Team E - ALA Emerging Leaders Class of Final Report

Transcription

1 Team E - ALA Emerging Leaders Class of Final Report Prepared by: Jingjing Wu (jingjing.wu@ttu.edu), Web Librarian, Texas Technology University Kate McNamara, Program Analyst for United States Census Bureau Nitra Eastby (eastby@roanoke.edu), Senior Library Associate, Roanoke College Minhao Jiang (minhao.jiang@wayne.edu), Software Development Librarian, Wayne State University Introduction The 4 Emerging Leaders (Jingjing Wu, Kate McNamara, Nitra Eastby, and Minhao Jiang) collaborated with the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA) to build up CALA s Academic Resource and Repository System (CALASYS). CALASYS is designed to specifically collect, organize and centrally store academic publications, materials and related information resources created and contributed by Chinese- American Librarians especially CALA members, and any concerned individuals and parties. CALASYS is intended to serve as a central academic resources system for CALA members and other LIS professionals in their studies and research on Chinese- American Librarianship and to support CALA members and other LIS professionals in their professional development and growth. The Emerging Leaders were in charge of maintaining and creating metadata records, soliciting and identifying scholarly publications, enlarging the repository collection size, and improving user interface and system jobs. Results The Emerging Leaders were collectively an integral part of the CALASYS Committee (which consisted of 5 CALA members who started the repository), including monthly meetings attendance between February and June. Throughout these meetings, the Emerging Leaders reviewed and contributed to improving the Metadata Input Guidelines. Among enhancements are: Simplify rights statements for uploaded materials; Add descriptions to link together works by the same author but in different collections; Add/Designate four types of obligations for elements: Mandatory (M), Mandatory if Applicable (MA), Recommended (R), Optional (O); Add explanations and examples of including clickable links in records; Decide not to omit initial articles;

2 Decide to include classification data under identifier, instead of subjects; Decide to include presentations done at CALA Annual conferences into CALA Archives, and other works by members under "CALA Member Scholarly Achievements". Prior to the arrival of the Emerging Leaders, there were 52 records in the system. However, 242 records were created as of June 2017, amounting to a nearly 365% increase. This fact is demonstrated and further detailed in Figure 1. Figure 1. Contributions made by the Emerging Leaders to create metadata records Jingjing collected 4 CALA members scholarly achievements, including books, book chapters, journal articles, presentations and proceedings, leading to 37 metadata records created. Nitra found contact information for several presenters from the CALA Greater Mid-Atlantic (GMA) Chapter. In addition, she added 12 documents that resulted from CALA s GMA, Southwest and Southeast Chapter conferences. Kate added documents from CALA archives. The archives include caucus documents such as strategic plans, the officer manual, annual committee reports, and promotional posters from ALA Diversity Fairs. Some of these documents were already posted in other locations, including the CALA website, but collecting them in CALASYS creates a central location for all materials of these types.

3 While assisting fellow Emerging Leaders, Minhao focused on back-end system functionalities. He researched the relationship between items and collections within the Omeka system; made the user interface attractive by switching the theme from Berlin to Avantgarde; configured CSV Import plugin for batch processing; developed a tutorial (Appendix 1.) on how to use the plugin. Future Improvements Although the Emerging Leaders have helped increase size and improve functionalities of the repository, there are still ways to further develop it. Use of more plugins shall be explored to streamline the workflow; browsing and surfacing experiences made more smooth on hand-held devices; currently installed theme customized; and the relationship between items and collections possibly extended from one-to-one to multiple-to-multiple. Take Aways The Emerging Leaders temporarily increased the CALASYS Committee from five to nine members, which allowed a larger task to be accomplished within a short timeframe. Nearly half of the most recent additions to CALASYS were entered by the Emerging Leaders. The Emerging Leaders also witnessed that with consistent, organized communication, many people can come together to build a resource center as expansive as CALASYS. Although each one had varied backgrounds in experience and expertise, the combined efforts allowed for contributions to the many components of making it a success -- collecting and inputting data, revising the metadata guidelines, creating an attractive user interface, and enhancing the system functionalities. Acknowledgements Mingyan Li (Metadata Librarian at University of Illinois at Chicago) and Qi Chen (President of CALA and Director of Library Services for Calumet College of St. Joseph) served as mentors and oversaw the Emerging Leaders involvement in the project.

4 Appendix 1. Tutorial on Using Omeka CSV Import Plugin If you run into any problem, please contact the author of this tutorial, Minhao Jiang, at There are 3 sections in this tutorial: Things to Know, FAQ, and instructions (on how to prepare csv files, and upload them to the Omeka CSV Import Plugin). It s recommended to read this tutorial in order. Things to Know 1. One upload is only for one type. 2. Read the entire plugin s documentation at Focus on the 2 nd section `Preparing for CSV Import`. When you read the documentation, be critical about the presented information. For example, it s said in the 2 nd bullet point that and if it does surround that segment with double-quotes. As a matter of fact, most spreadsheet programs do this automatically for you nowadays. Therefore, some information from the documentation can be misleading if understood alone. Even so, reading the documentation can give a brief introduction to what the plugin is, and what can be done with it. FAQ 1. How to check a spreadsheet program can automatically add double quotes if one field has comma(s) in a csv file? Step a. Open a spreadsheet program (e.g., Microsoft Excel) and type in your last name, followed by a comma and your first name in the top left hand-corner field. Below is a snippet of an example. Step b. Choose the option of `CSV (Comma delimited)` in the drop-down menu of `Save as type` when you save the file.

5 Step c. Close your spreadsheet program and open your saved file in a text editor (e.g., Notepad++). If you see double quotes around what you just typed in (for instance, the below snippet), you don t have to manually add those if you are saving/editing csv files and one field have comma(s) in it. If you don t see them, however, you ll have to add double quotes by yourself. 2. How to convert a csv file to UTF-8 encoding? Before a prepared csv file is uploaded to the plugin, it is required that the file be converted to UTF-8 encoding. Step a. Open your prepared csv file in a text editor (e.g., Notepad++). Step b. Click the Encoding tab at the top ribbon, and choose `Convert to UTF-8`. Step c. If the Save icon is bright (see the below picture for illustration), click it to save your change. If the save icon is greyed out, no action is required. Step d. Close the text editor program. Instructions ==========================Prepare csv files======================= Step a. Open a spreadsheet program. Step b. Name columns in the form {ElementSetName}:{ElementFieldName}. For example, Dublin Core:Relation. Following the naming convention helps the program automatically map the columns with what are already stored in the system, and makes the whole procedure less error-prone. If one of your column is for Tags, name it Tags. Step c. Create metadata records. One row is a metadata record about an item. Values under the Tags column should be separated by semicolons (;). For example, `Comparative study; Knowledge base` Regular html is allowed. But there is no need no wrap these inside double quotes. Step d. Save the file as a csv file. Create a copy just in case so that you don t have to do all the above work again! Step e: Close the spreadsheet program and convert the file into UTF-8 encoding. ==========================================

6 ==================Upload prepared csv files to Omeka================== After you open the CSV Import plugin, do the following: Step a. Do not check the checkbox for the second listed setting on the page (`Use an export from Omeka CSV Report`), and make sure the checkbox for the automap setting is checked. Leave the 4 delimiter settings as is. Choose the file you want to upload, and configure other setting as appropriate. Click `Next` at the bottom of the page to proceed. Step b. Make sure the columns are correctly mapped to the intended combination of element set(s) and element fields. If values of one column have HTML, check the box under `Use HTML?` for that column. If this is the column containing tags, check the box under `Tags?` for that column. Click `Import CSV File` at the bottom of the page to import the csv file with your choices of configuration. Step c. Wait for some time (about 1 minute if your csv file has 100 rows of metadata records) before you have to refresh the page. The change of status from `queued` to `success` indicates records have been successfully created. ============================================================