2019-10-02 Meeting Notes

 

Date and Time

Oct 2, 2019

09:00PDT/12:00 EDT - 10:00PDT/13:00 EDT

 

Zoom URL

https://lyrasis.zoom.us/j/897871318

 

Participants

  • @Kevin Schlottmann

  • @James Griffin (Unlicensed) (Note taker)

  • @Daniel Michelson

  • @Maggie Hughes

  • @Dallas Pillen

  • @Wiedeman, Gregory

  • @Christine Di Bella

  • Bria Lynn Parker

 

Goals

 

Discussion topics

Item

Item

Introductions (Ice Breaker Question: Do you have a pet, and if so, what kind?)

Metadata standards (for descriptive and for encoding use cases) which should be supported as default ArchivesSpace solutions

Status of the Describing Archives, a Content Standard (DACS), and its support within ArchiveSpace

Maintaining published import and export crosswalks for metadata in ArchivesSpace

Documenting ArchivesSpace data mappings (for example, from MARC to EAD)

Scheduling Future Meetings

 

Action items

 

Notes

(Introductions were held)

 

Overview of the Sub-team

  • We are tasked to come up with a work plan and activities which can be reasonably executed over the next year

  • We should hone in by the end on a rough work plan and begin scheduling

  • Moving ArchivesSpace to support the identified metadata standards

 

Reviewing the Sub-team Charge

 

Metadata Standards

  • Migration is often heavily informed by ensuring that the imported metadata follows standardized schema

    • How can we make explicit what ArchivesSpace commits to in terms of metadata standards?

    • How do we document this?

  • Daniel: A lot of this works came out of the structure of the EAD

    • There is a desire to ensure that EAC-CPF and MARC exports are fully supported from within ASpace

    • Tooltips for the system are based on DACS, but this is customizable

    • Resource record section is based on EAD and DACS

  • Internationalization

    • We should note that RAD or ISAD might be preferred by adopters outside of the United States

    • Hence, DACS might not be preferred for those outside of the US

  • OAI-PMH Implementation

    • Note that this supports Dublin Core

  • There are tiers of support for standards when it comes to adherence

    • For some standards, ASpace just exports data with the bare minimum level of compliance

    • This should be distinguished

    • Highest level of compliance and documentation should be there for MARC, but for cases such as Dublin Core, we might just offer the mapping

    • Daniel: EAD adherence is really the highest tier

    • Greg: Defining these tiers and standards can be a work plan item

    • Kevin: MARC is constantly considered at Columbia University, a robust MARC implementation within ASpace would be ideal

    • Greg: We should explore how DACS applies to ASpace, documenting how it is implemented would be valuable

  • Kevin: We should look towards documenting existing import and export mappings for at least EAD and MARC, and get these up to date

    • These are behind by more than one year

    • Bria: In the Migrations Sub-group, having a path for getting these mappings updated would have been valuable

    • Greg: Ensuring that communicating that a certain element must be updated in the mapping alone would be a great contribution

    • Kevin: This would likely be offered as instructions to community members in how to create JIRA tickets for review

Documentation

  • Christine: Much of the ASpace documentation is being migrated to Confluence, hence it might be best to explore migrating this mapping documentation here as well

    • Kevin: To what extent could some of this process involve documentation generated from the code base?

    • Christine: This is difficult to determine, but when changes are made to the API, there can be documentation updates which are generated

      • Not certain as to whether or not this could be supported for export/import functionality

    • Note that Data mapping is not a part of the technical documentation

    • There are a few spreadsheets which are linked from the general documentation

    • Christine: The technical documentation focuses upon what is involved in installing and deploying the application

    • There has not been a full effort to update the MARC export/import maps due to limited developer resources

 

MARC Mapping Concerns

  • Migrations Working Group found that there are some long-standing, complex issues regarding the importation of more obscure MARC fields

  • It would be best to try and break this down into actionable tasks

  • Kevin: Some of the behavior might be adjusted within the JRuby code base

  • Adjusting the field-level mappings for MARC export/imports can perhaps be demonstrated or documented for the community

  • Christine: This group should decide what the way is regarding the default/”one true way” to support default mappings

 

Support for Emerging Standards

  • There should also be an understanding that the standards are vast, and that there might be a need to call on expertise from outside of the community

  • Controlled vocabularies might be an area where catalogers would be preferred in terms of inviting colleagues to collaborate

  • EAD3 is still also a fairly new standard, and expertise might need to be invited

  • RIC is another standard which should be considered

  • https://www.ica.org/en/records-in-contexts-ric-a-standard-for-archival-description-presentation-congress-2016

  • Exploring how difficult it might be to support Records in Context would be desirable as well

  • TS-DACS membership ensures that we have parties who are engaged in the development and finalization of this standard

    • Perhaps we should consider a call to the general Technical Advisory Committee enquiring about DACS support once work with the DACS progresses

 

Work Plan Tasks and Goals

  • Defining our level of commitment to various standards

  • Addressing various mappings (this will need to be broken down into tasks, and we will need to ensure that we clearly define our level of commitment)

  • How DACS integration is supported and how tooltips are in sync.

  • Addressing dev. tickets and to what extent a request to improve a feature will be rewarding to the community

  • Offer a mechanism to provide feedback

 

Next Steps

  • We should offer an e-mail on the Wiki where we define the work plan items

  • We should break them down on to tasks

  • In four weeks, assign the specific tasks, and define a timeline for each of these

 

Scheduling the Next Call

  • Next TAC call is scheduled to be held in two weeks

  • We are required to provide a work plan, but a draft (which is later adjusted) is acceptable for this

  • A Doodle poll will be sent to schedule another call for defining the task list for the Work Plan

  • The Work Plan should have a section as a holding place/wishlist for tasks which might not be prioritized for this term

    • EAC-CPF is an example of this (although, after some discussion, it was determined that this might be a higher priority)

 

The meeting was adjourned at 09:46 PDT/12:47 EDT