DPLA's Archival Description Working Group Update

*Archival Description Working GroupUpdate

*Working Group Charge*The Archival Description Working Group is composed of

representatives from DPLA Partner institutions as well as national-level experts in digital object description and discovery.

The group will explore solutions to support both item-level and aggregate-level approaches to digital object description and access. The group will be charged with developing recommendationsfor DPLA as well as developing any data models or tools as appropriate. The working group will explore aspects of both object description and access through discussion, review of prior research, and examination of exemplary implementations at other institutions.

Charge. The New York Public Library.

*What are we NOT doing?*Incorporating Finding Aids or other collection

records into DPLA*Modeling or mapping EAD as DPLA

SourceResource objects*Putting a stop to

either item-level oraggregate-level description practices

Stop the Madness! University of Southern California Libraries.

*What ARE We Doing?

*Recommendations for aggregated archival objects*What contextual information is useful for items*What structure (item- or aggregate-level) is useful in

what situations*How should objects be

displayed in context in an aggregation

*Sources for context of digital objects*EAD and archival notions of

collection*Thematic and other notions of

collection Easter Egg Race. Nyack Library.

Empire State Digital Network.

*Membership

Gretchen Gueguen (Chair/DPLA), Jodi-Allison Bunnel (Orbis Cascade Alliance), Mark Custer (Yale University), Bradley Daigle (University of Virginia), Jacqueline Dean (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Max Eckard (University of Michigan), Ben Goldman (Penn State University), Leigh Grinstead (LYRASIS), Kris Keisling (University of Minnesota), Adrian Turner (California Digital Library)

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*Advisory Board

Shawn Averkamp (New York Public Library), Erin Hawkins (World Digital Library, Library of Congress), Sheila McAlister (Digital Library of Georgia), Sandra McIntyre (Mountain West Digital Library), Anne Van Camp (Smithsonian Institution)

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*Work Plan

*Research Phase (10/1/15 – 2/29/16)*Literature Review*Environmental Scan*Summary/synthesis

*Design Phase (3/1/16 – 6/30/16) *User Scenarios*Metadata Analysis*UI Analysis

*Writing Phase (7/1/16 – 7/31/16)*Whitepaper*Metadata Tools

Blueprint of Victory. National Archives and Records Administration.

*Research

* Literature Review* Jodi Allison-Bunnell, Elizabeth Yakel, and Janet Hauck, “Researchers at

Work: Assessing Needs for Content and Presentation of Archival Materials” Journal of Archival Organization. 9:2 (Fall 2011): 67-104.

* Bardi, et.al. Recommendations for the representation of hierarchical objects in Europeana. Version 1.0. 2014.

* Wickett, et.al. Modeling Cultural Collections for Digital Aggregation and Exchange Environments. Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship. 2013

* Wim van Dongen. A workshop on how to display hierarchical objects and their metadata in Europeana. Europeana Metadata Workshop. 2010

* Oksana Zavalina. “Contextual Metadata in Digital Aggregations: Application of Collection-Level Subject Metadata and Its Role in User Interactions and Information Retrieval.” Journal of Library Metadata. 11:3-4. (2011): 104-128.

* Environmental Scan

*Literature Review

*Define what you mean when you say collection*Collection information is useful when

evaluating individual digital objects*Confusion can happen when

it isn’t clear that the item is part of the collection,or how it fits in*Finding or mapping the data

can be difficult

Children's Dept., basement work room, showing Charles K. Miles accessioning books.

Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County.Indiana Memory.

*Finding Aid Driven Sites

*Traditional “Digital Collections”

*Hybrids

*Aggregations

*Environmental Scan

Things to Build On:*Collection context at brief

and full record*Browsing by collections*Mix of item- and aggregate-

level objectsThings to Improve On:*Need to improve on transition

between finding aid contexts and digital repository contexts. A family outing along the river. Woman

with binoculars is likely Marie Donner.Beaufort County Library.

South Carolina Digital Library.

*Design

*User Scenarios: http://bit.ly/userScenarios*Brief “stories” that identify*A type of user*A motivation*A desired interaction with data

*Additional work identifies*Metadata needs to make the scenario possible*UI needs to make the scenario possible*Example implemenations

*User Scenario 1

Juliet finds an item during a geneaology search that confuses her. The record contains information about the collection to which it belongs, which helps her make sense and expand her search.

Desired Interaction:*It should be apparent to users when

they find an item/s that these materials are part of a larger collection.

“Romeo and Juliet.” Memphis Public Library.

Digital Library of Tennessee.

*User Scenario 2

Stanley does a search related to his personal interests. Collection information in the brief record result helps him choose which record to explore further.

Desired Interaction:*Users should know as soon as

they search that items are part of collections and should be able to act on that knowledge.

Stanley Ketchell. The New York Public Library.

*User Scenario 3

Melody is familiar with a collection and wants only search results from it. She narrows her search results by collection membership.

Desired Interaction:*Users should be able to refine

and limit their searches by membership in collections.

“Melody in F” Sheet Music. National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring

Center.

*User Scenario 4

Kurt searches and finds a record for a folder of letters. The collection information in the record helps him understand what it is and he explores further.

Desired Interaction:* Users should understand when

objects are described using a traditional component-level archival-style descriptions

Into the Library. The University of Washington.

*User Scenario 5Augusta is an artist looking for visual material. She finds lots of items with similar descriptions from an archival collection. The collection information helps her make some sense of the results, but since these are images, she is pretty satisfied with her search anyway.

Motivation*Users should be presented with

appropriate metadata for objects, and this level of metadata and context may not be the same for all objects and collections. Augusta Savage, sculpting.

National Archives and Records Administration.

*User Scenario 6Hiro finds an item that he is interested in. The metadata implies that it is not only part of a collection, but part of several sub-groupings. This helps him determine that he wants to explore the collection more fully.

Desired Interaction:*Users may be presented with

information that helps them makes sense of where the item belongs within a collection if the collection structure or arrangement is meaningful.

Unidentified Japanese Student. Los Angeles Public Library.California Digital Library.

*User Scenario 7

Nadima finds an interesting item. From the record she discovers that it was used in an exhibit, which also contains materials that interest her.

Desired Interaction:*Collection/context information

applies to different types of collections including exhibitions and primary source sets. Muslim woman in class, South Asia or Middle

East, photograph by Jean Shifrin, 1992. Georgia State University Libraries, Special

Collections.Digital Library of Georgia.

*User Scenario 8

Marshawn wants to find collections of materials to help his students do research. He browses through collection descriptions.

Desired Interaction:*Users can go to DPLA and

find a collection that interests them without doing a item search. An African - American male professor teaches a

Math class at Elizabethtown Community College. University of Kentucky.

Kentucky Digital Library.

*User Scenario 9

Ling does a successful search. While viewing an item of interest, she is presented with links to other items from the same collection.

Desired Interaction:*A user can find similar

materials related to a retrieved item by their membership in the same collection.

Othello – Costume Rendering. University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign.

*Next Steps

*Metadata Analysis*Collection information to gather*Sources/mappings

*UI Analysis*Collection information to display*When and where

An alley and stairs outside a garment shop shows cloth scraps falling out of a barrel.

Cornell University.ARTstor.

*Future Work

*Whitepaper*User scenarios*Recommendations*Collection/context

Metadata*UI Wireframes

*Tools*Data models*Crosswalks

Futuristic Street Scene, Zumbrota. Minnesota Historical Society.

Minnesota Digital Library.

*After that?

*Recommendations only

*Comment by Community*Exploration by DPLA

of feasibility

Astronaut Carrying Experiment Packages. National Air and Space Museum.

*What Have We Missed?

Detective Comics No 108. National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring

Center.

*THANKS!“It’s a Bear,” the Mascot at Camp Greene. Charlotte, N.C.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.North Carolina Digital Heritage Center.

User Scenario 1* Items are part of

collections

User Scenario 2* Collections are visible in

search results

User Scenario 3* Searches can be limited

and refined by collection membership

User Scenario 4* Aggregate description is

enhanced by collection information

User Scenario 5* Items with little to no

descriptive info work in some contexts, but are always improved with collection information.

User Scenario 6* Materials that are part of a

hierarchy can contain that information.

User Scenario 7* “Collections” can include

things like exhibits.

User Scenario 8* Collections should be

browse-able

User Scenario 9* Recommender algorithms

should include collection membership