Week 5: Spreadsheet Corrections

Another week is coming to a close, but the Public History Central team is going strong with our spreadsheets. Admittedly, on my part, it has felt a little back and forth at times. The process feels as though I’m getting closer to finishing at least one of the spreadsheets; however, I realize there is more to the process than I initially thought. After contacting the RICHES digital archivist about some of my questions regarding his feedback, I still have much to do according to their standards.

Titles that need changes

After clarifying one of the more pressing questions about how to write the two titles for each artifact, it was confirmed that specific indicators, including terms like “photograph”, “obituary”, or “newspaper clippings”, should be avoided based on the fact that different parts of the metadata will specify these parts. Before his response, I was slightly hoping to be wrong about that concern since my teammates and I from the summer filled our titles with these kinds of terms, with the idea that it would make searchability easier. Every place is different in how to fill metadata out, and I recognize that RICHES has its own way of doing it that works for them. During this process, I’ve kept a document to the side to write any tips down for future interns, having the solutions to some of these comments that might not be covered in the guidebook.

I still need to work through a few miscellaneous parts, especially the Apopka spreadsheet, which I need to finalize. For one, I need to recheck the Cats for each artifact to ensure the appropriate terms are there. Luckily for me, Cats is one of the easier categories to fill out since the terms are right in front of me. The Descriptions need revising, but that has felt more daunting because it will require a little rearranging of information. Plus, Apopka was not a collection that was assigned to me to research, so it’s more scary to jump into those when I know they need changes, and it makes it a little more challenging to fill in the External References that include a few academic sources.

Dublin Core: Descriptions with corrections

Despite these changes remaining, I have left a few comments on some of the corrected rows for rechecking. Each time, he has commented back saying that the corrections I made are perfect, which has made me feel a lot better about my work and encouraged me to continue. Getting positive feedback also confirms exactly what I need to do for the other spreadsheets, which I still go back and forth on when I’m feeling stuck on Apopka.

While I’m getting closer to finishing, one other issue we had to fix was changing all of the TIFF files to JPG. Fortunately, we are getting some outside help, as Jessie has contacted a study group that will assist us in figuring it out and completing it in batches. It is a lot of help for me because the main way of converting the files is through Photoshop, which, of course, I don’t have access to.

Resolved button - one less comment to work through!

This past week has helped me experience more flexibility in how I work and has allowed me to work through specific problems with others. These conversations have given me a lot of questions about why things are done a certain way, but it will get done, nonetheless.