Moving Beyond The “Back Room”: The Expanded Role for Metadata and Catalog Librarians in Campus Digital Humanities Efforts Lisa McFall Hamilton College Clinton, NY McFall ALA 2014
Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi) Formed in 2009 Received Mellon grants in 2010 and 2013 Working to develop models of supporting digital humanities on campus primarily using existing positions dhinitiative.org McFall ALA 2014
DHi’s Collection Development Team Angel David Nieves Co-Director, DHi Janet Simons Co-Director, DHi Gregory Lord Lead Designer & Software Engineer Peter MacDonald Library Information Systems Specialist Lisa McFall Metadata & Catalog Librarian Steve Young Unix/HPC Systems Administrator McFall ALA 2014
DHi Repository Layers Display Layer (appearance) Fonts, color, page blocks User accounts Application Layer (behavior) Connects Drupal and Fedora Commons Handles data ingest, metadata editing Data Layer (storage) Data files Metadata McFall ALA 2014 Slide by Peter MacDonald
Metadata Process McFall ALA 2014
Working With Faculty Goals Faculty develop an understanding of the role of metadata in their archive A customized metadata schema will be developed Use cases will be discussed Method Review sites they use and like from their own discipline Ask detailed questions to guide discussion about metadata McFall ALA 2014
Sample Questions For Faculty Who is the primary target audience for your collection? How do you envision experts in this subject interacting with the collection? How will students use your site? If you were to stumble upon this site, how would you expect to find resources? What are some of the key categories and characteristics by which you would expect to be able to search? McFall ALA 2014
Metadata Categories Required for all DHi Projects: McFall ALA 2014 Title Creator/contributor (if applicable) Language used in item Date of digital object creation and any other relevant dates Tags/keywords Publisher (if applicable) File size Standardized file name Submitter of object Relationships to other objects
Metadata Categories (cont.) Administrative and descriptive metadata fields that require specialized controlled vocabularies such as AAT and LCSH, as well as a genre field that uses a customized controlled vocabulary Custom fields that vary for each faculty project McFall ALA 2014
Supporting Metadata Creation One-on-one metadata entry to serve as an example Provide resources such as a wiki or built-in support on best practices for metadata creation Be available to answer questions McFall ALA 2014
Metadata Process McFall ALA 2014
Building Connections Beyond DHi Classroom lectures: How to organize information Establishing good metadata practices Methods of file organization Specific tools used by digital humanists One-on-one work with students Metadata training modules – coming soon! McFall ALA 2014
Repurposed Skills Known metadata schemas Controlled vocabularies AAT LCNAF LCSH User search habits McFall ALA 2014
XML and TEI Resources XML Training: (paid subscription service) (free training modules) TEI TEI Lite: Training: “Learn the TEI” TEI By Example validation site: McFall ALA 2014
Other Useful Resources THATcamps: Conferences and training sessions Journals lists XML-DEV System-specific DIGLIB MODS Listserv DC-General Mailing List ACRL Digital Humanities Discussion Group McFall ALA 2014
Contact Information Lisa McFall Metadata and Catalog Librarian Hamilton College, Clinton, NY Digital Humanities Initiative dhinitiative.org McFall ALA 2014