[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Is it possible to include a summary note in a digital object CSV?

[Kennedy, Nancy]

Angela,
Just a thought re: "we'll still have to manually create the archival object records and manually link each one to its corresponding digital object."

If your archival objects don't yet exist, have you considered importing via EAD?  You could build out the archival objects and associated digital objects at the same time, saving yourself the trouble of manual linking.  Especially if you're already working from a spreadsheet and just want 'glorified linking'.

If you already have a spreadsheet to work from: consider using excel to build out the EAD <dsc>, one row per archival object and set up column(s) for the <dao> while you're at it. Convert excel/csv to xml, by using the column names as element names (which means that it's fairly easy to add new elements as new columns, rather than a behemoth spreadsheet with 60 columns...). Excel macros can do it, or ruby. Once the data is in xml, it's just an XSLT to set up as EAD and apply local rules before import.  If you'd like to see examples, feel free to get in touch. I have files set up to do this for AT, and in initial testing, these seem to work as well for ArchivesSpace.

Nancy

Nancy Kennedy
EAD Coordinator
Smithsonian Institution
KennedyN at si.edu
________________________________
From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org [archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] on behalf of Angela Kroeger [akroeger at unomaha.edu]
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2016 12:07 PM
To: Archivesspace Users Group
Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Is it possible to include a summary note in a digital object CSV?
Mark,

Thank you for your helpful reply! I'll start by mentioning that I'm not a programmer and have never used an API before, so I don't know how to do it, but knowing that it CAN be done is a good start.

I looked at your digital object converter code, and I see that there is a bioghist note in it. I imagine a summary note could be added the same way, copying that code? Again, I'm not sure where to put this code or how to use it, but seeing it gives me hope.

I found the documentation for the ArchivesSpace RESTful API on github (http://archivesspace.github.io/archivesspace/doc/file.API.html), but it's somewhat beyond my present level of knowledge and understanding.

Since I know essentially nothing about APIs, I'm going to follow the advice in the University of Michigan's blog post on ArchivesSpace APIs (http://archival-integration.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-archivesspace-api.html) and look at the ArchivesSpace Developer Screencasts (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJFitFaE9AY_DDlhl3Kq_vFeX27F1yt6I).

Can you recommend any other resources or tutorials I should look at to get started?
We are hosted by LYRASIS, if that changes anything.

Thanks also for the advice about not using the user defined fields for this. I'll throw that idea away.

You asked how we were using digital objects. You used the phrase "glorified linking mechanism," and that's pretty close to how we're using them. A lot (most) of the information is duplicated between our digital objects and the archival objects they're linked to.

Here's a sample digital object from our institution:
http://unomaha-public.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/4/digital_objects/211

And here's its corresponding archival object:
http://unomaha-public.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/4/archival_objects/33757

We had considered creating series-level archival objects and linking all appropriate digital objects to them, but after the advice from several folks on this list (discussion in early February), we went with a one-to-one relationship between item-level archival objects and digital objects.

We've been manually adding digital objects and archival objects from our spreadsheet one at a time, and it is painfully slow. I saw the digital object import as a way of cutting out one of the steps. After importing the CSV of digital object records, as far as I can tell, we'll still have to manually create the archival object records and manually link each one to its corresponding digital object. Or can that also be done with an API?

Thanks, again!
--Angela

Angela Kroeger
akroeger at unomaha.edu<mailto:akroeger at unomaha.edu>
Archives and Special Collections Associate
Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library
University of Nebraska at Omaha
(402) 554-4159


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