marac subject guides pflug
TRANSCRIPT
“It’s Hard to Find Something When You Don’t Know What You’re Looking For…”Subject Guides for Archival and Manuscript Collection
Wendy PflugOctober 22, 2011
Research Guide to AIS Collections
LibGuides as Subject GuidesCreated 5 LibGuides,
representing major themes in our collections:◦Business ◦Environmental ◦Government, Political and Social
Activists ◦Organizations, Local Societies and
Institutional Records◦Labor and Working Class History
LibGuides as Subject Guide
LibGuide Use
Faceted Browsing of Finding AidsUsers could find
items on more than one dimension
Discover collections without using a specific keyword
Allow for browsing collections in a format that was more than a list
Subject HeadingsIdea to use
existing subject headings to create word cloud
Problem: too many terms
Solution: “Tags” to define and/or limit vocabulary to apply uniformly
EAD XML ExportWhen EAD XML subject heading is
exported from Archivists’ Toolkit:
<subject source=“lcsh”>Astronomers—Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh</subject>
EAD Code Tags ExportWhen Tags are exported from
Archivists’ Toolkit:
<subject source=“ulstag”> Personal papers</subject>
JSON Data File
Our ProcessStep 1: EAD gets fed through the
XSLT Style Sheet. Output = Tab delimited text file
Step 2: Tab delimited text gets converted to comma separated text (CSV)
Step 3: Python script converts CSV to JSON file
Step 4: HTML file interacts with JSON
ULS Tags TermsArchitectureAssociationsBusiness &
IndustryChurches &
SynagoguesEducationEnvironmentGovernment
LaborPersonal PapersPoliticsSocial ActionTransportationUniversity of
PittsburghWomen
Browse Feature on Home Page
What We LearnedGoal: subject guides as way for
researchers to browse collections
LibGuides more useful as an instructional tool than as a subject guide
Faceted browsing of finding aids met our users’ needs the best