Got Metadata in Your Future? Lessons Learned from Describing a Unique Image Collection

This practical session covers how Clemson University Libraries’ metadata team describes their largest digital collection of historical images. It focuses on what the team has learned from this project thus far. This includes developing workflows and strategies for describing images, creating and using a controlled vocabulary of local headings, and leveraging expertise across the libraries to streamline metadata creation. The team walks through the metadata management tool CollectiveAccess, shares image examples from the collection, and discusses the benefits of metadata documentation. The team concludes with challenges they still face, such as selecting appropriate subject headings, managing entities, and describing images with little to no information

Metadata-from-Home: A Digital Collections Project During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shift to working from home (WFH) and online education proved a boon for digital collections. Not only can digital collections provide researchers remote access to rare and unique archival materials, but the metadata work that facilitates its discovery can be adapted to a WFH environment. At Clemson University Libraries, the metadata team facilitated a WFH project where 15 Libraries employees across two units are helping to describe a collection of over 2400 photographs. This project rose to the challenges of providing meaningful work to colleagues while working from home, empowering them to learn new skills and gain stronger understanding of metadata work, all while speeding up the timeframe for making this collection accessible online. This presentation provides a brief overview of the project workflow, including how training, communication, and quality control were managed remotely

Clemson’s Past Digitized: The Future of Archival Access

Libraries are at the forefront of creating rich quality metadata to ensure a future where communities access, learn, and understand their shared histories. The Metadata and Monographic Resources Team (MMRT) is tasked with describing and providing access points to Clemson Libraries’ Digital Collections. Consisting of digitized historic materials from Special Collections and Archives, Digital Collections provides a globally accessible avenue for our communities to explore Clemson’s past. Metadata decisions made by MMRT affect how community members discover, access, and use these materials. This poster covers metadata challenges and decisions we made to improve access to one digital collection, Clemson University Historical Images

Describing Historical Images: Improving Access to Digital Collections with Local Subjects

Libraries are at the forefront of creating rich quality metadata to ensure communities can access, learn, and understand their shared histories. The Metadata and Monographic Resources Team (MMRT) is tasked with describing and providing access points to Clemson Libraries’ Digital Collections. Metadata decisions made by MMRT affect how community members discover, access, and use these materials. Photographic images, in particular, pose challenges if they lack descriptive information or historical context. If descriptions are provided, they often align with the historically white male majority, naming high level individuals and leaving out minority and marginalized peoples. This poster covers challenges and decisions MMRT made to improve inclusive access to the Clemson University Historical Images by harnessing the power of local subject headings. This includes steps metadata specialists take to research image content, identify knowledge gaps, and create and apply new local subjects. Hard questions needed to be answered. For example, how do we normalize and control our local subjects to ensure consistent application? How detailed of a description do we provide to contextualize an image for researchers? Our current goal is to create a sustainable descriptive process that is consistently applied across a collection to support researcher needs. This poster will also discuss future hopes and goals, such as creating a globally accessible, shareable, and reusable local subject vocabulary for institutions beyond Clemson. The local subject approach could be useful for any type of library or cultural heritage institution looking to digitize and describe their image collections

Clemson Libraries Inclusive Description Task Force Report

This report summarizes the findings of the Inclusive Description Task Force presented to the Libraries administration in December 2022. It serves as the final deliverable of the Task Force that outlines the research completed from July to December, presents recommendations on how Clemson Libraries can systemically implement inclusive description practices across all descriptive records, and lists the next steps and prioritized tasks to complete

“All the World’s a Stage” and Each Has a Role to Play: A Collaborative Cross-Unit Metadata Project in Five Acts

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shift to working from home proved a boon for digital collections. At Clemson University Libraries the metadata team facilitated a work-from-home project, during which 14 employees across two units described a collection of over 2400 photographs. From the standpoint of both the metadata reviewers and metadata creators, we will provide an overview of the project and workflows, including how training, communication, metadata creation, and quality control were managed remotely. This presentation reflects a balanced cross-unit perspective on what worked well and what could be improved for future virtual collaborative projects

The landscape of open science in behavioral addiction research: Current practices and future directions

Open science refers to a set of practices that aim to make scientific research more transparent, accessible, and reproducible, including pre-registration of study protocols, sharing of data and materials, the use of transparent research methods, and open access publishing. In this commentary, we describe and evaluate the current state of open science practices in behavioral addiction research. We highlight the specific value of open science practices for the field; discuss recent field-specific meta-scientific reviews that show the adoption of such practices remains in its infancy; address the challenges to engaging with open science; and make recommendations for how researchers, journals, and scientific institutions can work to overcome these challenges and promote high-quality, transparently reported behavioral addiction research. By collaboratively promoting open science practices, the field can create a more sustainable and productive research environment that benefits both the scientific community and society as a whole