Lisa McFall Hamilton College Clinton, NY

McFall ALA 2014

Moving Beyond The “Back Room”:

The Expanded Role for Metadata and Catalog Librarians in Campus

Digital Humanities Efforts

Lisa McFallHamilton 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 primarilyusing existing positions• dhinitiative.org

McFall ALA 2014

DHi’s Collection Development TeamAngel David NievesCo-Director, DHi

Janet SimonsCo-Director, DHi

Gregory LordLead Designer & Software Engineer

Peter MacDonaldLibrary Information Systems Specialist

Lisa McFallMetadata & Catalog Librarian

Steve YoungUnix/HPC Systems Administrator

McFall ALA 2014

DHi Repository LayersDisplay Layer (appearance)

Fonts, color, page blocksUser accounts

Application Layer (behavior)Connects Drupal and Fedora CommonsHandles data ingest, metadata editing

Data Layer (storage)Data filesMetadata

Slide by Peter MacDonald

McFall ALA 2014

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 CategoriesRequired for all DHi Projects:• 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

McFall ALA 2014

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

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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 ResourcesXMLTraining:• www.Lynda.com (paid subscription service)• www.W3schools.com (free training modules)

TEI• TEI Lite: http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/Customization/Lite/• Training:• “Learn the TEI” http://www.tei-c.org/Support/Learn/

• TEI By Example validation site: http://www.teibyexample.org/xquery/TBEvalidator.xq

McFall ALA 2014

Other Useful Resources

• THATcamps: http://thatcamp.org/camps/• Conferences and training sessions• Journals• Email lists

• XML-DEV• System-specific• DIGLIB

• MODS Listserv• DC-General Mailing List• ACRL Digital Humanities

Discussion Group

McFall ALA 2014

Contact Information

Lisa McFallMetadata and Catalog LibrarianHamilton College,Clinton, [email protected]

Digital Humanities Initiativedhinitiative.org