[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Date certainty in the PUI

[Olivia S Solis]

Hello all,

We are exploring the public interface and were wondering what kinds of
solutions anyone might have come up with for an automated way to display
date certainty in resource records. We're using ASpace version 2.8.1.

Currently, we export EAD to publish to a regional consortium and our EAD
exporter exports the following inside <unitdate> tags.

   - Adds "circa " before each Begin and/or End date when a certainty of
   "Approximate" is selected in a date subrecord. e.g. for single date of 1980
   or Begin = 1980 and End =1990
      - circa 1980
      - circa 1980-circa 1990
   - Surrounds single dates and/or date ranges with brackets if "Inferred"
   is selected
      - [1980]
      - [1980-1990]
   - If anything is entered in the Expression field, it exports that
   field's conent instead of either of the above, regardless of certainly.
   This allows for e.g.
      - 1980-circa 1990
      - [1980]-1990

This behavior has a lot of benefits for us. It saves work. Most of the
time, processors don't have to enter the same date in two different
ways, one in the normal fields and one in the Expression field. It avoids
conflicts between the Expression field and Begin/End fields. It produces
consistently formatted dates.

Given the way we need to balance how the data would be entered for both the
regional consortia and the PUI if we turned the public side of ASpace on, I
want something that works with both platforms. I see in the following issue:
https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/browse/ANW-1273
which would be wonderful to address. But it doesn't seem to incorporate
certainty. I know that is a lot more complexity to throw in.

We are curious as to how other institutions handle certainty in the PUI. Do
you just manually add "circa," brackets, etc. in Expression so that
certainty is publicly conveyed? Display "(approximate)" or "(inferred)"
along with dates if applicable?

Apologies if this has been addressed anywhere previously in this group.

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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/attachments/20210901/415c2f31/attachment.html>