[Metadatalibrarians] Help for a beginner

[Diane I. Hillmann]

I'm afraid I disagree a bit with this advice.  If you think that the way 
people will want to access this information is to look for names, it 
makes sense to separate the names from the transcribed description (or 
image) of what is written in the document (though this is a good idea in 
and of itself, and there's no reason not to supply that as well as the 
names-as-subjects).  I don't think it's that valuable to designate the 
names as bride, groom, etc.  since as Alice notes below they're unlikely 
to appear multiple times (except for officiants, and they're not likely 
going to be the focus of user attention). 

In Simple DC, subject is really the best place to put these names, since 
the parties are not creators or contributors to the document itself.  As 
subjects, they can be searched easily in most systems, and ordered 
browse lists can be created if they're needed (so long as names are 
entered surname, forename).  Given that the names may be difficult to 
transcribe correctly, or that they may be slightly incorrect in the 
documents themselves, enabling browse lists as well as specific searches 
may be the best you can hope for.  As someone who's done some genealogy 
work, you do expect to find misspellings in documentation and the best 
thing to do, recognizing that, is to leave plenty of scope for the user 
to make the appropriate connection, when text is unreliable for whatever 
reason.

Regards,
Diane

Platt, Alice wrote:
> Hi Aimee,
>
> I'm afraid I'm not aware of similar projects, but I would imagine that a transcription of what is written in the digitized document should go in the Description element, because it helps to describe the document. The theory behind using a subject heading is to group materials together that have similar subject matter or names associated with them; other than perhaps using the officiant name as a subject keyword, that purpose would not be achieved by listing the names as separate subject entries... unless, of course, a lot of the people at the Mission got remarried several times! ;-)
>
> Alice Platt
> Digital Initiatives Librarian
> Shapiro Library
> Southern New Hampshire University
> 2500 North River Rd
> Manchester, NH 03106
> 603-668-2211 x 2156
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:51:56 -0700
> From: "Aimee Algier" <AAlgier at scu.edu>
> Subject: [Metadatalibrarians] Help for a beginner
> To: <metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com>
> Message-ID: <49BFB90C.7406.00EB.0 at scu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> Here at Santa Clara University we are scanning the pages of baptismal and marriage records of the Mission Santa Clara. Some of the entries are not legible so we have created an excel spreadsheet with the names of the brides and grooms and officiants, with a column for the dates.
>
> Can anyone recommend some sites that have done similar projects that I could look at? The metadata needs to be crosswalked to Dublin Core and are just duplicated entries of what is being scanned. I am tempted to put the brides, grooms and officiants in a subject element. If I do, is there any way to distinguish what kind of subjects they are with different labels? Bride  Groom Officiant (or is the subject element restricted to one label?)
>
> Any help you can give me would be appreciated.
>
> Thank you,
>
>
>
> Aimee Algier
> Head of Technical Services
> Harrington Learning Commons, Sobrato Technology Center and Orradre Library
> Santa Clara University
> 500 El Camino Real
> Santa Clara, CA 95053
> TEL: 408.554.5556
> FAX: 408-551-1805
> aalgier at scu.edu
>
>
>