Curation Guidelines

Having explored the physical archives, we are now asking you to explore the digital version and consider the difference between these experiences. Visit U of I Library digital collections and explore to find at least five additional records relevant to the project.

Explore the different browsing features of the collections, such as clouds, maps, and timelines to see how these visualizations impact your discoveries. Sort and filter the browse pages, click through some item pages, download some files, try full text search.

How is this digital experience clicking on your laptop different from leafing through boxes and folders in the Reading Room?

Collections to Explore

U of I digital collections contain many mining related collections. In particular, take a look at these collections which relate to the archival boxes you viewed in Spec:

• Bunker Hill Labor Collection
• Barnard-Stockbridge Photograph Collection

Try to select items that are different from what the course has digitized, looking for records that can supplement the stories and narratives that you are interested in exploring.

Item Pages vs. Visualizations vs. Interpretive Pages

Digital collections have typically have three main types of pages:

• Item Pages: a page that represents an individual object record. The item page usually displays the record’s metadata alongside a preview of the item’s digitized object (image or pdf). Example: Elks Roundup Parade [15].
• Visualizations: features that represent aspects of the collection items to enable users to browse, explore, and understand contents. For example:
  • subject clouds represent the values from a metadata field in a “word cloud” allowing user to view an overview of the contents.
  • browse page visually represent all items in a collection in an interface that can be filtered using different metadata fields, allowing users to visually browse through all contents.
  • table view represent all items in a spreadsheet-like interface allowing users to filter and sort based on metadata values.
  • map view places markers for all items with lat/long on a map allowing users to browse geographically.
• Interpretive Pages: pages on the site which provide narrative, interpretive content for the user. These often combine collection items with descriptive text, providing contextual details and telling stories using the records. Example: About Barnard-Stockbridge Photograph Collection.

How to Create Metadata Records

Your five items will be recorded in your copy of the metadata template, following exactly the same conventions as your newly digitized items.

In this case, you will be looking at an item with already existing metadata. However, the metadata fields might not exactly match our project template– sometimes the existing record may not have all the fields in our template, they might be named slightly differently, the fields might be used in a different way specific to the original collection, or they might not be that good!

You will be creating your own original metadata record based on your understanding of the object, just as you did for digitized objects.

If the existing metadata values make sense for our template, then you can directly copy the values from the item page into our template (see spreadsheet tips for how to copy and paste, but also feel free to write your own metadata. You are curating these objects for a new context, which means you may interpret the metadata slightly differently–or perhaps you have insights or research knowledge that enriches the existing information.

Think about why you choose this particular item for our exhibit project and ensure those reasons are reflected in the metadata.

filename field

For the “filename” field, you will need to list the full URL to download the item.

On most of our item pages, you will find a “Download” button. Right click on the button and select “Copy link address” to copy the URL. Then use Ctrl+V to paste it into your Sheet.

If you encounter a CONTENTdm item page, for image items you can right click on the preview image and select “Copy image address”. For PDF items, right click on the download icon, and select “Copy link”. These options might not work as expected, but they do contain the information needed so we can fix it later! Alternatively, try to find the item you are viewing on CONTENTdm back in the main collection interface and copy the download links from there.

description field

You will likely want to enhance the description of existing records to better relate to the context of this project’s exhibit. For example, items in a collection often have some information assumed based on being in context of the collection–some of that background may need to be added to the description to ensure the item can be understood in the new context.

source field

If your curated item has a Source field available in the existing metadata, please copy it into your record, and add a link to the item page after. If it has none, simply copy the link to the item page into your “source” field.