[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Staff users/agents as subjects/creators

[Olivia S Solis]

Hi Jordon,

Thank you!! Your response is indeed very helpful and I totally understand
the logic behind your decision. Just a little background, we are almost
ASpace live. We are about to set up all of our user accounts. At some point
along the way, I read ASpace documentation advising not to use users as
linked agents. I can't at the moment remember exactly where, but I can see
that as useful advice. We ignored it for a couple reasons cited below.

We, in contrast to y'all, have decided to use staff agents for
human-initiated collection management activities that may need to be
documented in major record types. In particular, events.

I think there were a couple of things throwing us off here. For one, events
require some kind of linked agent, and we are using events for various
stages of accessioning and the ultimate stages of processing, as you have
chosen not to do in all cases (at least through events records which do not
use relators). For something like a processing step completed in an event,
how would the required linked agent not be some kind of staff user? We also
wanted it very clearly documented that certain staff played certain roles
in events.

The second is that all users are included in the list of possible
candidates when one starts typing in a linked agent in accessions,
resources, and archival objects. So below, my record is pulled up because I
started typing in my name (in this case in a new accession record) in a new
linked agent sub-record:
[image: Inline image 1]
I was created as simply a user in ASpace, not an agent. Anyone could add me
to a record as a creator or subject regardless of an institutional policy
not to add users as linked agents. Relooking at ASpace, apparently being a
user also makes me an agent in ASpace, with all the functionality ASpace
endows to agents. I could edit my agent record's URI or create
relationships with other agents, etc.

I'm seeing a lot of pros and cons here. I can give myself as a user a VIAF
URI in my agent (not user) record. (It also appears that editing my user
"Full name" doesn't automatically update the equivalent "Primary name"
field in my agent record). But if you go with a policy that users are not
agents and should not be used as linked agents, how do you get staff
creating and editing records not to add the users that appear as candidates
when they start typing in the linked agent fields as linked agents? Users
are options here. Our solution was that "staff" addition.

In terms of authority control, it seems very precarious to allow any user
to be added as a linked agent to any record, particularly to a published
record. If it's possible to add any user as a linked agent, despite
institutional policy not to, someone will. (Months of cleaning up legacy
data has made me a skeptic.) Even if that same user has a sanctioned,
legit, separate agent record.

Has this been a problem for anyone else? Do you have ambiguous
relationships between agents and users? And Jordon, given your library's
policy, has this ever been an issue for you... staff accidentally adding
users as linked agents? Again, we've got staff members who are regularly
creators, subjects, donors, etc.

I'm also curious about the relationship between users and their correlated
agent records and how/if various interrelated/common fields are
reciprocally updated.

Thanks, and if there is documentation that exists about this apologies!

-Olivia

On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 7:18 PM, Jordon Steele <jsteele at jhu.edu> wrote:

> Olivia,
>
>
>
> Yes, we do use URIs for our agent records, and, like you, they are sourced
> from VIAF.
>
>
>
> We separate user accounts from agent records. A user account is for
> someone to edit or view ASpace data. An agent record is reserved to
> document creators or subjects of collections or staff involved in
> collection-related activities. We’ve discussed and decided not to create
> and manage agent records for roles related to collection management
> activities such as processing or updating records; those names just appear
> as free text in processing notes (or in the audit trail of the ASpace
> record, which shows the last username to edit a given record). We generally
> only create agent records for staff to document curatorial activities like
> acquisition and deaccessioning.
>
>
>
> So there could indeed be a scenario where we have an agent record for a
> staff member and a separate user account for that staff member, which we’ve
> decided we can live with, especially because agent records are managed in a
> module separate from user accounts. It’s a similar situation to a library
> catalog’s authority file, where a staff member may be listed because he or
> she happened to, like, author a book that the library owns, but that staff
> member may also have logins managed separately to access library
> applications. But I understand the gray area—we’ve just decided to accept
> it.
>
>
>
> Hope that helps!
>
>
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> Jordon
>
>
>
> Jordon Steele
>
> Hodson Curator of the University Archives
>
> Special Collections
>
> The Sheridan Libraries
>
> Johns Hopkins University
>
> 3400 N Charles St
>
> Baltimore, MD 21218
>
> 410-516-5493 <(410)%20516-5493>
>
> jsteele at jhu.edu
>
>
>
> *From:* archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org [mailto:
> archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] *On Behalf Of *Olivia
> S Solis
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 04, 2018 4:29 PM
> *To:* Archivesspace Users Group <archivesspace_users_group@
> lyralists.lyrasis.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Staff users/agents as
> subjects/creators
>
>
>
> Hi Jordon,
>
>
>
> Thanks for the response! Do you use URIs for your terms? Forgive me if
> this was not clear before (or if it was that I am being repetitive). We've
> been doing a lot of work to clean up normalize data set ourselves up for a
> linked data universe where we reference all of our names with URIs and we
> specify the name authorities we are using. In particular, we've chosen
> VIAF. So say Celine Dion is our Registrar who uses ArchivesSpace daily to
> create and search for records. She also donated her papers to us. She needs
> a user account, but we want to refer to her by her URI:
>
> https://viaf.org/viaf/12491209
>
> in her papers, in particular to anything we publish. If she has a user
> account, there is no field for the URI or the authority. If I'm not
> mistaken, all users who get "Local" rules, but we would want to specify
> "VIAF" as the source of the term.
>
>
>
> Thanks, and again, sorry if I am over-explaining!
>
>
>
> -Olivia
>
>
>
> [image: Inline image 1]
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 3:13 PM, Jordon Steele <jsteele at jhu.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi Olivia,
>
>
>
> We have one agent record and assign different roles or relator terms based
> on the context. So for a given collection, Person X may have the role
> “Source” and relator “Curator” if that person was involved in acquiring a
> collection. If the person was the subject of the collection, we’d re-use
> the existing agent record and assign the role “Subject.” If we ended up
> getting that person’s papers, in that scenario, we’d assign the same agent
> record but with role “Creator.” We think of the agent one entity who may
> have different roles depending on the collection/event/context.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> Jordon
>
>
>
> Jordon Steele
>
> Hodson Curator of the University Archives
>
> Special Collections
>
> The Sheridan Libraries
>
> Johns Hopkins University
>
> 3400 N Charles St
>
> Baltimore, MD 21218
>
> 410-516-5493 <(410)%20516-5493>
>
> jsteele at jhu.edu
>
>
>
> *From:* archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org [mailto:
> archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] *On Behalf Of *Olivia
> S Solis
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 04, 2018 3:05 PM
> *To:* Archivesspace Users Group <archivesspace_users_group@
> lyralists.lyrasis.org>
> *Subject:* [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Staff users/agents as
> subjects/creators
>
>
>
> Hello all,
>
>
>
> I was wondering if some of you have a situation we have. Occasionally,
> some of our staff will appear as subjects/creators in resources and
> accessions. We have some staff members who are published scholars and
> appear in name authority files. In such cases, we'd want to use the URIs
> for those names (no such field in user records). We also have specific
> rules we follow for local names for subjects/creators.
>
>
>
> How do you/do you distinguish between staff members when they are acting
> in their capacity as staff (e.g. as the recipient of the agreement received
> event) vs. as subject/creator? Staff users appear to be agents that are
> selectable in any kind of record type.
>
>
>
> Our current strategy is to include a "(staff)" addition to "Full name" for
> users. For instance, mine would be "Olivia Solis (staff)", the reason being
> to make it absolutely clear this is not the non-existent "Solis, Olivia" in
> VIAF who is also an agent, but not a user. I don't like including
> information that is not part of a name in the name field, but otherwise, I
> think people would accidentally select the user agent in instances where
> they should select e.g. the VIAF "Solis, Olivia" with a URI we want to use.
> Is there a better solution to "staff" for disambiguation purposes? Somehow
> display the person's title in the type-ahead list that appears when you
> start typing in a linked agent name? I'm not sure how difficult that would
> be.
>
>
>
> We plan to retire (change passwords for), but not delete staff user
> accounts when the staff members no longer work here so we don't get rid of
> their data trail. But in 20 years it would be nice for staff to know that
> the retired "Olivia Solis (staff)" is also the same person as creator of
> one of our collections. Or maybe a donor, in which case I would not want to
> use the user account.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Olivia
>
>
>
> --
>
> Olivia Solis, MSIS
>
> Metadata Coordinator
>
> Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
>
> The University of Texas at Austin
>
> 2300 Red River St. Stop D1100
>
> Austin TX, 78712-1426
>
> (512) 232-8013 <(512)%20232-8013>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Archivesspace_Users_Group at lyralists.lyrasis.org
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>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Olivia Solis, MSIS
>
> Metadata Coordinator
>
> Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
>
> The University of Texas at Austin
>
> 2300 Red River St. Stop D1100
>
> Austin TX, 78712-1426
>
> (512) 232-8013 <(512)%20232-8013>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Archivesspace_Users_Group mailing list
> Archivesspace_Users_Group at lyralists.lyrasis.org
> http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/mailman/listinfo/archivesspace_users_group
>
>


-- 
Olivia Solis, MSIS
Metadata Coordinator
Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
The University of Texas at Austin
2300 Red River St. Stop D1100
Austin TX, 78712-1426
(512) 232-8013
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