When considering the work for the term, especially in the lead up to drafting the term workplan, it is helpful to understand that term activities tend to be made up of routine work (that work which repeats and is considered the core of the work) and new projects and initiatives (or discrete projects taken on during term). Balancing these two types of work is the goal of the workplan and the challenge of subteam leadership.

To define routine work, start with the subteam charter or description, which is recorded on the parent page for each team: Metadata Standards

To define project work, start with the prior term’s retrospective.

Start of Term Activities

The TAC-MD Subteam Lead should do the following at the beginning of each term:

Set up a Jira Ticket Filter

Jira filters are saved searched that can be configured to send automatic emails, display in-line in a page (such as below), display as widgets on a Jira dashboard, or be checked manually throughout term. The TAC-MD Lead should reference the filter before each monthly meeting in order to know what new tickets need attention from the subteam or which continuing tickets remain to be resolved.

The follow shows a filter in action:

JQuery for the above filter:

A natural-language description of the above is:

Show me anytime the metadata_standards_subteam label has been applied to a ticket where the ticket status is Accepted, Awaiting More Information, Awaiting Prioritization, Awaiting Support, In Review, Newly Added, To Do, or Waiting for questions to be answered.

The JQL (Jira Query Language) statement behind this filter may need to be altered over time to account for new or differing filters.

Open

Video demonstrating how to set up a Jira filter

Prompt Dev Pri about using the Metadata Tag

The above filter works only because members of the Development Prioritization team tag tickets with the metadata_standards_subteam label. This inter-team dependence must be maintained from term-to-term and this there is a risk that changing leadership may lose sight of this task. This is therefore a prompt for friendly outreach at the beginning of term. You can find the current lead of the Dev Pri group by navigating to the term-specific roster here: Development Prioritization Sub-Team

Sample text, edit at will:

I am writing today on behalf of TAC-Metadata Standards to make a request to our few Council members regarding the use of the metadata_standards_subteam label. Since it is the beginning of a new term, TAC-MD is sending a friendly reminder to Dev Pri to use this tag for Jira tickets that involve the either the ASpace data importers or exporters so that Metadata can be aware when changes, minor or major, are anticipated. Thank you so much for continuing to help us monitor the standards landscape in ASpace!

Subscribe to Github File Watcher

Please navigate here for information on how to set up GitHub File Watcher, which is a service that will email you anytime changes are made to specific files inside any public GitHub repository that you configure. This allows any member of the Metadata Standard Subteam to be alerted to changes and then assess whether those changes need follow-up action from the team. It is suggested that the Lead set up this tool for themselves any files relevant to the team and to encourage any other member that is interested to do the same.

Some paths relevant to the TAC-MD as of this writing:

backend/app/converters/ead_converter.rb

backend/app/converters/lib/marcxml_bib_base_map.rb

Define Routine Work

Draft section:

Defining “Monitoring the archival metadata landscape for changes.“

Pretend a freshly minted post-grad has joined TAC-MD. How would you suggest someone “Monitor the archival metadata landscape for changes?“ Some basic advice here would be welcome, including listservs to subscribe to.

SAA section listservs for TS-EAS, Description, and Metadata and Digital Objects sections (SAA members only)

In the Loop newsletter (SAA members only)

SAA standards portal: https://www2.archivists.org/standards

MARC news and announcements: General Information: MARC 21 Standards (Network Development and MARC Standards Office, Library of Congress)

Maintaining ASpace data maps.

Wise to link to these?