Convergence of Practice Merging library, archive, and museum collections management within EMu KE EMu User Conference, 17 October 2012 Pooja Budhraja, Brian Wilson – The Henry Ford

Dedicated in 1929; opened to public in 1933 Five primary units: Museum and Village Imax Theater and Assembly Plant Tour Benson Ford Research Center Houses the Archives and Library 1.5M onsite visitors per year employees and 650 volunteers $50M yearly operating budget Archives and Library 9 FT and 4 PT staff; 6-10 volunteers 2500 onsite researchers per year 2500 remote reference requests per year History and Operation 2

Collections Museum and Village Rosa Parks Bus; Wright Cycle Shop Archives Over 18,000 cu. ft. (6400 linear ft.) Ford Motor Co. records, s Henry Ford personal papers Trade Catalog collection Institutional records Library Over 43,000 book titles Over 2000 periodical titles Open to public; non-circulating 3

Making Connections 4

Working Together 5

Digital LAM Project Three Phases Establish broad “wants/needs” Create/import archival description within EMu Revise delivery interfaces Representation from Program Management, Registrars, IT, and Archives Place archival items in collection context Reduce initial amount of individual description required Provide information about collections without digitized content Enable public search across store of archival description Increase velocity of digitization 6

EMu Internal UsersExternal Users Firewall 7

Progress to Date Converted 900+ hardcopy inventories to pdf format Work done under prior external grant Established core project team Implemented EMu Test environment Created local Archivists’ Toolkit instance Constructed Metadata and Field cross-walks In process of resolving shared fields Tested EAD import and XSLT Modified EAD template and customized XSLT Begun creation of example archival collection in EMu 8

Record Structure and EAD Import Accession Collection Series I Series II File Item Multimedia csv import template or csv import ead import manual 9 Parent/Child Attachment

10 Accession 232, World’s Fair Photograph series

Created using EAD import, record templates, and csv file imports 5516 records Collection level: 1 Component level: 202 Item level: 1771 Multimedia: 3542 Not fully digitized (~40%) Complete archival description Accession 232, World’s Fair Photograph series 11

Ford Motor Company Records Structure FMC Collection Photographs RG Engineering Photographic Photographic Department Accession 232, World’s Fair series General series Industrial Relations RG FMC Archives RG No. 2 through No Plant Construction series Renovated Assembly Plants series Northern MI Operations series Ford Rotunda series Ford News Bureau series Photographic Library series Photographs RG: 16 accessions ~ 500,000 photographs ~ 1M digital images

What We Are Finding Differing professional practices Local practices of The Henry Ford EMu practices and implementation 13

Differing Professional Practices Archival provenance, context, and collection Description at an aggregate level – “Are things findable?” Granularization of data – removal of context Terminology – common / disparate terms Archival hierarchy - Similar to Village/Districts/Buildings/Rooms? Location – Intellectual and physical EAD and CDWA (metadata) relative to DACS and CCO (description) Archivist use of multiple date ranges for single entity Example: Inclusive and Bulk Date ranges for collection Differing EAD best practices within or separated 14

Local Practices of The Henry Ford Terminology and Meaning “Item-Level Cataloging” Content versus Structure – Defining title field versus form of title Object ID requirement for object records Application to archival intellectual-level components Added “-X” suffix to collection ID for ’s Location Granularity of data – Collection shelf range and/or specific box/folder ObjectType field Defines item or catalog record? Or both? Using cross-walks to define “shared” fields Title defined in Main Title field as concat of and Extent written to Measurements tab Dates captured on Creation/Date tab 15

16 Date Example: Ford Motorsports Records, (bulk ) Bulk dates entered as additional dates here to commonize with Registrars practice. [EAD] Component tabCreation/Date tab Inclusive dates only written to fields here.

EMu Practices and Implementation Handling of multiple date ranges for single item/entity No bulk date field(s) Lack of container field Writing box/folder data to Physical Facet field temporarily Function of Archives “Tree” Visibility; drag/drop; position control Subject / Controlled Access term import Tied to Parties Module; creation of duplicate records Other Parties Module fields Accession, Finding Aid Author, Revision By, etc. Duplicate fields across multiple tabs Suppress/hide three of seven tabs Mixing of data about collection and data about collection description 17

What’s Next Short Term Continue build-out of sample archival collection within EMu Focus on resolving shared fields such as Title and Date Develop output formats Finding aid form and EAD XML Handling of Library collection data – Discovery not management Reuse/transform/import existing MARC record data Use of Related Objects to connect collections and items Long Term Public and internal facing website redesigns Explore potential use of narratives module Collection level description (scope, bioghist, etc.) Review of item-level metadata Can we define a “light” record for publication? 18

Contact: Thank You. 19 Pooja Budhraja Database Manager The Henry Ford Brian Wilson Digital Processing Archivist Archives and Library, The Henry Ford