Early this month the INDI project team made the INDI Sandbox available so that archivists and others interested in the distributed workflow system could kick the tires and get a feel for how the Integrated Digital Special Collections works. Late last week team members completed the INDI Walkthrough that will guide first time users through the various features available in INDI. This document is available at http://www.lib.byu.edu/indi/indi-walkthrough/ and is meant to be used in conjunction with the INDI Sandbox. It features step by step instructions on how to use INDI Desktop, MyProjects, and MyContacts, as well as detailed instructions for creating appraisal and accession projects. We hope that the walkthrough will make using the INDI Sandbox an easier experience.

In other INDI news, the project team is wrapping up the documentation for INDI Phase I, and once the final bug is fixed and the source code has been appropriately packaged INDI Phase I will be made available to the archival community. Phase I is comprised of INDI Desktop, MyProjects and MyContacts as well as the Apprasial module and the Acquisition and Accession module. Please watch the Downloads page for links to the source code for these items.

With the completion of Phase I the project team is turning its attention to Phase II. Phase II will focus on the creation of the Arrangement and Description module of INDI. This module will gather descriptive data about archival collections and then make that data available for export in a variety of output formats (EAD, EAC, MARCXML, MODS, Dublin Core, etc.). The project team is currently creating the requirements statements that will serve as the basis for programming this module of INDI. The team is also comparing the various standards that will be available for output and working to create a comprehensive data model. This data model is seen as the key to enabling INDI to output the specified formats as well as INDI’s future extensibility.

This past summer, Cory Nimer, Blake Miller, and I were tasked with the responsibility to develop the INDI Appraisal module. Appraisal, as suggested in the Society of American Archivists Glossary for Archivists, is the process of identifying records that have long-term historical or retention value. One of the most important appraisal tools available to the archivist or manuscripts curator is the collection development policy. The well-defined collection development policy identifies the types or kinds of historical materials acquired by archival institutions.

Traditionally, archivists have maintained paper-based case files to document or otherwise record appraisal activity. In terms of the web-based nature of the INDI Project, however, it was important that we also maintain or otherwise preserve a permanent electronic record documenting all appraisal transactions.

To accomplish this task we created a flow chart incorporating all major elements (from our perspective at least) of the appraisal process beginning with the identification of a potential collection or a potential collection donor—what we called in INDI parlance “lead identified.” Following steps, as outlined in our flow chart, and as developed by INDI software programmer, Curtis Thacker, include:

1. “Collection description” information, including a description of the contents of a specific collection.
2. “Contact” information for the donor or vendor, including an address, phone number, e-mail address, etc.
3. “Fieldwork reports”, including correspondence with donors and vendors; and
4. An “appraisal” statement indicating whether the collection in question was acquired and the reasons for its acquisition; as well as the “disposition” of materials not selected, and the reasons why the materials in question were not acquired.

The long-term importance of the case file, including the permanent retention of appraisal information, cannot be overstated. Appraisal records not only document the provenance of the collection they become part of our institutional histories. They are frequently consulted by archivists and manuscripts curators and they inform our understanding of the collections in our care. It is our expectation that INDI will further facilitate the creation and maintenance of accurate case file and appraisal information.

In building the MyContacts tool in INDI, one of the primary goals of the design team was the ability to use the data it contains for authority control. Although there has been a long (and ongoing) debate over the importance of archival authority records, it appears from the recent formation of the Encoded Archival Context (EAC) Working Group that the archival community has decided to formalize the creation and sharing of these records. Yet as various writers have noted, archives face some difficulties in building EAC authority files, especially in attracting library participation in EAC databases.

For libraries, the primary concern of traditional authority control is headings management. By using a documented, authorized form of a person/corporate name in descriptive records, library systems are able to collocate materials and provide improved access to their materials. Many academic libraries are associated with the Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO), and contribute authority records to the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF). Here at Brigham Young University we are also a NACO participant.

For many librarians, there is little to be gained from contributing to an archival authority file in addition to library authority file. Archives and special collections are oftentimes housed in the library in academic institutions, and contribute to the LCNAF as part of their MARC cataloging. In these circumstances, creating a second authority file would require unnecessary database management problems as they tried to keep both up-to-date. Additionally, some librarians do not see an advantage in recording the contextual information possible in EAC to authority records.

The recent publication of the Functional Requirements of Authority Data (FRAD) draft suggests that archival concerns about recording context are beginning to be addressed by the library community. While it is noted in the draft that EAC was not evaluated in the preparation of the document, the writers did consult the International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families (ISAAR(CPF)), developed by the International Council on Archives and embodied in Describing Archives: a Content Standard.

In the FRAD model, names and persons are defined as separate entities. Names include various attributes, such as type, scope of usage, dates of usage, language, script, and transliteration scheme. Name records can then be associated with person records (or corporate bodies/families records), which contain information about the person, including dates, titles, gender, associated locations, languages, occupations, and biographical histories. Person records (or corporate bodies/families records) can also be associated with other entities to describe parent/child, hierarchical, or other relationships.

The resulting FRAD framework seems reminiscent of the EAC model, except that it separates the authorized form of the name (EAC identity element) as a separate record. This is also somewhat similar to the agency history records created as part of the RLG Government Records Project, which used LCNAF authorized forms for headings while keeping administrative history information in the bibliographic record. While FRAD is still in draft, it will be interesting to see what effect its conceptual model might have in the development of Encoded Archival Context.

In INDI we have already begun implementing the FRAD model by separating headings management (name record data) from contextual information (person/corporate name/family record data). The decision to do so was made primarily due to pragmatic considerations, but we believe will have long-term benefits for our program and should be considered by the wider archival community as we move toward the development of archival authority files. In INDI, the MyContacts record acts as the FRAD contextual record, containing information about the entity and associations with other entity records and with archival collections. For headings management, though, INDI relies on the LCNAF through record linking.

To accomplish this, MARC 21 Authorities records are currently synched with the Oracle database used by the library ILS system, and are searchable within INDI. Once the correct record is selected it is linked to the MyContacts record on the record number. While this setup requires close integration between INDI with the library ILS, it reduces the need for headings management to a single authority file. It is hoped that as the Library of Congress develops an Search/Retrieval via URL (SRU) interface for LCNAF similar to that currently used in their catalog that INDI will be able to do this searching and linking directly with the national authority file itself.

Then for EAC output, INDI will harvest the information from the linked LC authority record, using it in the identity section of the record. The MyContacts data in turn will form the contextual information for the description and relationship sections of the record. In future releases of EAC, perhaps this type of linking relationship could be integrated in the standard to prevent the duplication of record content between library and archival authority files.

We hope that by approaching authority control in this way we will be able to both honor our commitments to the NACO program and library community locally, while participating in the emerging archival authority control community. Attending presentations on EAC at the SAA conference in Chicago, it seems that many members of the archival community are ready to write off libraries as partners in archival authority file development, with the intent of building completely independent systems. Yet it seems foolhardy to ignore the infrastructure and detailed authority work already done by librarians. By using linked authority systems we may be able to leverage that system, integrating heading management and contextual data as recommended in the FRAD model.

INDI team members have been busy over the summer working on the data model and workflow for the Arrangement and Description Module as well as testing the Accession module.

The Accession Module of INDI was released in a limited fashion to several students and curators in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections in July 2007. These students and curators used INDI to accession new collections and provided feedback on INDI’s usability. They recommended that contextual help be implemented as soon as practical and the project team began drafting the text for this help to be added to the Accession module. The Accession module of INDI was released to all of the manuscript curators and their students in early August and use of the system has been consistent and very few problems have been reported.

Team members carefully analyzed Describing Archives: A Content Standard, the EAD Schema, Dublin Core and several other national standards in the construction of the data model that will underly the Arrangement and Description Module. They also carefully analyzed the manuscripts Workflow in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections and created a workflow diagram to aid in the creation of the forms that will gather the arrangement and description data. Team members are working to understand the arrangement and description practices of the Wilson Folklore Archives in order to meet the unique descriptive needs of folklore materials through the INDI system.

This week the project team has been creating a webcast to highlight the completed portions of INDI. It can be viewed on the Downloads page of this site under Screencasts.