated this process over and over until bap seven happened and then we were done.
13:34:53 Moving on.
13:34:56 Also included in the materials, Elizabeth gave to me with each round of finding a batches, was this Excel spreadsheet.
13:35:15 Each collection has its own line by line entry and the content that is represented in the spreadsheet includes several metadata components that are helpful for building an ad hoc content management system. The components shown in the spreadsheet here include the department's full accession number are working session number or the
13:35:21 working at session number or the one that we use on a day to day basis, whether the finding eight already existed for this collection, the title for each collection.
13:35:37 A link to the collection as a whole on past perfect, a scope and content notes, whether any collection was digitized already on past perfect, as well as a note section, and the notes section was really helpful for me so that I would know to make notes
13:35:44 about merging collections together on Marshall digital scholar, or whether I mean needed to make a note that a particular collection was deaccessioned or may be transferred to our archives.
13:35:55 This key information was helpful to ensure unnecessary items were retrieved from our other content system at the time we were using past perfect online as Elizabeth already showed you.
13:36:06 At least we were linking back to past perfect from MDS so that users we're going to we're able to see the content associated with that specific action.
13:36:15 Moving on.
13:36:18 Moving on. Another thing I did to sort of make this a less time consuming process on my end was to create a document that made into a new manuscript collection entries into MDS.
13:36:28 Marshall digital scholar, a bit easier. I created a Word document of each metadata component in the order in which I'd have to enter it.
13:36:35 These areas are listed in this on the image on the right are the ones that I would use to create a template or two, so that I could easily replicate them for each time I created a new collection.
13:36:48 The document was especially helpful when many are all of our collections involve using HTML and certain fields, such as our access and use field or the past perfect Links section.
13:36:58 So, by creating a base template, I was able to copy and paste certain portions, replace the text I needed to and take extra time with other areas such as keywords or discipline sections for certain sections like the comments section.
13:37:12 I had a series of statements that I would copy and paste depending on the circumstances of a particular manuscript collection. I've already spoken to this a little briefly, but just as an example with that comment section.
13:37:23 it might have included one of three statements, one.
13:37:26 This collection has been transferred to the University Archives to this collection has been withdrawn and is no longer held by special collections and three.
13:37:36 This collection is related to accession number, and that's where I would list that four digit code and then I would also cross link it to the collection that it's related to on Marshall digital scholar.
13:37:46 If you decide to initiate a collaboration across your between departments that your own institution, providing that LS professional with similar templates will ensure accuracy consistency and less headache of having to go back in and correct some errors
13:38:00 later. Not only just having a template lined up save time, but it also provides consistency across collections. And that's important when considering access and visibility of collections.
13:38:11 Moving on.
13:38:13 Speaking of visibility of our collections, I do want to focus on two specific metadata components that coincide with each entry visibility of collections is especially important when these collections represent marginalized and underserved communities.
13:38:27 the use of keywords and disciplines are very helpful to increase access to these collections because without them. Researchers would only be able to access them through one door with them, they can access them through, through multiple windows as well.
13:38:40 And that's because we've created additional ways for users to find our collections.
13:38:45 Although all of our materials are full text searchable and can be identified through very informal means of conducting information searches, the use of keywords and disciplines are essential metadata components to all to allow our over 800 connections
13:38:58 to be narrow down to a specific topic.
13:39:01 This image included on this slide serves as an example of what it looks like when I'm entering metadata in a new entry for the first time.
13:39:08 As I decide what to include for each collections entry. I have to take into consideration, where it should be organized and how researchers are looking for items, sorting collections and the different disciplines is easy, because it requires standard
13:39:20 language, and it either does, or it does not belong to a specific subject, assigning keywords to entries, however, is a little more subjective and requires some knowledge on knowing how your researchers are looking for materials, incorporating folks on
13:39:35 me like language and controlled vocabularies can also mitigate any issues related to outdated terms that may have been used in this legacy collections at your institution.
13:39:45 A more current example includes the addition of African American Studies, as well as race, ethnicity, and post colonial studies, as the selected disciplines of reflection, and then including keywords, such as civil rights, Black Lives Matter and BLM as
13:40:01 keywords. This way, researchers are able to come across your collections, through more modalities than a standard search. Now, Elizabeth is going to talk to you a little bit about project features.
13:40:15 Sure. So, I'll get started with some of the implications for this project because we all know that uploading finding aids digital assets and other peripheral items for access and use of archives is nothing new.
13:40:28 This project has implications for institutions with limited technical infrastructure, or staff with limited technic limited technical capabilities. Because be press is responsible for all of the technical work and maintenance at no cost to the client,
13:40:43 including no additional cost based on number of record or number or storage space for digital assets institutions with little formal technical infrastructure can have a platform with more capabilities at a comparatively minimal price.
13:40:58 Obviously the last point depends on whether your own institution would require any cost sharing with your scholarly communications, or other departments, but because of the payment structure there were no additional fees incurred for Special Collections
13:41:12 by this project, outside of the staff time required to complete it.
13:41:16 The staff time has undoubtedly been recouped several times over by minimizing the disruptions that are inherent in any department that relies on institutional knowledge for collections management.
13:41:28 Similarly, by adopting a platform
13:41:33 that
13:41:37 by adopting a platform that places minimal demands on updating infrastructure combined with a small staff at Marshall staff time can be devoted to processing the backlog, that we all have or creating resources that connect this new platform to users,
13:41:55 such as lesson plans or other materials usage of this platform bridges the skills gap between staff members who might have varying levels of skill with technology.
13:42:08 Advocacy has also been an unexpected benefit and implication in two senses. one, we have had the chance to conduct significant projects with colleagues and cost scholarly communications and technical services that furthered collective institutional and
13:42:23 library goals. As a result, the department has formed positive relationships and conducted in reach to our library colleagues about our resources. If I were presenting this in 2020, our goal would have been simply to have departmental finding needs up.
13:42:38 However, as a result of this collaboration. We built a sense of trust that has allowed us to add more materials such as digital assets and have representation within the department as administrators on the platform, facilitating some of the future projects
13:42:54 that I will discuss in a few slides.
13:42:57 In addition to these relationships, our researchers faculty and students now see archival materials in the same context as other scholarly output, that is worthy of study.
13:43:10 Before I dive into this, I want to make sure to specify that the generalized location recorded that is collected and that I discussed on the slide is non specific and non identifiable.
13:43:22 However, the general location provides us with valuable data that we can use to determine who geographically is using our materials, and whether those individuals are who we have identified as part of our target audience, which is Appalachians.
13:43:37 We can also see how our users get to our platform. So the URL of referral or the site that link them to the finding aid or digitized item. This is helpful because it tells us where our users are finding us, whether it's scholarly avenues or Plano Google.
13:43:54 Finally, we can identify what resources are most downloaded as a consideration for digitization additional processing or read description priorities.
13:44:20 One artifact of the coven 19 era is that the past year of partially working from home has allowed us to begin exploring and acting on what would have been the futures component of our initial presentation, which was slated to take place Last year it Merrick.
13:44:21 What was once considered a future can now be understood as our current projects.
13:44:25 Last summer, when we didn't have access to our physical collections, and even digital access was partially limited through VPN, or remote access only we had to take a very frank look at our current digital collection strategy and how we wanted to move
13:44:40 forward in a strategic way that minimize the number of access platforms, we have. After all, with this new approach of putting finding aids and Marshall digital scholar, or digital assets, we're now split between Marshall digital scholar and past perfect.
13:44:57 So now we have begun migrating digitize materials from past perfect into Marshall digital scholar, which allows us to have an all in one access platform that better meets user needs and removes the prior requirement of us sending high resolution photos
13:45:17 manually every time someone needed one from past perfect. Additionally, it also removes the collection management aspect of past perfect from being integrated into the collection access portion.
13:45:29 There was a lot of accidental public information that should not have been on past perfect because it was previously an internal only platform.
13:45:38 We can also foster usage of these materials that are now combined to create an upload curricular resources for use in K through 16 classrooms, which is a particular interest of mine.
13:45:53 Since each page for a collection can have its own metadata standards appearance and individualized text, this platform opens up new avenues for partnerships with community organizations to conduct contemporary collecting in a way that is very visibly
13:46:09 community driven. This is just a future possibilities that obviously has a significant number of factors that we'd have to carefully consider to ensure the maximum amount of ethics and keras taken for such a project, but the fact remains that this platform
13:46:23 provides the ability to explore these types of community driven projects.
13:46:29 Additionally, we will now be able to harvest our metadata in an XML format for eventual import into dp la thanks to Digital Commons adherence to OAIPMH.
13:46:39 Additionally, Digital Commons provides avenues for adjusting, not just the external display of metadata, but the internal mapping of metadata to the Dublin Core standard for additional flexibility.
13:46:52 This harvest is particularly helpful for me now, because well, when I did this project back in 2019.
13:46:59 I did not have a particular skill set within programming. However, I am now proficient in Python and a significant amount in web scraping so that has helped us in our capabilities and what features we can imagine.
13:47:15 Additionally, because the press has in house developers who can work again at no additional charge to adjust the default implementation of Digital Commons, to allow for the incorporation of Tableau or other embedded data visualizations in the context
13:47:30 of digitized images and finding aids, this platform allows us to explore alternative avenues for providing access to archival materials.
13:47:41 It's no longer. We're no longer limited to just having a list of icons that all go to metadata instead we can actually create interactive avenues that link to search results.
13:47:57 And with that, we'll move on to questions.
13:48:08 All right, so we have received a couple questions.
13:48:13 So we'll just get started with those so the first reports from the IR systems are you systematically generating reports statistical or other how often what format, and you publish them.
13:48:27 And are you getting any feedback that they are found useful.
13:48:33 Did you want to start with that Lori.
13:48:36 I was gonna say I don't on my end as the head of the department.
13:48:39 We haven't yet.
13:48:41 But as Elizabeth mentioned, I think that this is one of the robust reasons for using this platform is that we can. I know Gretchen has of course used it reports and such for other avenues within Marshall digital scholar, and we can then as Elizabeth show
13:48:59 showcased see downloads a number of downloads who, how many hits our pages are getting, which is, you know, always useful in determining our next steps whether we need to better process something, collect more items on a certain topic.
13:49:14 You know branch out on what our users are looking for.
13:49:18 out on what our users are looking for. And I'm sure there's going to be things that we didn't realize we had that are now very popular because they're accessible to people.
13:49:25 But, Elizabeth can speak more to that I know she's very interested in the metrics that we're going to gain from this MDS platform.
13:49:33 Yes, for sure. I actually use them in my annual reports to demonstrate the impact of the materials that I've processed and uploaded throughout the year.
13:49:44 However, I think there's a really great opportunity for outreach and engagement, to be able to say, this is the impact that we've had. This is how many people are using our materials that we can tell in a more robust way, then, you know, Reading Room
13:49:59 tracking, or reference request tracking which can often be done and systematically and wonderfully helps with by into our administrators as well.
13:50:12 One because it allows us to to again showcase the work that the archives are doing, but then also to help make sure that this platform is maintained, you know the university has to pay for this software yearly so the more we put into it, the more they'll
13:50:27 be, you know, able to keep it. Lindsay was going to say something as well. I was going to say it even breaks down our metrics, since you're asking about like, I mean feedback and stuff it gives feedback to us certainly because we find out like whether
13:50:40 our users are coming from institutions or maybe government agencies, or even like which countries, people are accessing things from again in a way that doesn't violate their privacy but just kind of gives like a pain like of where they may be located
13:50:54 just based on like computer IP, something, something, but but um so it does give us information, as, as archivists to see like, what types of people are looking at which types of materials that we have access to.
13:51:11 It's also one of the things that I've been using.
13:51:14 When I talk to community organizations, about putting their newsletters and information in, because it's easier than show, you know, here's how many people were looking at your newsletters
13:51:29 and sort of related to that when using the download reports, how do you separate legitimate research uses versus robotic web scrapes etc.
13:51:40 Again, I don't know that we can intentionally tell I do like that it shows the difference between those who are just viewing the, the landing page versus downloads and and again i mean i think that that's just the nature of archival research anyway just
13:52:01 someone requests a box here in Special Collections doesn't mean that they're going to use the material. They might glance through it, they might not.
13:52:04 But again, I think the more data we have, the better we'll be able to move forward, and maybe understand more from that.
13:52:13 I think web scripts are just the nature of the beast I mean we put stuff out there and there's, you know, companies that are always going to just be web scraping stuff, but it's kind of cool to see that someone in Russia downloaded a certain document
13:52:24 not just viewed it on the page but it's downloaded, so something had to download it, which is kind of an awesome, because you can see how many came from like.edu or dot o RG, those kind of things and then what countries, you can also sort of tell what
13:52:41 were legitimate maybe downloads, or landing pages versus what was coming from a scrape.
13:52:48 And I know that the presses consistently improving how they detect those issues to.
13:52:55 I, I've because I noticed there were several downloads from locations that seemed like they were automated and I'm like okay, so they minimize double counting and things like that,
13:53:10 who builds the teaching guides and how is the content decided
13:53:16 that on everybody else's screen but.
13:53:20 Yes, it's me. So essentially, I use what has either been identified through partnerships with K through 12 teachers. So I've worked with middle school and high school teachers within our county, and I've identified topics of interest and will either create
13:53:39 create materials for them using our archival materials if I have time obviously because time is one of our most valuable and scarce resources or I'll direct them to other things that encourage the use of primary sources because we don't have everything
13:53:57 we do document. A very niche area that doesn't necessarily map up to curricular standards.
13:54:02 I also get input from faculty members at our institution. So for instance, I'll create curriculum materials around those demands and I just make sure that it's in a shareable state that can be replicated using our digital assets.
13:54:21 Did you involve your community of researchers for input in decisions about access issues and if so what did that process look like.
13:54:31 I will say I know informally after being here for so long that there have definitely been the informal complaints that really take to heart not just from internal users like staff and faculty or on the reference desk, but students who simply cannot find
13:54:46 anything and then therefore they have to come to us, or felt the need to come to us to ask for how to find stuff.
13:54:53 So, that was on my end the the number one reason for trying to develop a better system.
13:55:00 But I do know again Elizabeth and Lindsay have done a little more specifics in that realm as well in there, and their expertise is in access, access.
13:55:12 Sure. so I actually moved to Huntington, West Virginia.
13:55:18 The same month I started this job. And though I lived in West Virginia previously. I knew nobody in the community and I simply approached it with a person focused, or user focused and community member focused approach.
13:55:34 So, minimizing the amount of super detailed information that people aren't going to read. In many instances, providing them with just enough to be able to determine whether or not they would be interested in downloading reviewing the full materials.
13:55:49 But what is great, now that I've been in my position not quite two years is that I can actually work with students to see what metadata you metadata use they might find helpful or haven't found helpful, and can actually do some test cases there because
13:56:09 it's really easy to add an additional metadata and other information through batch upload processes.
13:56:18 Have you had any sort of response from the administration, you mentioned the support of the dean, but anything from administration saying like this is great, we should keep supporting the institution repository unofficially but I think we're gearing up,
13:56:33 also with some of the digitization of the archival materials that future project that we're on.
13:56:40 Um, you know, 2020 was a little crazy we were all kind of in our bubble, but I expect in the next probably couple months especially by fall because we're a semester system School of getting that information out to other stakeholders such as the alumni
13:56:55 and foundation offices athletics, and the president's office and other other organizations that don't quite realize that we're updating stuff every day.
13:57:03 I think that's the thing is like, what was there six weeks ago, or not there six weeks ago might be there now.
13:57:10 And I anticipate that being a really excellent PR opportunity, especially with alumni and Alumni Affairs, and our foundation who of course are always tasked with raising more money to support a public institution so I know that there's some talk about
13:57:27 that, especially with the the Parthenon but with the finding age the academics side certainly the history department has already been very receptive and happy about it.
13:57:38 Well, and one of the projects that we did was we put in the catalogs, and that was actually the request of the director of the registrar registrar. Yeah, so that was, you know, coming from the top of that department.
13:57:56 So, so I think that because I helped with I've helped complete a lot of these projects but a lot of, a lot of these initiations across like deans and departments, we would not have worked with them in a lot of other instances, so I think that it's a really
13:58:10 good way for the library to build external partnerships within with internal stakeholders. It's been very helpful in a lot of ways.
13:58:21 Were there any weaknesses and challenges that emerged during the duration of this project and if so how are they resolved, or if they could not be fully resolved mitigated.
13:58:31 Sure. So, there were definitely technical limitations just based on the platform and that's true, obviously for anything that you use, whether it's archive space or similar platforms.
13:58:46 But I'm trying to think if there was anything that was explicitly difficult. I think that based on our evolving, technical expertise we probably would have done batch uploading previously which is something that we do now, especially since I'm migrating
13:59:03 10,000 digital assets into this system. So if I didn't have batch uploading or metadata manipulation with Python and XML on my side I would definitely be struggling.
13:59:17 But go ahead Elizabeth, I just wanted to say as a, as a director standpoint that this would not have happened had we not hired people who were interested and skill set and things like Python.
13:59:31 I think that that was something that probably alleviated some of those other stressors that might exist in other institutions.
13:59:39 Elizabeth is in school currently as well to grow her tech savvy enough and then we inherited Lindsay as a full time faculty member now so you know I couldn't be more blessed I don't think anything went wrong in this, in this situation and that they are
13:59:54 perfect. They were perfect they made it look super easy and and and it just seemed to go very smooth, which is rare for anything in academia, and I will, I will say that I'm having, I was the second person who had the role that I had at the time this
14:00:10 is the stuff librarian communicates about scholarly communication specialist and the role was very different prior to my being there. So I think that having that the time from the Associate Dean the time to be able to commit to this rather than working
14:00:23 on a lot of just just digitization efforts. I think that at least increase the timeline of being able to complete it, especially since we were only doing manual uploads at that point like Elizabeth pointed out, I did realize, one of the big snags was
14:00:38 the collection management issue, right. So, part of this involves totally reorganizing our collection storage area, so that we could actually find things.
14:00:51 And as a person who had literally started this position the month before.
14:00:57 This was obviously quite a project, so it involved a lot of Lori's patients as I asked her, many of which she couldn't answer.
14:01:06 So, having someone able to do it. I think that's one of the things from someone who I started in this department as a work study student, and was in a very specific role to inherit only a brief memory of institutional, you know, information and knowledge,
14:01:21 it was a it was a major disarray, and I think it's because of small staff and different skill sets and different priorities that we had really let some things get out of hand as far as intellectual control and physical control over materials, which happens.
14:01:39 But this presentation did just show the iceberg of what started a couple years before and just trying to figure out who we what we had. And then Port Elizabeth inherit a huge mess back there and I was like I have this idea, but I don't have time to do
14:01:52 And but, and I think the unintended consequence for both of them was been way more experienced now and what we have. They now have downloaded, 45 years of institutional knowledge in the brain.
14:02:04 So they can't ever leave me, ever.
14:02:10 We have a couple more questions and this session does go till 230, if we don't.
14:02:15 Okay, that's fine. So the next question is do you anticipate using the IR to host and or make born digital material available also did you investigate the use of archive space in tandem with the IR Elizabeth.
14:02:31 Yes. Okay, so that's what's really great about the press as a platform is that it accepts pretty much any format of digital material. So that means that when we get born digital collections in the future and address the ones that we currently have, is
14:02:52 that we can actually upload them into their own digital collection, using this specific types of metadata that we need to share them more widely so for instance with dp LA.
14:03:05 We did, I did evaluate archive space, as an option, but the reason why we were unable to do that is because we would have been unable to get the same level of granularity so I'm the only person that has experience with EAD and coding, or anything like
14:03:25 that. So, that would have funneled all of the work translating paper finding aids into that format to me. And that would have limited our ability to get access additionally we did not have the technical infrastructure for it, nor did we have the money
14:03:44 to host it elsewhere. So, using an existing platform that we already had access to at our institution was huge.
14:03:52 I will say on the university archive side, I already, upload born digital material all the time into Marshall digital scholars so I do things like our faculty senate meeting minutes the Board of Governors minutes.
14:04:04 A lot of that, that data that we're going to want to remember about the university, decades from now. And so those are initiatives that are happening on a smaller scale but I would love to see that kind of ramp up onto a more large scale.
14:04:19 And I would say to that, I think one of the things again unintended consequence was that, Elizabeth expertise and understanding the way that data is needed for others, you know to transport out into other situations like dp LA, you know she had to do
14:04:35 that research prior to agreeing really to do MDS. Like she spent some time in researching what their.
14:04:42 What they you know what different organizational scheme as they subscribe to and how we can get our data out and mapping it, which.
14:04:52 It just so happened that MDS does this I don't know what we would have done, had it not had some of that capability, because again we could not afford archive space and we knew past perfect was not.
14:05:03 I mean it was not doing any of that stuff that we really needed, or at least the way we had been using it for decades, it would have taken a lot more time to fix that metadata.
14:05:12 And so I think that MDS after her research became pretty like an easy answer. I'm not sure what other institutional repositories, other than be press though offer so you know if your institutional repository doesn't have that.
14:05:27 It might not be as easy.
14:05:30 And are you continuing to use past perfect as your record keeping, system.
14:05:36 We're facing it out as of September, gone.
14:05:39 I mean, it was great for what it was for a small institution, at the time, but I think because of so many issues, and it being behind the scenes for so long that it just did not fulfill the requirements of an academic archives in the way that we want
14:05:55 to move forward. And so, there's no fault to the software and many people use it very successfully but it was not able capable of doing what I envisioned for for the future of this department.
14:06:07 And we've already exported all of the data and to have backups of that. So it's not as though that expression or other information is gone. In many instances are only obsession record for an item is what they printed out from past perfect, and they put
14:06:21 it in a folder in our lovely filing cabinet Yes.
14:06:28 I mean, I think there's no loss in in that moving forward, especially since there's the capability of writing code and batch uploading all of our digital assets that were already digitized in past perfect into MDS.
14:06:43 So the migration won't be near as painful as trying to start from scratch somewhere else. Yes, with past perfect. I even was at the point because you cannot do batch edits and past perfect you can only do initial batch upload.
14:06:58 I was at the point where I was about to teach myself. Different Python libraries that actually pointed and clicked to edit the data, because it would have been editing 10,000 individual records to change it.
14:07:10 So that was not a solution that we could really deal with because of the significant metadata issues. And I will say that at the time too I mean we never envisioned I don't think anybody in the department envisioned.
14:07:22 How, how the archives for us was going to change again many from the historical standpoint, much of what we did was for a geological standpoint, and that really shifted when that became director.
14:07:34 He was very much an academic and and wanted to make us more relevant to the programs offered on this campus the Masters and PhD level programs.
14:07:44 So that required a change to because even the data was mostly name generated, who, you know, whose family name was who and didn't really tell you you were looking at a diary or a letter or or boxes of materials, it was mostly family names.
14:08:01 Talked about metrics and seeing if your if your target audience was downloading or finding aids. I was wondering if you thought about UX or usability testing of the IR.
14:08:11 Yes, as I alluded to earlier that's something that is on my radar, especially for student use because I'm a huge proponent of incorporating archives and primary source integration, especially in an undergraduate student research.
14:08:26 I find that it's particularly impactful, but I'd also like to involve community members as well, who are using our materials and to manage to find us.
14:08:37 Sometimes inexplicably I feel I love hearing the background. Yeah.
14:08:43 I appreciate Lori's face.
14:08:45 But yes, I would love to do usability studies on that.
14:08:48 And I think that's one of the things that we have been positioned in a place where we do not have a local Historical Society. So a lot of our materials do become de facto Historical Society type visitors who visit on travels or who visit and want to come
14:09:04 to Marshall because of the story of of like we are Marshall. So we do have that duality between community and accessibility and Student Accessibility, and certainly again the concept that in MDS is is way more integrated with our web accessibility that
14:09:20 meets disability standards that past perfect certainly was not so providing even a better robust platform for for a variety of abilities on on reading and sight and etc.
14:09:38 As the presence of legacy finding aids creators in different formats posed you any special problems. This person says I am currently involved in a project in which you, we are editing and encoding our legacy finding aids and add on archive space we were
14:09:52 trying to standardize our legacy finding aids, as much as possible.
14:09:57 Yes, if I prioritize that obviously I would still be doing this project and that's part of why we didn't end up going with archive space because we can actually just upload a base document.
14:10:08 While that allows for less nuanced searching.
14:10:13 I feel that doing what we did, which is isolating the core elements of data so for instance the scope and content node, as being central we only have to pull that information from the legacy finding aids, we don't have to worry about necessarily
14:10:33 making them the same structure, until we have time for that project, so we can prioritize that access sooner rather than later by just saying, hey we want to pull the scope and content we want to pull the title, pretty much every legacy finding it has
14:10:48 has at least that to some extent is going that path because working with the containers and the folder list. I would likely still be doing that project because thousands of feet and manually encoding that with just me when I pulled 10 hours a week on
14:11:05 the reference desk. It would be a pretty tough task and other duties as assigned faculty member, we also all are teaching and participating in, you know, different groups and organizations and stuff that we have to do, and I will reiterate what Elizabeth
14:11:22 said as well I think the key was just to get stuff all in one location. That was my original goal, and to make it in some way accessible, but this gives us a like a triage option and we can go back in and hit those collections that we feel need more robust.
14:11:36 Either you know container list or, you know, certainly wording is an issue I think some of our fight collect you know are finding aids weren't always you know the keywords chosen were weren't always what we would use today, and those kinds of things that
14:11:57 we can then clean up the best we can and make them more robust.
14:11:57 And actually, now that all of our finding aids are accessible, even in just a PDF format.
14:12:02 I can have students actually transfer container list and I have a student doing this right now into Excel so that I can choose and have the option available to migrate it, or more correctly, transform it into a gap in the future because I've already created
14:12:19 a script for that because I tested archive space batch uploading with Python and XML.
14:12:28 And that helps to with allowing our students the opportunity we you know the do the do some of that smaller work that, you know, the staff and faculty had to do that big layer to get it in there, but now we can train and use some of our student workers
14:12:42 to assist in the other the other levels.
14:12:47 Can you speak more about manual uploading versus batch loading and the migration process.
14:12:53 Lindsay since you've actually had to do that more than I have. And an archives context, would you like to talk about that. Sure. Um, so the best upload is at least in my experience is very helpful when you're putting lots of items and it may belong to
14:13:08 the same category, so I because we were digitizing our student newspaper right now the Parthenon every single week. I'm supposed to be doing the new ones individually, and oftentimes I feel like that takes a little a minute go back to the answer, so I
14:13:28 can see the question again I'm sorry, so that I can.
14:13:27 I do the individual uploads because I have to add like current authors and things like that so that metadata is going to change on a week to week basis but I oftentimes find that those weekly wants take me longer than batch uploads because I can do a
14:13:39 batch upload, where all of the metadata remains consistent except for maybe dates.
14:13:45 And I'm able to accomplish a lot more in a shorter span of time. So I've, for example I've uploaded like I upload like 110 of our student newspapers from like 1959 and I can do that in like an hour, versus the maybe 15 minutes it takes me to kind of like
14:14:02 to do the ones that I'm supposed to do on a week to week basis with like the 10 authors that we have because we do want to honor our current students, and make sure that they're reflected in the more current data versus with our like our back end, or
14:14:15 our backtracking our data we're just kind of listing the author is like Marshall's a whole. So with at least on the archive side, doing those batch uploads kind of helps get a lot of data out there faster, and it's a lot easier, at least for me once I
14:14:28 I learned how to do it well and if I can say the batch upload is from an Excel spreadsheet, and you're loading that Excel spreadsheet up where when you're doing an individual.
14:14:39 It's a lot of copying and pasting so your workforce up and you're copying and pasting from one screen to an extra document to that.
14:14:47 Thank you.
14:14:48 Yeah, no problem.
14:14:52 Since you are facing out past perfect and using the IR for your finding aids, do you or will you have a content management for the backend collection management of the archives.
14:15:04 Yeah, sure. So I'm actually creating, because again, technical issues.
14:15:10 Currently I'm investigating an Excel versus an Access database spreadsheet approach so I've already worked with students to conduct a full box level inventory of exactly what shelf boxes are located on.
14:15:24 So now we can have a more formal system.
14:15:27 I also have a database management background so could incorporate usage of barcodes to barcode individual boxes, but we're likely going to stick with more user friendly back end only tools.
14:15:42 So trying to mitigate the prior usage of past perfect which served as collection management and content management and was less effective for us and cause some problems.
14:15:56 Again she can't leave. Nobody, nobody could kill for in my, my team just yet, because I think that's something moving forward certainly that we can always address later on if we have extra funding or time if we want to go to something like our cap space,
14:16:10 or some other, but past perfect was not being used necessarily as the collection management at all. It was mostly a content management, it would tell you a room something was in.
14:16:22 Right, right. Well, and again I think it could have been but it had so many issues from.
14:16:27 I know there was no standardization, let's just put it that way so fixing all those records at one at a time, just wasn't wasn't feasible to fix it all without the ability to batch change things.
14:16:40 We can we can start from scratch in an Excel format and then try to migrate that data to whatever format we want later on.
14:16:51 Alright, well that was our last question someone I just want to point out in the chat said this is such an inspirational story both individually and collectively.
14:17:00 So thank you for sharing this with us today, and there. There's one more question or comment. Thanks for this fantastic presentation, they'll be sharing it with their colleagues, so that's, that's great.
14:17:15 And thank you again for joining us today and thanks again to the Crowley company for sponsoring this session.
14:17:21 Thank you so much. All thanks for you. Thank you. Thank you, Mac team for keeping us very organized I appreciate the help in creating sessions and making sure we were able to get this going without any, any problems.
14:17:39 Yes, thank you so much for.
14:17:41 Thank you.