diglib: AAA collections: input standards for "creator"

[Carol Hixson <chixson@darkwing.uoregon.edu>]

Below are my notes from the meeting this morning. If anyone
attending has corrections or clarifications, please share
them with me so that I can get them out to all the lists.--
Carol
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The Metadata Implementation Group, the AAA digital
collections project team, and other interested parties
met this morning to discuss input standards for the
Creator field in the CONTENTdm-mounted AAA collections.

In attendance: Faye Chadwell, Nathan Georgitis, Corey Harper,
Carol Hixson, Susan Hoyt, Jon Jablonski, Cara List, Lori Robare,
Jennifer Rowan, Ed Teague.

The issue: input standards for personal names mapped to
Dublin Core "creator" follow modified LC standards in all
previous CONTENTdm collections. With the AAA collections,
the form of name has been taken from the Union List of
Artist Names (ULAN) 
(http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/ulan/)
The  main difference between the two is that ULAN forms of name
contain a phrase that specifies the role of the artist (painter, sculptor,
etc.)

The questions: Does this matter to our users? Do we want to
use the same input standards for all of our CONTENTdm-based
collections?

Discussion:

The main points of discussion centered around the primary target
audience and what their expectations would be and the possible
negative affects of using a variety of input standards for
cross-collection searching, maintenance of the database,
and harvesting metadata for cross-domain searching.
Some members of the group felt uneasy about
proliferating standards and long-term implications for
searching and sharing information between different collections.
In general, it was felt that users are accustomed to seeing
information provided in a variety of formats and have
become savvy about how to deal with this.  The use of
ULAN was seen as being very important for the primary
target audience of AAA users. The context of a collection
was seen to be very important for determining input standards.

The decisions:

1) AAA collections will continue to use ULAN as the source
for form of name for fields mapped to Dublin Core Creator.
2) When a name is not in ULAN, the name will be set up
with as much information as is readily available or time permits
for researching. The default role will be "artist" when no other
information is available or time does not permit further research.
3) Within the AAA collections, the same input standards will be used
for the Creator fields and the same form of name will be used
consistently for the same person.
4) AAA staff will be trained by MDLS in using CONTENTdm for input
of metadata and will be responsible for updating or correcting
information in the fields.
5) MDLS will assist in the creation of a "comments" form
for AAA collections, the output of which will go to AAA staff
for resolution of metadata problems.
6) In the short term, we will probably de-activate the general
search box and the out-of-the-box link to the advanced search
page so that leaving a AAA collection will be less accidental
and more the result of a conscious choice. Customizing
interfaces is something that must always be weighed
against the time and expertise needed to track local
changes and keep them functioning when new versions
of the software are installed.
7) Decisions about input standards will need to be documented
and made readily available as part of the public interface for
the digital collections both for users to read and to provide
assistance for public services staff trying to help people
navigate the collections.

Further meetings will be scheduled to discuss input standards
for other fields.

Carol