Integrate Metadata Creation into Oral History Production Process, Xiaoli Ma
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The document outlines the integration of metadata creation into the oral history production process for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida, addressing issues of inconsistent metadata quality and missing key information. The collaboration between the SPHP and the University of Florida Digital Collections aims to standardize metadata practices by incorporating input from interviewers and enhancing metadata through transcripts. The updated workflow seeks to improve accessibility and the searchability of interviews while maintaining a manageable workload for those involved.
Integrate Metadata Creation into Oral History Production Process, Xiaoli Ma
- 1. Integrate Metadata Creation into Oral History Production Process Streamline the Metadata Creation for Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida Xiaoli Ma Metadata Librarian George A Smathers Libraries, the University of Florida March, 2021 Greetings from Florida. I am Xiaoli Ma, the Metadata Librarian from George A Smathers Libraries, the University of Florida. Before I start my presentation, I want to acknowledge that I am presenting on the traditional territory of the Timucua people and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Thanks! Today we are going to talk about our experience of integrating metadata creation into oral history process.
- 2. ● The metadata quality of oral history interviews varies from project to project. ● The metadata that tells what the interview is about, for instance, Subjects and Abstract, usually is not included in the digital records. Problem Statements “You have to know what you are looking for, like who did the interview on which date, in order to find the interview in the digital collection ”--from an end user. The problems we intended to solve is the inconsistent metadata quality of oral history interviews and also the missing of the key metadata that states what the interview is about. So the problems are No. 1 the metadata quality of oral history interviews varies from project to project. No, 2, the metadata that tells what the interview is about, for instance, Subjects and Abstract, usually is not included in the digital records. That’s why we got users comments, “You have to know what you are looking for, like who did the interview on which date, in order to find the interview in the digital collection.”
- 3. Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) -- a high-profile international resource that provides access to over 8000 oral history interviews encompassing a range of disciplines that include African American Studies, History, Social Studies, Environmental studies and many more. It is the official oral history program at the University of Florida. The Background The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) -- a large scale digital collection that hosts over 217,000 titles ranging from rare books, manuscripts, antique maps, children’s literature, newspapers, theses and dissertations, data sets, photographs, to oral histories, posters and etc. The team runs UFDC is Digital Support Services (DSS), a department in the George A Smathers Libraries. As a result of over 15 years’ collaboration, the recordings or/and the transcripts of nearly 4000 interviews are available through UFDC. Before I dive into how we solve the problems, I would like to give you more background. Two institutions, or you can say, two teams, participated in this project. They are Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) and the University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC), the digital collections maintained by the Digital Support Services, George A Smathers Libraries, the University of Florida. SPOHP is a a high-profile international resource that provides access to over 8000 oral history interviews encompassing a range of disciplines that include African American Studies, History, Social Studies, Environmental studies and many more. UFDC is a large scale digital collection that hosts over 217,000 titles ranging from rare books, manuscripts, antique maps to oral histories, posters and etc. These two teams have worked together for over 15 years. As a result, roughly half of SPOHP interviews are available through UFDC.
- 4. The Original Workflow Interview Ingest metadata and upload media files SPOHP UFDC Fill in metadata template Transcribe interviews Available on UFDC Organize media files Original Steps Issues: ● Whenever SPOHP sent over metadata with media files or transcripts, UFDC created new digital records, causing one interview has multiple digital records. ● No detailed metadata guideline to follow batch batch In the past 15 years, the two teams collaborated like this: the SPOHP team conducts interviews, prepares the metadata, media files as well as transcripts and then passes them to UFDC, so end users can access them. Two major issues lie in this workflow. The first one is UFDC creates a new digital record whenever receiving a batch from SPOHP. This has led to the situation where one interview has multiple records. This situation is very confusing for end users. They are forced to face a bunch of records for the same interview in the search results. On top of that, none of the records can provide a complete set of information. The second issue is, no detailed metadata guideline to follow, when SPOHP prepares the metadata, this escalated to the inconsistent quality of metadata from project to project.
- 5. ● To improve the metadata quality without increasing much the workload or dramatically changing the workflow The Goal The Solution ● To integrate the metadata creation into interviewer’s work ● To add Abstract and Keywords produced during transcription to the metadata to facilitate search Interviewer Generated Metadata -- b Doug oyd Based on the understanding of the above workflow, we set the goal of the metadata quality improvement project as “to improve the metadata quality without increasing much the work or dramatically changing the workflow. We then identified the solution: one is to integrate the metadata creation into interviewer’s work; and the other to add abstract and keywords produced during the transcription to the metadata so they can be searched. Gathering metadata from interviewers’ work is not a new idea. Doug Boyd wrote Interviewer Generated Metadata. Good writing, available on Oral History Association Website.
- 6. Step 1: Identify the sources of the metadata -- Interview Information Form and Transcripts Step 2: Map the gathered information to appropriate metadata fields Step 3: Standardize the practice by including the above mapping in a Metadata Guideline exclusively made for SPOHP Steps Here are the steps we took . Step 1: Identify the source of the metadata -- Interview Information Form and Transcripts, Step 2: Map the gathered information to appropriate metadata fields, Step 3: Standardize the practice by including the above mapping in a Metadata Guideline tailored exclusively for SPOHP’s needs. Let’s see more details.
- 7. Metadata Sources -- Keywords Interview Information Form Update the keywords included in the form The Metadata Guideline requires the keywords to be included as Subjects Here on the left is SPOHP’s Interview Information Form. It is the required form for every interview. I believe this is a common practice in many oral history programs. That is, the interviewer must fill in a sheet that includes copyright and content information before the interview. In SPOHP’s form, besides the acknowledgement of the copyright statement, the interviewers also need to choose terms from a list of keywords to describe the interview’s aboutness. We, the SPOHP’s Digital team leader, Deborah Hendrix, the library’s SPOHP Liaison Librarian, Stephanie Birch and me, the Metadata Librarian, together updated the keyword lists to reflect the latest interview trends, for instance, we added Covid-19 there. The newly updated list now is in use in an online version of the same form. We then explicitly requires SPOHP staff to collect the subjects from this information form’s keywords in the SPOHP Interview Metadata Guideline.
- 8. Metadata Sources -- Transcripts Transcript UFDC Records Here let’s look at the work after the transcripts are available. After transcribing the interviews, transcribers also provide abstract and another round of keywords. The abstract and the keywords are great metadata to add so users can know what the interview is about.
- 9. The Improved Workflow Interview SPOHP UFDC Fill in metadata template Transcribe interviews Organize media files Original Steps batch Ingest Metadata and upload media files Available on UFDC Metadata quality check Add transcripts and update UFDC records manuel Added Steps Based on our learning, we adjusted the workflow. We added two more steps. “ Metadata quality check” step makes sure that the metadata follows the guideline. “ Manually add transcripts and update UFDC records” step splits manual updating from batch creating new UFDC records. This means, whenever the audio or video of new interviews are ready with metadata, UFDC is going to batch create new records so users can access them before the transcripts are ready. This split also reinforced the needs to track the digital status of the interviews, things like which interviews have been uploaded to UFDC with audio files, which ones need transcripts etc.
- 10. ● SPOHP and UFDC continues to collaborate on records management in order to track the interviews’ digital status ● SPOHP speeds up to put in most of their interviews into UFDC ● UFDC has more rich metadata ● How about end users’ responses? Results As a result, the SPOHP and UFDC teams started a database to track the interview’s digital status; SPOHP has sped up the process of adding interviews into UFDC; UFDC has more rich metadata. We feel better about our work, but is it really impactful? We hope to know users’ responses.
- 11. ● It’s easy to plan the changes but hard to implement the change. ● Collaboration means to adjust the practices on both ends. Learnings Implementation uses theories to transform reality. In reality, it’s easy to convey the ideas but hard to change the mind set and break habitual behaviors. Moreover, collaboration means the adjustment from both ends. We need to keep going.
- 12. Questions? Comments? Contact me at xiaolima@ufl.edu Hope our case shed light on your projects. Comments, questions and suggestions? Feel free to reach me at xiaolima@ufl.edu