Hello former FOLIO SC&A Working Group members,
I hope this finds you all well. By way of an update:
Since the beginning of the year, several of us have been sitting in on the FOLIO Metadata Management SIG’s weekly calls, which are convened by Laura Wright of the University of Colorado. Mine has mostly been a
watching brief, but I recently took the liberty of sending Laura some work that is being done by an ArchivesSpace-Alma Integration Group that includes at least one representative from a FOLIO institution (Noah Huffman, from Duke). An interesting thread ensued,
which I am attaching below. We hope to continue this conversation on the MM SIG and possibly at an in-person meeting later this year.
Integration between existing archival management systems and FOLIO loomed large in our WG’s discussions, and this speaks directly to that. Copying Laura, Sebastian Hammer and Peter Murray of Index Data, Michael
Winkler of OLE/OLF, and Adrien Hilton of Harvard University, who first gave me permission to share the AS-Alma Integration Group’s work with other interested parties.
Best,
Aaron
Aaron Trehub
Assistant Dean for Technology and Head, Special Collections & Archives
Auburn University Libraries
231 Mell Street, RBD Library
Auburn, AL 36849-5606 USA
+(334) 844-1707 office
+(334) 750-1695 mobile
E-mail: trehuaj@auburn.edu
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0296-5792
From: Aaron Trehub
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2019 3:07 PM
To: 'Laura E Wright' <Laura.Wright@Colorado.EDU>
Cc: Lisa Furubotten <cuaco@tamu.edu>; Adrien Hilton <adrien_hilton@harvard.edu>; Noah Huffman <noah.huffman@duke.edu>
Subject: RE: Of interest: ArchivesSpace-Alma integration project
Hello Laura,
Thanks for these thoughts and questions. A big brainstorming session would be very helpful. If the Ipswich meeting comes off, perhaps we can have one there. In the meantime, here are some very preliminary attempts
at answers to your questions.
“But I’m also thinking about *why* an institution would want their archival materials in Inventory and whether we need to be thinking at the same time about how to push these into Discovery.”
One of the metaphors we used in the SC&A Working Group was FOLIO-As-Swiss-Army-Knife. That is, as a universal toolkit that can handle any type of material. At my institution, we already run a number of silo systems
(e.g. separate databases for our IR, digital collections, and ETD repository) and are evaluating yet another set of potential silos in the form of standalone archival management systems. We haven’t committed to one yet, but even if we do, this strikes me as
a not-elegant way of doing things. Since learning about FOLIO, I have been intrigued by the idea of developing a universal knowledge-management system. The name of the metadata pool in question—Inventory, Codex, or something else—is less important than the
concept, which involves moving beyond the traditional ILS/LMS model. And yes, we definitely want to expose SC&A materials to Discovery.
“I’m also wondering about coming up with a list of other sources of metadata currently in use (or planned for use) by FOLIO partners that we might want to map.”
Sebastian Hammer might have some ideas about this. For my part, I think we ought to start talking with the research data management community, the museum community, and with media outfits like WGBH. The National Digital Stewardship Alliance
(NDSA) might be a useful model here, since its membership extends beyond academic libraries.
“The overarching question in my mind as I type this is when do we want to map to Inventory vs when would we rather be able to use a Codex-type search? Or is that a local decision and FOLIO needs to accommodate libraries who want their archival
(or digital or otherwise different) collections in Inventory AND those who want to keep the descriptions separate but still be able to search across them?”
I don’t have a good answer to this, except to say that I think FOLIO should be flexible enough to accommodate both approaches. Another metaphor that has been bruited about is FOLIO-As-App-Store-Platform. Install the ones you want, as you
want. The tricky part is to design apps that work smoothly together (or with legacy components) to support basic library functions—things that need to be done in the here and now—but that can also be mixed and matched in unconventional ways in order to produce
greater efficiencies and better discovery.
I hope these thoughts are helpful, and not a recipe for a dysfunctional system that will do nothing particularly well.
Best,
Aaron
Aaron Trehub
Assistant Dean for Technology and Head, Special Collections & Archives
Auburn University Libraries
231 Mell Street, RBD Library
Auburn, AL 36849-5606 USA
+(334) 844-1707 office
+(334) 750-1695 mobile
E-mail: trehuaj@auburn.edu
ORCID:
orcid.org/0000-0002-0296-5792
From: Laura E Wright <Laura.Wright@Colorado.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2019 2:12 PM
To: Aaron Trehub <trehuaj@auburn.edu>
Cc: Lisa Furubotten <cuaco@tamu.edu>; Adrien Hilton <adrien_hilton@harvard.edu>; Noah Huffman <noah.huffman@duke.edu>
Subject: RE: Of interest: ArchivesSpace-Alma integration project
Hi again Aaron,
I’ve had a chance to look briefly at some of the documentation and want to run a few initial thoughts by you:
It looks like the mapping from ArchivesSpaceàFOLIO Inventory should be relatively straightforward, since neither format is nearly as granular as MARC. This would be a great exercise to complete
as a proof-of-concept (in addition to being practically useful). But I’m also thinking about *why* an institution would want their archival materials in Inventory and whether we need to be thinking at the same time about how to push these into Discovery.
Although Discovery is not part of FOLIO (as it’s being built right now at least), it seems that questions are coming up routinely about Discovery and the MM community might want to weigh in on this.
I’m also wondering about coming up with a list of other sources of metadata currently in use (or planned for use) by FOLIO partners that we might want to map.
The overarching question in my mind as I type this is when do we want to map to Inventory vs when would we rather be able to use a Codex-type search? Or is that a local decision and FOLIO needs to accommodate libraries who want their archival
(or digital or otherwise different) collections in Inventory AND those who want to keep the descriptions separate but still be able to search across them?
If any of us are able to meet in person this year, I’d love to have a big brainstorming session. If we can’t meet in person, I’d still love to figure out a way to have a big brainstorming session.
I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this.
Best,
Laura
***********************************
Laura Wright
(she/her/hers)
Serials and E-resources Cataloging Manager
University Libraries
University of Colorado Boulder
Boulder, Colorado 80309
T 303-492-4847
From: Aaron Trehub <trehuaj@auburn.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2019 11:02 AM
To: Laura E Wright <Laura.Wright@Colorado.EDU>
Cc: Lisa Furubotten <cuaco@tamu.edu>; Adrien Hilton <adrien_hilton@harvard.edu>; Noah Huffman <noah.huffman@duke.edu>
Subject: Of interest: ArchivesSpace-Alma integration project
Hello Laura,
Lisa Furubotten at Texas A&M and I had a mini-Metadata Management SIG meeting yesterday. We both forgot that the January 31 SIG call had been cancelled and turned up, puzzled, on Zoom. Anyway, it turned out to be useful because we talked
about making sure that metadata for special collections and archival materials are represented in the FOLIO Inventory/Codex/Rosetta Stone etc.
To that end, here are links to some interesting work that is being done by some of our colleagues in another part of the forest to crosswalk metadata between ArchivesSpace—a widely used archival management system—and Alma:
Clearly, the use cases and data maps outlined here are also relevant to FOLIO.
Adrien Hilton at Harvard, whom I am copying on this note, put these documents together and gave me permission (thanks, Adrien!) to share them with relevant people on the FOLIO project. I’m also copying Noah Huffman at Duke. Noah was a member of the (dormant)
FOLIO SC&A Working Group and is currently a member of the AS-Alma Integration Group. He brought this work to my attention at the end of last year.
Can we put this question—specifically, how best to accommodate metadata from related communities and systems in FOLIO—on the agenda for an upcoming MM SIG call? Doesn’t have to be next week, but sometime in the near future?
Thanks,
Aaron
Aaron Trehub
Assistant Dean for Technology and Head, Special Collections & Archives
Auburn University Libraries
231 Mell Street, RBD Library
Auburn, AL 36849-5606 USA
+(334) 844-1707 office
+(334) 750-1695 mobile
E-mail: trehuaj@auburn.edu