Peter and Sebastian,

 

Thanks for weighing in on this. Yes, I hope we can get a conversation going on the MM SIG list, but I’ve been reluctant so far to impose on that group’s agenda. Now that the Codex/Inventory discussion has receded a bit and things are moving towards implementation, there may be an opening. I’ll defer to Laura on that.

 

More generally—and I could be wrong about this—but it’s my impression that the design of FOLIO is currently being driven by internal library business processes. For example: there’s a lot of talk around materials orders—how to describe them at each stage of the acquisitions and cataloging lifecycle, where and how they should be represented in Inventory, what to do if their status changes, etc. That’s necessary and understandable, but it’s not the whole picture. I hope the intense focus on the need to reproduce very specific warehouse-management practices doesn’t eclipse FOLIO’s potential to be a universal content management solution. Sebastian, this was the concern behind our conversation at CNI in December about setting up a FOLIO skunk works—that is, a space where developers who are interested in working on more-experimental features can do so without detracting from orthodox development. Speaking for my institution alone, I think we have a developer who might be willing to do this. It’s a question of balance: taking care of conventional features while making room for experimentation. De-silo-ing scholarly repository, digital collections, and special collections content in a unified system (that also has a built-in digital-preservation component, which seems especially timely given the recently announced demise of DPN) seems like a worthy innovation, at least to me.

 

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: speccoll-archives@ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org <speccoll-archives@ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org> On Behalf Of Sebastian Hammer
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2019 2:41 PM
To: speccoll-archives@ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org
Cc: Laura E Wright <Laura.Wright@colorado.edu>; Adrien Hilton <adrien_hilton@harvard.edu>; Mr. Peter Murray <peter@indexdata.com>; Michael Winkler <mdw233@cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: SpecColl_Archives SC&A questions on Metadata Management SIG

 

Thanks for sharing this Aaron. I'd love to see this conversation in the MM SIG. 

 

--Sebastian

On Thu, Feb 7, 2019, 2:56 PM Aaron Trehub <trehuaj@auburn.edu> wrote:

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

W http://colorado.edu/libraries

 

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

ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0296-5792

You received this message because you are subscribed to OLE Mailing List "speccollarchives".
To unsubscribe from this list and stop receiving emails from it, follow this link: http://archives.simplelists.com.
To post to this group, send email to
speccoll-archives@ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org
<mailto:speccoll-archives@ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org>.
Visit this group at
https://ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org<https://ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org>. lists.openlibraryfoundation.org>
.

You received this message because you are subscribed to OLE Mailing List "speccollarchives".
To unsubscribe from this list and stop receiving emails from it, follow this link: http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=ZEYH8Aqp0ii2Opxxq4Q107ZxKf5pLR4F.
To post to this group, send email to
speccoll-archives@ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org
<mailto:speccoll-archives@ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org>.
Visit this group at
https://ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org<https://ole-lists.openlibraryfoundation.org>. lists.openlibraryfoundation.org>
.