2024-04-19 DAMS-ArchivesSpace metadata notes

Review of current status of DAMI project

Discussion

Mike's questions for Katie:
Do you want to continue doing your description and arrangement in ArchivesSpace, or do you want to do it in the DAMS?

-KR prefers ArchivesSpace, since it is the system of record. raises the question that metadata creation within the DAMS will be necessary if there are different metadata requirements for DAMS? ER says DAMS should do what we need it to do with metadata, and censhare/Avyre have experience with ArchivesSpace migrations to censhare.

-BG: fundamental difference between archival processes and description. in special collections field, item level description is not the norm. ER: we may or may not need item level in DAMS, we will talk to vendor about how this works. Folder level descriptions mimic the experience of a reading room. We do this because of the volume of content we receive.

-MD: so clarification that SC does not plan to expand into additional item-level description. So what work would SC be doing in the DAMS? KR: changes would need to be mirrored in the DAMS. What functionality of DAMS is useful/efficient in DAMS in that case for SC? KR: bulk updates are possible in censhare, per Katie's research into censhare functionality. Should also give us a better understanding of what has been scanned if it all goes into DAMS–connecting things to finding aids (similar to tracksys function). KR has been hesitant to connect things to tracksys because sense is they will need to be connected to DAMS in future, and connected to finding aids. BG: we plan to use DAMS a great deal. Students and researchers will be pointed to DAMS to pull items down, and they should be able to do this without item level description. That is a thing the DAMS can do that SC cannot do with current systems. Pulling things from tracksys, DPLA, LoV for resources was not best option during pandemic for class resources.

What functions does DAMS need for it to be most useful to SC? Find by collection (MSS #, etc), title of collection, subject (KR has a list of fields she thinks are most useful). 

BG/MD: where does metadata come from? from existing description, then there would need to be new links to DAMS for searching that. Not new description, though linking is new.

If you keep ArchivesSpace, how much of the ArchivesSpace information do you want in the DAMS?  Is seems like the least overlap would be to have the items in the DAMS mirror the physical arrangement (ie, grouped by box and folder).  Then those items could be manually added as digital objects in ArchivesSpace.   With such a light coupling, folks could only find stuff in the DAMS based on the folder or box, or any additional item-level description that was added in that system.   This is essentially what tracksys does now.

At the other end is that all the description and organization is stored in the DAMS.  This would allow for maximum discoverability within the DAMS (you could search on all that stuff), but would require a new description workflow to be established, and makes the most sense if you're moving away from ArchivesSpace because then there wouldn't be the same information maintained and synchronized between two different systems.

CD: will the publicly accessible descriptive metadata be in DAMS or ArchivesSpace, or both? We aren't trying to add a lot of metadata to tracksys but it isn't publicly accessible metadata so not useful to researchers. So mostly a function of DAMS-ArchivesSpace connector. For new things coming in, and also for things in tracksys now. Will the metadata go into ArchivesSpace, or into the DAMS?

KR: reminder of tracksys future? per last meeting, "does censhare replace tracksys functions? No. Digitization queues would remain in tracksys. Discoverability and multiple formats are what censhare is supposed to provide." KR and BG agree tracksys should continue to do that function.

BG/KR: ArchivesSpace is where we present finding aids, and we want to keep them there. Description will ideally continue to be done in ArchivesSpace and be connected to the DAMS, per KR/BG. For Edgehill-Randolph test case, description is all in ArchivesSpace so tidy. Other things will be messier, with metadata coming from Virgo, or finding aids in ARVAS (formerly VA Heritage). 

CD: to clarify what we are deciding: as DPG works through content that is already digitized, we will be gathering whatever metadata we have for it (in ARVAS, Virgo, or ? ) and it will live in ArchivesSpace and be linked to DAMS. And any metadata that is in ArchivesSpace comes from Katie's group (SC metadata).

MD: will DAMS be able to be searchable by metadata not contained in DAMS? Would need to be linked to allow this, how does that work? Fields listed below are stored in multiple systems, and would remain collected in those other systems, and we want people to be able to search DAMS based on that metadata (that is in ArchivesSpace). Metadata would need to be in both places. Would need to be a feature of DAMS to automatically pull in changes from ArchivesSpace to maintain consistency.

KR/MD: where does URL come from for items in the DAMS? tracksys, for example, generates a stable URL. Does that come from DAMS, or tracksys? We don't know the answer long term, but it will be immediately apparent when we get sample content into DAMS.

List of metadata fields

Which are in ArchivesSpace now, which would need to be linked to DAMS, which would need to be added in DAMS?

*MSS / RG / Accession Number

*Subject

*Name and Location of Repository

*Title of Collection

*Date(s) of Item(s)

Extent/size of item(s) – file size in megabytes (per DCMI)

Name of Creator – of collection? Item? How to determine when there are 3rd parties?

*Conditions Governing Access

Languages and Scripts of the Materials – this may vary from the collection level description to the file or item level description

*Rights Statements for Metadata – open

*Item/folder title

*Filename and/or unique identifier

File format – pdf, jpeg, etc.

Type – text, still image, etc.

Takeaways

BG: I think we need to make it so that if people come to the DAMS first, then they can find what they need. We can’t expect them to go through Archives Space every single time.

CD: test collection should answer many of the questions above. 

Metadata will be collected and input for SC in ArchivesSpace.

We need a full mapping of metadata and where it is coming from, and what we want in censhare.