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We’ve received two grants to digitize the Beckman and Bredig collections respectively; we have another one coming soon (the Dow collection). This is a quick overview of the current state of metadata and information architecture setup in ArchivesSpace and the Digital Collections, to make future conversations about these two websites easier.

Example 1:

Let’s take a look at a letter in the Beckman collection as an example.

Digital collections:

In the digital collections, the letter takes the form of a work: https://digital.sciencehistory.org/admin/works/wm117p03j

To place the work in its archival context, the D.C. gives you the following clues:

  • The letter is part of a collection, the Beckman Collection.

    • 💡 A work can be part of more than one collection, but a collection cannot be part of another collection.

  • The letter is part of a subseries and a series within the Beckman collection.

    • This information is stored as an unordered sequence of two strings:

    • Series Arrangement

      • Series I. Arnold O. Beckman Files

      • Sub-series 1. Correspondence

    • Notes re: series arrangement:

      • Each string concatenates the type of metadata ( Sub-series), the identifier, (I.), and the title of the grouping: (Arnold O. Beckman Files)

      • There’s no ordering information to encode the fact that a series is more important than a subseries

      • There’s no way to order the subseries within a given series

      • There’s no way to order the series within a collection.

  • The letter also has an ASpace Reference Number: 118f36c4c5a373e4b4a81253ebc85fae.

ArchivesSpace:

In ArchivesSpace, the work takes the form of a “digital object”:

https://sciencehistory.libraryhost.com/admin/digital_objects/247#tree::digital_object_247

  • The digital object contains as part of its metadata the URL to the “work” in the digital collections.

  • It also contains a link to what ArchivesSpace calls a “file”:

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