Continuing our series of blog written by our student employees, Alie Dowell writes about her experiences working as a metadata assistant. Alie assisted with The Wittliff’s metadata and archival description initiatives focusing on the migration of Microsoft Word and PDF collection inventories into ArchivesSpace to enhance online discovery and access. The Wittliff’s ArchivesSpace site can be found here: https://archivesspace.library.txstate.edu/.
As I approached my last year as a super senior at Texas State University and wanting to gather insight into Library Science and Archival graduate programs, I turned to my closest resources and emailed the lead archivist at The Wittliff Collections. She very kindly offered me an opportunity to work on an ongoing project to import finding aids into The Wittliff’s new ArchivesSpace collection management system. This project gave me the practical skills for a stronger graduate school application and my future professional goals.
At the start of summer 2023, I began volunteering a few hours per week to learn how to use the system. I worked on small projects until the fall semester began and I was officially hired as a student metadata assistant. At that point, I was given one of The Wittliff’s largest
Entering data into the ArchivesSpace system.
collections, Marc Simmons, to tackle and transfer into ArchivesSpace. I also added abstracts and biographical information to the accessions to provide more context. This was a giant undertaking as the original inventory for the collection was over 200 pages long! After weeks turned into months of working on this overhaul, I had finally gotten through it all. Going through the entire collection, I found some interesting bits such as Simmons’ contribution to historical information for Josefina, the American Girl Doll!
Another collection I enjoyed working with was King of the Hill, adding further information to the collection and restructured the series to promote usability. Getting to go through every episode of a show I love was a highlight of my work at The Wittliff.
The way that information is displayed in the original finding aids compared to ArchivesSpace is vastly different. The organization in ArchivesSpace makes all the collection information so much more accessible. It’s incredible how the information is organized makes such a huge difference in accessibility. On a PDF, you could be scrolling forever searching for something. With ArchivesSpace, it’s all so cleanly arranged with clickable links from subjects, authors, collections, and series. The transition to ArchivesSpace increases the visibility of The Wittliff’s collections, while encouraging anyone, anywhere to be inspired by these materials.
I’m thankful for the opportunity to learn how to use ArchivesSpace in a practical, hands-on way to better prepare me for an archival career path. I love The Wittliff Collections!
Noice!