Author Archives: James Williamson

TARO community feedback about EAD Best Practice Guidelines

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Hello TARO Community,

Earlier this year the TARO Standards Subcommittee shared with you that we have been tasked with assessing the level of adoption of the TARO Best Practice Guidelines, among other things. You can check out the Standards wiki page to learn about what our group has been doing this past year.

This message is to ask you to share your thoughts with us. Let us know what you think of the TARO Best Practice Guidelines, both what you like and what you don’t like. We want to know if you are using the best practice guidelines document, and if you are not, to learn why.

You can provide your feedback by completing this brief survey.

You don’t have to be your repository’s designated TARO representative. If you create finding aids that are added to TARO, we want to hear from you!

Please complete the survey by Friday, November 3.

TARO Index Terms survey results

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Dear TARO community,

Thank you all who participated in the Index Terms survey we sent out in May. We are writing to share with you the results of the survey and to let you know that the TARO Steering Committee will further investigate/peruse the Metadata Hopper software option based on feedback received from survey. See below for survey results.

Question 1: Is your repository able to check all Index Terms (Names, Subjects, Document Types, and Titles) in the <controlaccess> section in your EAD files before uploading to TARO to verify that the terms match the authorized version of the term and that the encodinganalog and source attribute values are assigned correctly?

The majority of responders indicated that they do check all their terms or at least try to verify them. Some are not able to check them and others are not sure whether this is done before upload to TARO.

 

Question 2: Do you believe your repository has the necessary resources (staff time and expertise) to retrospectively review your EAD files’ <controlaccess> terms and edit them as needed to use the authorized vocabulary terms if TARO provided a report of what terms need to be updated?

 Several people indicated that they believe their institution has the resources or can plan for the next fiscal year to embark on a project to do a data clean-up project. The comments indicate that people could do a cleanup project (after TARO provided a report) as long as there was ample time (no tight deadlines); responders asking for flexibility.

 

Question 3: In addition to controlled lists of local terms would it cause practical/logistical problems for your institution if TARO decided to require that EAD files use specific controlled vocabularies, such as Library of Congress Name Authority File and Subject Headings, and Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus, for <controlaccess> terms going forward?

 Most people replied that they do not foresee any problems if TARO required a controlled vocabulary but asked for the flexibility of still being able to use some local terms that follow controlled vocabulary conventions (e.g. follow LCNAF conventions to create an entry). Again people ask for flexibility and/or training (specifically referring to AAT).

 

Question 4:  Would your repository be willing to have its TARO finding aids sorted into broad TARO subject categories to enhance user experience in browsing? For an example, see the Chicago Collections site (http://explore.chicagocollections.org/)

Good news! Nearly everyone who responded said their institution would be willing to have broad subject terms applied to their finding aids. There was one blank response and one person said that this would be okay as long as there was no additional work incurred on their staff.

 

Question 5: Do you have additional comments or questions?

Most people had no comments. Five comments were submitted (mainly from Steering Committee members).

 

Best,

TARO Steering Committee

TARO Index Terms Survey

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Dear TARO participants,

 We need your input to plan our path forward in relation to the Index Terms (also known as <controlaccess> terms) such as personal and corporate names, subject terms, and genre terms used in finding aids submitted to TARO.

 As you may know, TARO has not in the past strictly required use of a particular controlled vocabulary, and repositories have used what fit their collections. This has resulted in a rather wide variety of headings in TARO, raising concerns for the user’s experience in trying to browse TARO by index terms. Imagine for example, browsing across all name, subject, or format headings in TARO – there would be similar headings with minor differences in them, some finding aids with many headings and some with few, some with ending punctuation and others with none, some with local headings, some with only authorized headings.

 We are therefore exploring whether it makes sense to either:

1.) Engage in TARO-wide index term clean up work (with repository participation / approval) and require use of only specific vocabularies going forward or

2.) Leave repositories to use vocabularies as they wish, and implement software (Metadata Hopper) to apply broad subject categories for browsing purposes. A program using this software is the [explore.chicagocollections.org]Chicago Collections.

 Many repositories will have varied answers to these questions, please just answer as best you can. The information will not be publicized; it will only be used to get an honest view for planning purposes.

 Please answer our very brief survey by Friday June 2, 2017.