[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Agents with topical (or other) subdivisions in ASpace

Wed Aug 12 11:17:59 EDT 2015

Hello everyone,

First things first... thank you for your replies!

Second, I have to admit that when we first sent the email, we didn't
actually realize that there is indeed a way to add terms and subdivisions
to agents with the role of subject in resources in ASpace (that's a
mouthful!), because we had only been looking at agents. Reading your
replies, though, it became apparent that we were missing something, and
when we checked, we were pleasantly surprised to find this:

[image: Inline image 1]

That doesn't actually help with importing these types of agents into
ASpace, but we think we have an idea. We're hoping to be able to import the
agent (before the first subdivision) ahead of time, associate the resulting
ASpace ref with it in our EAD, split out the rest of the terms in a
meaningful way (we've done that in the past by comparing those subdivisions
to subdivisions with type subfields in our MARC records), and then, upon
import of the resource, add the subdivisions in ASpace.

That being said, here are some more specific replies:

Mathew: No, we're not an Archon user. We've been using a homegrown system
to create and manage our EADs, and for about the past six months or so
we've been prepping these EADs for import into ASpace. If you or anyone
else is interested, here's a shameless plug for our blog's entries on our
ASpace adventures
<http://archival-integration.blogspot.com/search/label/ArchivesSpace>.

Maura: I think we'll try to figure out a way to implement the solution we
described above, and if that doesn't work, your suggestion seems like a
reasonable and researcher-friendly alternative.

Kevin: We appreciated hearing about your experience and the reasoning
behind it. We won't be using the public display, but it's interesting to
note that this is an issue with the public interface. It's also nice to
know that agents-as-subjects-with-subdivisions export to MARC properly.

Thanks again for your replies!

Max

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 4:54 PM, Kevin Clair <Kevin.Clair at du.edu> wrote:

> 1.       We were able to migrate our agents-as-creators and
> agents-as-subjects separately and have them display as such in the staff
> frontend, which we managed because they were stored in separate fields in
> our last collection management system. The public site won’t display
> “Creator” or “Subject” the same way the frontend does; it will only display
> more specific relator terms. Example:
> http://duarchives.coalliance.org/repositories/2/resources/496
>
>
>
> 2.       We went with option #2 when we migrated, because it was easier
> and because at the time I didn’t know how the “Terms and Subdivisions” in
> the Agent Links form worked. Ideally I would like to switch over to option
> #1, but it’s been a low priority, and there are some issues with how the
> public site displays agent links with terms and subdivisions in that make
> me not want to devote time to it.
>
>
>
> An example of this on our site is here:
> http://duarchives.coalliance.org/repositories/2/resources/725. The
> “University of Denver” agent link there is actually “University of Denver –
> Libraries”, and it does correctly exports “Libraries” as a 610$x in the
> MARC export, but you wouldn’t know it from the public display.  -k
>
>
>
> *From:* archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org [mailto:
> archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] *On Behalf Of *Maura
> Carbone
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2015 2:31 PM
> *To:* Archivesspace Users Group
> *Subject:* Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Agents with topical (or other)
> subdivisions in ASpace
>
>
>
> Hi Matthew,
>
> I'm not entirely sure what you mean by no distinction between creator and
> subject with regards to agents. Do you mean that you have two agents, one
> with the role of 'creator' and one with the role of 'subject'? Or do you
> mean it is bringing in things that should be classified as subjects as
> agents? Subjects are separate from Agents in ASpace (see an example from
> one of our collections here:
> http://findingaids.brandeis.edu/repositories/2/resources/20), but it is
> possible that the Archon import tool is only interpreting these as agents
> and not subjects.
>
>
>
> Max -- I'm not a cataloger or a metadata expert so just personal opinion,
> but #2 sounds the most feasible given how ASpace displays agents and
> subjects. Either that somewhat of a middle ground: in that example agents
> would be UMich and American Brass Company, and Subjects would be the whole
> term (University of Michigan--Students--Political activity.) That might
> be a bit more clear for users.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Maura
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 4:20 PM, Matthew J Gorzalski <
> mGorzalski at lib.siu.edu> wrote:
>
> Are you an Archon user?  We have related agent problems coming from Archon
> to ASpace.  Our test migrations show that any collection that has a
> corporate/personal name as both the creator and as a subject will migrate
> BOTH into ASpace under the agent field with NO distinction between creator
> and subject.  Our example is an artificial collection called Morris Library
> Photograph Collection where Morris Library is both creator and subject.  In
> Archon you can clearly distinguish between these two roles because Creators
> and Subjects are separate sections.  But in ArchivesSpace they are both
> lumped into Agents and given that generic non-descript person icon.  So it
> is confusing for researchers to see two Morris Library entries under Agents
> because their roles are not distinguished.  This same public interface
> design flaw works the same for any collection using a name as subject and
> creator.
>
>
>
> Mat Gorzalski
>
> SIU Carbondale
>
>
>
> *From:* archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org [mailto:
> archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] *On Behalf Of *Max
> Eckard
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2015 2:45 PM
> *To:* Archivesspace Users Group <
> archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org>
> *Subject:* [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Agents with topical (or other)
> subdivisions in ASpace
>
>
>
> Hello ASpacers!
>
>
>
> We've been working on importing agents into ArchivesSpace, but have run
> into an issue. As an example, we have a number of <corpname> elements that
> are subdivided with topical subjects, like so:
>
>    - University of Michigan--Students--Political activity.
>    - University of Michigan--Faculty.
>    - American Brass Company--Strikes.
>
> The issue we've encountered is that there is no space in ASpace for agents
> that are subdivided in this way. Note: we are not talking about agents with
> primary and subordinate names (with periods in between them)--ASpace
> handles these just fine! We've been thinking about a number of ways to
> handle this:
>
>    1. We could divide up these terms so that the first term gets imported
>    as an agent (in the examples above, corporate entity) and the rest of the
>    term gets imported as a subject (or a subdivided subject). We've
>    experimented a little with this here
>    <https://github.com/bentley-historical-library/vandura/compare/master...eckardm:master>.
>    The problem with this approach is that subdividing names/agents is a
>    longstanding practice here (and totally acceptable in MARC), and making a
>    change like this would require making an even (arguably) bigger change to
>    descriptive practices here and cause issues with exporting MARC records
>    from ASpace.
>    2. We could just leave the whole string, dash dashes and all, as the
>    primary form of name. This could work, but it seems inelegant, since each
>    variation would be imported as a new agent, even though we're only
>    referring to one.
>    3. We could change these to subjects, but that doesn't seem quite
>    right either, since agents can have the role of subject.
>
> We've been trying to consider all angles, including what affect a change
> like this could have on researcher searching and browsing. Now we're
> wondering what you all do. Do you have subdivided agents (<corpname>s,
> <famname>s and <persname>s)? If so, how have you imported these into ASpace?
>
>
>
> Thank you for your time!
>
>
>
> Max
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> *Max Eckard*
> *Assistant Archivist for Digital Curation*
>
>
>
> Bentley Historical Library
>
> 1150 Beal Ave.
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2113
> 734/763-7518 <734.763.7518>
>
> http://bentley.umich.edu/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Archivesspace_Users_Group at lyralists.lyrasis.org
> http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/mailman/listinfo/archivesspace_users_group
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Maura Carbone
>
> Digital Initiatives Librarian
> Brandeis University
> Library and Technology Services
> (781) 736-4659
> 415 South Street, (MS 017/P.O. Box 549110)
> Waltham, MA 02454-9110
> email: mauraa at brandeis.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>

-- 
*Max Eckard*
*Assistant Archivist for Digital Curation*

Bentley Historical Library
1150 Beal Ave.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2113
734/763-7518 <734.763.7518>
http://bentley.umich.edu/
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