EvCC Yearbooks Digitization Pilot Project: Glossary

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Project Report Definitions
3. CONTENTdm Definitions

1. Introduction

During the pilot project we developed policies and procedures that make use of terminology unique to  archives and special collections. As such, it's useful to have a glossary to orient ourselves, and visitors to this LibGuide who might not be familiar with these terms. Additionally, during our work we discovered that CONTENTdm does not have a glossary, so we are creating our own. Please see the relevant sections below.

2. Project Report Definitions

• Collection - a group of items that have been assembled to provide information on a particular topic, person, or place.
• Controlled Vocabulary - descriptive standards that supply preferred terms to be used as values in cataloging digital assets.
• DAM - Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a business process for organizing, storing and retrieving rich media and managing digital rights and permissions. Rich media assets include photos, music, videos, animations, podcasts and other multimedia content. DAM involves the creation of an archive, the development of an infrastructure to preserve and manage digital assets and a search functionality that allows end users to identify, locate and retrieve an asset. At its simplest, a DAM is a set of database records. Each database record contains metadata explaining the name of the file, its format and information about its content and usage. Digital asset management software can be used to create and manage the database and help the company to store rich media in a cost-effective manner.[1]
• Digital assets - digital surrogate for materials that have been scanned, i.e. digital image in JPEG format for a photograph.
• Diversity - Diversity includes all the ways in which people differ, and it encompasses all the different characteristics that make one individual or group different from another. A broad definition includes not only race, ethnicity and gender — the groups that most often come to mind when the term diversity is used — but also age, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education, marital status, language and physical appearance. It also involves different ideas, perspectives and values.[2]  See our recommendations section for more on the diversity initiatives and its connection to identity communities.
• File - 1. a collection of papers or publications usually arranged or classified; 2. a collection of related data records (as for a computer).[3]
• Granularity - the scale or level of detail present in a set of data or other phenomenon.
• LMC - The Library Media Center at Everett Community College
• Matrix, The - a spreadsheet detailing the metadata needs, guidance, and examples of the Everett Community College Special Collections
• Metadata - data that provides information about other data. For metadata terms and definitions, see The Matrix.
• More Product, Less Process (MPLP) - shorthand terminology to refer to the ideas presented in "More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Archival Processing," which is a 2005 archival science article written by Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner that first appeared in the Fall/Winter 2005 issue of The American Archivist. The paper argues that traditional archival processing is too slow and advocates for the use of minimal processing in order to reduce backlogs and provide access to archival collections as quickly as possible. The ideology presented in the article, abbreviated as MPLP, has since been widely adopted in modern archival theory with subsequent praise directed primarily towards the ability to increase user accessibility without prohibiting the option for future processing. The article provides a new set of guidelines for arrangement, preservation, and description:
  • Expediting the availability of collections to users;
  • Assuring adequate arrangement of materials for users' needs;
  • Taking the minimum steps necessary for physically preserving collection materials;
  • Describing materials sufficiently for use.

Additionally, the authors present their "principles for change" as recommendations for archivists:

• The Golden Minimum: to reach the processing requirements of current and future users at the most basic level.
• Arrangement: As opposed to organization of individual items, arranging collections at the series and folder levels simplifies and facilitates research for prospective users.
• Description: to embody the materials, provide context and access information to the user, and reflect the level of arrangement.
• Preservation: Modern climate controlled storage can be trusted to preserve materials following minimalist processing.
• Policies: “Unprocessed collections should be presumed open to researchers. Period.”
• Metrics: Consistency must be established at the most basic acceptable level among all aspects of archival processing.[4]

• Value - descriptive text stored in a metadata tag.