A workshop presented by Arden Kirkland at the 2017 annual symposium of the Costume Society of America, about best practices for metadata, controlled vocabularies, and research data management for costume history collections.
4. 4
The Moving Parts
Costume
History
Portal
Costume-specific
data entry
Researcher’s catalog: Excel
Institution catalog: PastPerfect
Institution catalog: Shared Shelf
Institution catalog: Omeka
Costume
Core
Other
repositories
(Regional, etc.)
Costume-specific
browsing and
search interfaces
Getting data
Institution catalog: Other
Using dataCollection
Management
Systems
Shared
Guidelines and
Best Practices
Personal
Curation
Storing data
5. 5
The Big Issues
● “Good” = descriptive,
complete, accurate
● Costume History-specific
● Labor-intensive
● Consistent even though
practices vary between
institutions
● Portal for national access
● Structured searching to find similar
objects for dating
● Analysis of data from many collections
● Personal curation for digital
exhibitions, class use, or personal
research
Getting good data
(object records and
images)
Using the data in
valuable ways
Storing
Data
10. 10
Costume History Portal
Researcher’s catalog: Excel
Institution catalog: PastPerfect
Institution catalog: Shared Shelf
Institution catalog: Omeka
Institution catalog: Other
Costume
History
Portal
Costume-specific
browsing and
search interfaces
11. 11
What are we talking about?
artifact, object,
item, work
image, surrogate,
asset, media, file
metadata,
catalog record
user interface,
website,
online collection,
database, display
12. 12
What are we talking about?
artifact, object,
item, work
image, surrogate,
asset, media, file
metadata,
catalog record
user interface,
website,
online collection,
database, display
13. 13
What are we talking about?
artifact, object,
item, work
image, surrogate,
asset, media, file
metadata,
catalog record
user interface,
website,
online collection,
database, display
14. 14
What are we talking about?
artifact, object,
item, work
image, surrogate,
asset, media, file
metadata,
catalog record
user interface,
website,
online collection,
database, display
15. 15
What are we talking about?
artifact, object,
item, work
image, surrogate,
asset, media, file
metadata,
catalog record
user interface,
website,
online collection,
database, display
DATA
16. 16
What are we talking about?
artifact, object,
item, work
image, surrogate,
asset, media, file
metadata,
catalog record
user interface,
website,
online collection,
database, display
18. 18
Data Management Planning
Roles and Responsibilities
Expected Data
Period of Data Retention
Data Formats and Dissemination
Data Storage and Preservation of Access
20. 20
The Moving Parts
Costume-specific
Metadata entry
Researcher’s catalog: Excel
Institution catalog: PastPerfect
Institution catalog: Shared Shelf
Institution catalog: Omeka
Costume
Core
Getting data
Institution catalog: Other
Using data
Shared
Guidelines and
Best Practices
Visual
Tool for
Data Entry
Visual
Thesaurus
Costume
History
Portal
Other
repositories
(Regional, etc.)
Costume-specific
browsing and
search interfaces
Personal
Curation
Collection
Management
Systems
Storing data
21. 21
Researcher’s catalog: Excel
Institution catalog: PastPerfect
Institution catalog: ContentDM
Institution catalog: Omeka
Institution catalog: Other
Content Management Systems
Institution catalog: Shared Shelf
Institution catalog: TMS
Researcher’s catalog: FilemakerPro
Business catalog: Access
Institution catalog: Google Docs
Institution catalog: Mimsy
Spreadsheets
General Database
Software
Open Source Software (OSS)Proprietary Software
Institution catalog: Other
Institution catalog: Fedora
Institution catalog:
Collective Access
Institution catalog:Drupal
Institution catalog:
CollectionSpace
Institution catalog:
Digital Commons
22. 22
Accessing our Data
Institution catalog: Excel
Institution catalog: PastPerfect
Institution catalog: TMS
Institution catalog: Omeka
Institution catalog: Other
Shared
Guidelines and
Best Practices
Export Data:
• CSV (Comma
Separated
Values)
• API (Application
Programming
Interface)
23. 23
Data Remediation
Costume-specific
Metadata entry
Institution catalog: Excel
Institution catalog: PastPerfect
Institution catalog: TMS
Institution catalog: Omeka
Costume
Core
Institution catalog: Other
Shared
Guidelines and
Best Practices
Data
Remediation
Visual
Tool for
Data Entry
25. 25
The Moving Parts
Costume
History
Portal
Costume-specific
data entry
Researcher’s catalog: Excel
Institution catalog: PastPerfect
Institution catalog: Shared Shelf
Institution catalog: Omeka
Costume
Core
Other
repositories
(Regional, etc.)
Costume-specific
browsing and
search interfaces
Getting data
Institution catalog: Other
Using data
Shared
Guidelines and
Best Practices
Personal
Curation
Collection
Management
Systems
Storing data
28. 28
Descriptive Metadata
• Work type (ICOMV): “It’s a 2 piece dress”
• Period, Region, Creator (Dublin Core): “It was made in the 1890s
in Hardinsburg, Kentucky by Mme. E. Saunders”
• Culture, Material, Technique (VRA Core): “It’s American, made
of brocade, with both machine and hand sewing”
• Structure (Costume Core): “It has leg o’mutton sleeves, a floor
length skirt, and hook and eye closures”
• Others?
29. 29
Administrative Metadata
Technical
date of catalog entry or modification
file format
Rights management
Preservation
Local administration
cataloger name
User
frequency and duration of user access
47. 47
Visual Data Entry Workflow
Costume-specific
Metadata entry
Researcher’s catalog: Excel
Institution catalog: PastPerfect
Institution catalog: Shared Shelf
Institution catalog: Omeka
Costume
Core
Getting data
Institution catalog: Other
Using data
Shared
Guidelines and
Best Practices
Visual
Tool for
Data Entry
Visual
Thesaurus
Costume
History
Portal
Other
repositories
(Regional, etc.)
Costume-specific
browsing and
search interfaces
Personal
Curation
Collection
Management
Systems
Storing data
51. 51
Working Together
Costume-specific
Metadata entry
Researcher’s catalog: Excel
Institution catalog: PastPerfect
Institution catalog: Shared Shelf
Institution catalog: Omeka
Costume
Core
Getting data
Institution catalog: Other
Using data
Shared
Guidelines and
Best Practices
Visual
Tool for
Data Entry
Visual
Thesaurus
Costume
History
Portal
Other
repositories
(Regional, etc.)
Costume-specific
browsing and
search interfaces
Personal
Curation
Data
Remediation
and
Processing
Visual Tool for
Searching
Collection
Management
Systems
Storing data
We can work together to formalize guidelines for the field of
costume history.
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/dig-cost-coll
53. 53
Images
File Size when opened (before
compression) - around 20 MB
Mode - Color
File Type - JPG (TIF master)
Compression - 10%/high quality (11
(out of 12): in Photoshop)
high enough resolution to print at
8x10” (at 300dpi, 3000 pixels on the
long side)
File Size when opened (before
compression) - 41-43 MB
Mode - Color
File Type - JPG (TIF master)
Compression - 10%/high quality (11
(out of 12): in Photoshop)
high enough resolution to print at
11x14” (at 300dpi, 4200 pixels on
the long side)
Minimum Higher Quality
Editor's Notes
Welcome!
Bingo! Kazoos!
why are you here? why am I here?
This is my dream, my vision, and why I want to share what I know with all of you.
Here's an image of some of the major moving parts of ecosystem for digital costume collections. I worked on this visualization last fall with a software developer, Minor Gordon, who has taken an interest in digital tools for costume historians.
The idea is that if we could all agree on how to describe our collections and store our data, and if we all were willing to share some of our data, we could develop a costume history research portal through which we could search all our collections and then get pointed back to our individual websites.
In terms of taking advantage of digital technology to create a shared ecosystem for our collections, there are essentially three main parts we need to look at: getting good data into our ecosystem, storing the data safely, and then being able to use the data in valuable ways.
Material culture and costume-specific metadata enables domain-specific features, such as searching and faceted browsing by material (wool) or construction technique (hand-sewing), color, culture, gender, etc., as shown here on the left, like what you see on many shopping sites today, like Amazon or Zappos.
There are some important precursors in terms of looking at successful portals.
First, WorldCat.org provides a portal to search through 2 billion records from libraries all over the world, and point you back to the website for a library catalog that hold the item you’re looking for
http://worldcat.org/
The Digital Public Library of America or “DPLA” does the same thing, allowing you to search through
content from libraries, archives, and museums all over the United States (including some costume artifacts, by the way!)
http://DP.LA
Another portal you may be familiar with is the one for Europeana Fashion.
http://www.europeanafashion.eu/portal/home.html
A portal allows us to gather metadata from many different digital costume collections and make it accessible through one website, then send a researcher back to the original site the information came from.
Before we move on, just a warning that this workshop may raise more questions than answers – I want to get you thinking, but we won’t solve every problem today.
But you can follow up with me after this, and I want to help you find tools and services, including at your own institution, to help.
I also want to hear your questions and issues to get ideas for how to solve more problems in the future, even if we can’t do it today.
I’ve created our worksheets for today in a format that I can easily turn into data to help me determine what your top priorities and most challenging issues are, so I can try to help with them in different ways in the future to help us get to the vision I’ve shown you here.
Let’s define a few of our most basic terms before we move on, and let’s think about the layers of understanding involved here.
distinguish work from surrogate
distinguish work from surrogate
is metadata describing work or surrogate or both?
surrogates and metadata = our data
distinguish data from user interface
Data can last indefinitely with proper management – but no website can!
go through worksheet and fill out together
important principles:
backup
standards/interoperability/data dictionary
documentation
filenaming
link to sample DMP
So, to help with data management, many projects choose a CMS
an application to help manage your content / collection
collection management system usually include features about your physical collection
content management system = usually just digital
Here’s where CMSs fit in my big picture. There are lots of different systems out there and that doesn’t mean we can’t have shared approaches to using them and eventually sharing our data in a compatible way.
if you don’t see your system here don’t feel left out!
4 categories:
Small collection or independent researchers may use something as simple as an Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet
It’s also an option to adapt general database software such as FilemakerPro or Microsoft Access
Many institutions subscribe to proprietary services such as PastPerfect, The Museum System (TMS), Content DM, Shared Shelf, Digital Commons, Mimsy, etc.
Many libraries, archives, and museums are now turning to Open Source Software (OSS) such as Omeka, Collective Access, CollectionSpace, Fedora, or Drupal. While there are no licensing fees for open source software and the possibility for customization is wide open, there is significant technical labor involved. However, this can be mitigated with paid services for hosting and maintenance.
How many people using which? (take notes)
start to go through worksheet
But wait! Before we can really use our data, we have to be able to access it and get it out of our individual systems. An important feature to look for in a CMS is the ability to export data in a standard format such as a CSV, which is a spreadsheet format (it stands for comma-separated values).
Another way to access data is through what’s called an “API” which stands for “Application Programming Interface.”
It’s important to make sure that your system will allow you to own your own data and export it on demand. Unfortunately this is not true of all systems, so for those choosing a new system, it’s important to look for up front.
when you can export your metadata, that can make it easier to do what’s called “data remediation” or “data hygiene” – tidying up your metadata.
in a spreadsheet format it can be easier to sort your data and notice typos, or different versions of names or vocabulary
you can also easily use “find and replace” to make things more consistent
then you can import the remediated data back into your system.
what is a metadata schema?
we’ll move back a step to think about standards that should influence how we organize our data in a CMS
Let’s also define a new term here:
“Metadata” is a word for data about data, so for example, if we consider a catalog record for a dress to be our data, then the elements that describe the dress, such as title, creator, date, material, etc., are all metadata about the dress. When we talk about metadata, we’re usually just talking about the individual pieces of a catalog entry.
Here’s an example of a dress that has been exhibited at Vassar College
Different systems take different approaches to describing an artifact:
Work type (ICOMV): “It’s a 2 piece dress”
Period, Region (Dublin Core): “It was made in the 1890s in Hardinsburg, Kentucky”
Cultural, Material, Technique (VRA Core): “It’s American, made of brocade, with both machine and hand sewing”
Structure (Costume Core): “It has leg o’mutton sleeves, a floor length skirt, and hook and eye closures”
element vs. value
go through worksheet . . .
A system for how you will organize your metadata
also known as an application profile or represented as a data dictionary
term metadata schema can also apply to more technical specifications for encoding a catalog record for a machine readable system
Dublin Core developed by librarians in Dublin Ohio as a simple system for cataloging ANYTHING
VRA core = specific to visual resources, best fit for costume
after that part of worksheet, link to sample crosswalk
so, what’s the control in a controlled vocabulary?
the idea is that a catalogers choice of terms is limited to a defined, or controlled, list – in some systems this is presented as a drop down list so catalogers have to choose and can’t just use any term they like
the advantage is that then it’s easier to browse and search across consistent data –
BUT there can be a lot of debate about how the lists are defined and what’s left out or what terms are preferred. This has to be approached carefully.
there are several existing vocabulary lists that we can draw from, but no one list is complete on its own or includes all the terms we need for our research:
Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)
Europeana Fashion Thesaurus (EFT)
International Council of Museums (ICOM)
Quilt Index
This shows a screenshot of the term “bodices” from the AAT
Here you can see that for each term, there is a preferred term, and synonyms, and it’s within a hierarchy of like terms.
It also has a URI or Uniform Resource Identifier, which you’ll see in this case is the web address for the page of this definition. That URI, with the term’s ID number, allows the term to be machine-readable in addition to being human readable.
This allows us to take advantage of a principle called Linked Open Data or LOD, in which computers can better understand what content is being shared, and identify relationships, linking to other existing open content.
return to metadata schema worksheet to describe your item – skip description at first, and maybe title
debate – by hand, and then enter as a second step, or enter as you go?
slower way (2 steps) for students to get them to think more – faster way for more experienced catalogers
special tips:
avoid using special characters, quotes, commas
Dates as YYY-MM-DD, qualifiers after, not before
display fields vs. data fields, repeated fields
constructing titles
(get through DC elements and then . . . )
(move on to Costume Core!)
So far this has followed what you would find in most systems, entering data in a way that is generalized across all kinds of artifacts, from manuscripts to material culture.
While this is extremely useful in terms of being able to document and search for a wide variety of artifacts types in a single system, it can lead to a loss of specific information about costume artifacts if not approached carefully. For example, a system that is oriented primarily around two-dimensional materials may record dimensions only for height and width, so a workaround is required to document bust, waist, hips, skirt length, commercial size, etc.
so, what can we include for more “costume specific data entry”?
That’s what I’ve been exploring with Costume Core. It’s a work in progress, building on existing standards to create a specification for cataloging and encoding historic clothing
it includes elements from widely accepted features we’ve already discussed here, like the Dublin Core and (VRA) Core metadata schemas and vocabulary from the (AAT), Europeana Fashion Thesaurus (EFT), (ICOM), and the Quilt Index.
but then it digs deeper into crafting more descriptive elements not only in the free text description field, but also as standalong search and browsable elements
What Costume Core adds is a structural approach to describing costume, to allow for more specific ways of searching.
This shows some of the structural details and term lists under development.
This is more on the experimental side, so this is one of the places what we really need to work together as a community, to make sure we agree on the terms and most important elements to include.
I’ll give you a sneak peek into some resources and tools under development related to this.
A visual thesaurus is an essential companion to text descriptions of different work types as well as structural details. Expertise with costume vocabulary takes a great deal of time and effort to develop, but many institutions rely on student or volunteer catalogers with a more limited vocabulary. By connecting visual references directly with the terms, we can increase accuracy in choosing terms.
A resource that was found when working on the term lists for Costume Core is a table on Wikipedia, shown here, with terms, definitions, and images for sleeves
Working on the prototypes for HistoricDress, we thought we could do better, and began to build a database of terms within our Omeka site, including terms, definitions, synonyms, images, and citations for all of the above. This was begun as a collaboration with Arden Kirkland, Smith undergraduate student Lisa Wu, and Minor Gordon.
We need to choose terms from existing vocabularies (e.g., AAT) that are relevant, add identify the missing terms we need to add, and then find visual references for each. A visual thesaurus was one of the goals of the Europeana Fashion Project, and members of that initiative are eager to work with us to reach that goal. For that project they produced some Creative Commons-licensed drawings, now on Wikipedia, but many more are needed.
That leads us to another piece that Minor and Jennifer Gordon have begun to develop: a tool for cataloging costume to bring together all these aspects in one visual workflow for documenting a costume artifact
Such a tool could improve the day to day work with collections and the consistency of the information in our databases.
The goal is to make the process of cataloging simple but accurate for non-expert users, allowing for catalog record input from students of apparel history and local volunteers.
The target platform for this would be mobile touch screens (iPad, Android) to make it simple and safe to use while actively examining an artifact.
Using this tool, a cataloger could work through different features to describe (a sample list shown on the left) and enter material, technique, silhouettes, and other controlled inputs that describe an object in a structured way
Catalogers would move through a series of screens, one for each feature: waist type, material, et al.
Novice users: select from detail images of different options, as shown here on the right
Expert users: select from a text list, for speed
This could be done while examining the physical artifact or some details could be ascertained from a photograph.
The workflow can be dynamically altered according to the type of object, era, or other criteria, so that novice users pass through the steps in an order that is logical for the type of object being documented.
work in progress by Minor Gordon and Jennifer Gordon
Using this tool, a cataloger could work through different features to describe (a sample list shown on the left) and enter material, technique, silhouettes, and other controlled inputs that describe an object in a structured way
Catalogers would move through a series of screens, one for each feature: waist type, material, et al.
Novice users: select from detail images of different options, as shown here on the right
Expert users: select from a text list, for speed
This could be done while examining the physical artifact or some details could be ascertained from a photograph.
The workflow can be dynamically altered according to the type of object, era, or other criteria, so that novice users pass through the steps in an order that is logical for the type of object being documented.
A tool like this, separate from any individual system, can also make it possible to take advantage of what is known as “Crowdsourcing” – getting remote help from students or volunteers to examine a photograph and enter more specific data using this web interface. Institutions can then evaluate this input and import it back into their own system. Crowdsourcing can take several forms: original entry, checking existing entries, annotating them, etc. It can be helpful to have multiple users go through the process with the same object, to check for inconsistency.
A very important part of this visual tool is that it is “platform agnostic” meaning that . . .
we can Export records to different Collection Management Systems (+ Excel) – the tool, and the guidelines, are not tied to one system
Other communities have done this, resulting in the Quilt Index, Society of Architectural Historians Architecture Resources Archive (SAHARA), and Archaeocore, a metadata standard for archaeological sites. We can follow their example to focus on the specific needs of our own research.
Guidelines provided by the Visual Resources Association (VRA) book Cataloging Cultural Objects can be a very helpful resource for cataloging costume, but we need more specific guidance for our own objects
Try out costume core in worksheet.
Add more elements that you think are missing!
final worksheet:
what fields are most important for your collection?
for collection managers?
for researchers?
if you only had time to enter some metadata and not all, which would you choose?
go back through worksheets and highlight in a bright color / circle / etc.
After today all of us can share information and questions and ideas with each other to help each other and to formalize guidelines for the field of costume history.
dig-cost-coll group
Thank you! Let’s keep this conversation going!
tutorial on digital imaging - http://preservationtutorial.library.cornell.edu/intro/intro-01.html
point to FADGI and NARA guidelines