Over the last year the ADS has seen some significant changes, including a massive increase in staff and an influx of archives being deposited. As a result, we have been continuously brainstorming ways to improve our current workflows and enhance data accessibility
This May, the CATS team (Curatorial and Technical Staff) dedicated time to discuss these topics, reflecting on all things related to our archival workflows and outputs. To read more about what went on during CATS week, click here. One of the areas highlighted to improve upon was to enhance the data (and metadata) that we currently hold.
Before I started my role as a Digital Archives Assistant, I worked as an intern here. One of the projects I had was to look into the archives that still used the old web page template. I came to find that this was a more complex task than anticipated, as the new template was only launched last year, with decades worth of archives that need to be migrated to this new template. Read more about the Web Template Launch here, including information about object metadata updates and accessibility improvements.
Alongside my colleague Jenny (Archives Manager, who has since left ADS), I worked towards making plans to migrate these web pages to the new template, giving the archives a much needed face lift. However, with the thousands of archives the ADS holds, it has proven to be a bigger and more challenging task than expected, especially for a recent graduate. I found that every archive ‘face’(the archives interface which users see on the website) is unique and comes with its own separate challenges, some of which are created by time and evolving technology (wrinkles and sun damage). Reinforcing the importance of migrating this data over, simultaneously enhancing the metadata, and keeping it up to date for general dissemination accessibility and data preservation (applying retinol and sun protection).
A few months later, I started my role as a Digital Archives Assistant. I shifted my focus to learning how to archive, how to tackle any issues that may come across in the archiving workflow, and gain more knowledge about how our data is currently stored, and critically, how it differs from past methods.
CATS week brought to light the need to continue migrating these older archives, improving data accessibility, and reuse potential. With my knowledge of archiving much improved, I am now revisiting my project of web page migration with a better understanding of how to solve the challenges it has (albeit I’m still out of my depth and miss Jenny’s help).
With a new intern and other members of the team getting more involved with Project Face Lift, we are now making plans to migrate these web pages in the most efficient way possible. We are taking it one step at a time (or perhaps more like one year at a time) working our way backwards from archives released in 2024.
So keep your eye out for any older archives, and you may find that it had a great face lift. But if you do see a botched job, (like missing image thumbnails, or broken hyperlinks) please get in touch with us via the ADS helpdesk ([email protected]) or send a message through one of our social media channels which can be found at the bottom of this page.
