Community Design Workshop Notes - Retrospective Documentation

Context and Issues

  • Ideally, catalog items as they come in. In practice, have no docs, paper docs, personal (not systematic) documentation, etc., and need to capture this in the system.
  • Data may be scattered across institution, and have a process of collecting this info for entry.
  • There are grants for "Recon" e.g., transferring from card catalog to online system. Libraries should all be done by now, but museums still in process. May be part of a digitization process. Good strategy is to make it part of something "sexier" that gets funding (exhibits, digitization, etc.).
  • Can include adding publication references.
  • Might include documentation of processes,
  • Capturing loan, conservation histories, etc. from paper into system.
  • Can you/how do you harmonize old and new descriptive practices. Adhering to current standards and practices. Requires analysis of data, assessment of format, standards, etc. E.g., ASCII vs. Unicode to deal with characters with diacriticals.

Workflow

  1. Motivations
    1. Event requires a description: Class, loan, theft, insurance generation or claim,
    2. General strategic,
    3. Trustee-level mandate.
  2. Planning proposal. Costing of project. May happen before or after Assessment. May have pre-assessment, then costing, then full assessment.
    1. Define workflow for project. Draws upon history.
      1. If transcribing a ledger, that is simple.
      2. If also gathering field notes, what is order, how will it be modelled?
      3. System may influence this, since some are better than others at bulk entry.
      4. Leverage guidelines, policies.
    2. Propose schedule and staffing, resource usage.
    3. Decomposition and prioritization
  3. Decision point to go ahead? Assumes have money, then get approval from various sources (collections, staff, resources, etc.)
    1. If yes, proceed
    2. If no, really just a deferral
    3. Often, choose parts of it to do, and defer rest.
    4. Communication (from management) on decision, mandating action and requesting cooperation within institution.
      1. This raises some responses that may require revisiting decision, or
        adding additional constraints to process.
  4. Assess existing information.
    1. How much exists
    2. Where is it (i.e., within the institution)?
    3. Do we know of sources (researchers, donors) that should have it, that we do not?
    4. Searching for external documentation
    5. How good is existing info - too out of date, too unreliable.
    6. Many issues around cataloging in general, that apply here as well.
  5. Implement resource and staffing plans.
    1. May involve hiring, may involve outsourcing. Issues around letting the actual artifacts (ledgers, etc.) out of the institution.
  6. Assess IP and access policies around information. May be copyright, may be access to personal information from donor families. May be sensitivity around ownership (do we really own these bones?).
  7. Data entry
    1. May also include research aspect. Sometimes reference sources, but often do not.
    2. May use interim tool because of workflow. Many systems don't allow bulk entry.
      1. Requires sub-project to build out this workflow
      2. Do some examples, run import, evaluate
    3. Must mark entries as retrospective.
    4. Note that generally not documenting with object in hand, which means cost is lower (needn't pull from vault, insure, worry). If no information at all, this is not true.
    5. Tracking, reports on progress for accountability to complete.
  8. Quality control
    1. May be sample, may be all
    2. Curators may require validation.
    3. Need to track review steps and check-offs. Need to track individuals for accountability.
    4. Need processes so that some gets x weeks for review, after which it just trips into okay'd by default

Related issues: sometimes have allocated catalog #s to some project (arch/paleo dig) and later need to query on this.