Part of the Streamlining Workflows: Transforming 20th Century Metadata for 21st Century Access panel

In the 21st century, archivists strive to meet user expectations that their collections be digitally accessible and often must contend with legacy metadata processes and practices in order to meet these expectations. Archivists from three Kentucky institutions will describe strategies they have implemented to streamline these processes and share helpful tools and ideas that anyone can use. Heather Stone will discuss photograph and print legacy records that were created in PastPerfect Museum Software in the decades prior to her joining the Filson Special Collections department.  She will discuss search limitations due to poor record entry, the importance of standardization (authority files), and some strategies used to clean-up data within the system. Sarah Dorpinghaus will discuss her experiences in migrating finding aids and digital objects to the revamped Kentucky Digital Library. Specifically, she will address the importance of automating workflows when possible and utilizing programmer and IT assistance to do so. Heather Fox will discuss tools she used to create a master database capturing and tracking metadata for an ongoing digitization project of a photographic collection comprised of over 500,000 images. With the assistance of the University of Louisville Systems Librarian, Fox unified points of metadata creation starting with students entering administrative metadata as they scan the images, to Fox creating descriptive metadata and then uploading images to the University of Louisville’s Digital Collections website which is powered by CONTENTdm.