A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID-19 is built in Omeka, an open-source archival management system developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It uses Dublin Core as its main archival language, which requires certain metadata fields.
Using A Journal of the Plague Year’s submission portal for either video or audio as a template, please use the following guide to fill in the required metadata in the format indicated (where applicable). Everything in italics is to be replaced; if it is not in italics, then do not replace it.
Title: Interview with [Full Name] by [Full Name]
Creator: Names of both interviewee and interviewer
Date: Interview Date – MM/DD/YYYY format
Description: Describe the recording emphasizing its relation to the pandemic. Descriptions should be in complete sentences and no more than 3-5 sentences in length.
Type: Oral History
Geography: Location – if the interviewee and interviewer are in different locations, indicate the location of the interviewee.
Additional Information: Include the following statement and information:
This submission is in partial fulfillment of course requirements for Dr. Rebecca Wingo at the University of Cincinnati. Additional metadata fields include:
Interviewer: full name
Interviewee: full name
Duration: hours and minutes
Subject Heading(s): see below
Tags: see below
Add anything else you think the people processing metadata on the backend should know about the interview.
Some of you may or may not already be familiar with subject headings and tags, but for those of you who aren’t, subject headings and tags are two pieces of information that attach to your oral history (or any archival object) that make it more searchable across the entire archive.
For example, if one of your oral history interviewee talks about how bitter they are about COVID-19 pushing back the MLB season because they’ll miss watching their favorite Reds player Joey Votto from their season tickets, you might put that under a broad subject heading like "Sports & Recreation." You might tag the oral history with more specific terms like baseball, Cincinnati Reds, MLB, Joey Votto, and season tickets.
Why is this type of information important? It is part of the information architecture in the archive that links your interview to items on the rest of the site. Let’s pretend that a store owner in Mesa, Arizona, was feeling similarly distraught about the cancellation of spring training and the loss of revenue that she relies upon when the MLB teams and fans come to town. Her story would also have the tags "baseball" and "MLB," and by clicking on either of those tags online, users would be able to see that these two stories have a connection. Similarly, these two examples united under the subject heading of "Sports & Recreation" would yield stories even more broadly linked, like stories about scuba diving, downhill skiing, or cheerleading.
Think broad with subject headings. I find that these subject headings generally cover everything I need: Architecture, The Arts, Business & Industry, Clothing & Accessories, Community Organizations, Education, Family Life, Food & Drink, Labor, Politics & Government, Religion, Social Issues, Sports & Recreation, and Transportation.
Here are some rules of thumb:
Unlike subject headings, specificity is queen in tags. You don’t want to tag every word or concept, but you do want to make sure you’re tagging the important pieces of information.
Here are some rules of thumb:
Now that you know how subject headings and tags help form the information architecture of an online archive, go forth and tag!