Week 6: Metadata Spreadsheet

Dublin Core Elements covered in the RICHES Guidebook

It's hard to believe that we're in week six of the internship because it feels as though there's still so much for me to complete before it's all over. Last Friday, I finished the final touches on the metadata sheets for review and to prepare for my next assignment, which Sarah provided instructions for both teams at the Monday meeting. Last week, I specifically requested to be part of Elio's team again to work on the spreadsheet since part of my career plan is to pursue archival work. This will better prepare me to get a head start on understanding archival language, as I have already had some practice in transcription in the past. An overarching goal from my History degree and this internship experience is to gain a well-rounded understanding of different potential tasks in the field. To start, the initial work involves the Ronald Muse sheets that have been completed over the past six weeks and transferring the artifact information into the spreadsheet. In finishing those promptly, I can then review other collections that other students have also worked on for the city of DeBary.

Spreadsheet format

To start, it has been a bit overwhelming, but I have consistently referenced the RICHES Metadata Guidebook, templates, and the training recording featuring Geoff from week two. After this first week, my skills in Excel are developing, and I hope to feel even more comfortable with the software by the end of the summer and beyond. I knew I just needed to get something on the spreadsheet to get familiar with it, and I made the same approach with the sheets. Looking at each category, I quickly filled in the ones for which I had readily available information; some of these included Titles, Extent, Coverage, and so on. By Thursday evening, this strategy left me with approximately ten of the 29 categories remaining to complete for the initial 16 artifacts.

Search Library of Congress authorized vocabulary for Dublin Core: Subject

On Thursday afternoon, I attended Jessie's Zoom hours to clarify some questions I had been holding onto since I was unsure about certain columns, even after reading through the manual. It was mostly about double-checking the input information and verifying that my collection had the necessary details to fill in categories such as Digital Collection or Source Repository. She also suggested highlighting any sections that I was unsure of in the future and sending them to her for review. By next week, I will likely send over the document once it has more of the tougher parts completed. When it came to certain categories, such as searching the Library of Congress authorized vocabulary, I asked, "Am I supposed to be taking this long?" I was a little concerned that the assignment wasn't off to a good start with the parts that hadn't already been addressed on the sheets. Again, Jessie assured me that, for my first time working with metadata, it would take a minute to get familiar with the system, and navigating the subject headings would not be one of the faster sections to complete.

By the end of the week, I'm back to researching newspapers, obituaries, journals, and anything that can give me more information on top of what I gained from the sheets. In the spreadsheet, there is a Description category that RICHES wants to fill in with at least one paragraph, including the historical background. The truth is that some of my artifacts probably won't have a paragraph packed full of major details; however, I will still find what I can with the information gathered over the past six weeks. The next priority in the spreadsheet and description section is to think about the question posed in the RICHES manual: Why is this item so significant to Central Florida history?