Powerpoint slides for Session 15. Wendy Pflug

1. “It’s Hard to Find Something
When You Don’t Know What
You’re Looking For…”
Subject Guides for Archival and Manuscript
Collection
Wendy Pflug
October 22, 2011

2. Research Guide to AIS
Collections

3. LibGuides as Subject Guides
 Created 5 LibGuides, representing
major themes in our collections:
◦ Business
◦ Environmental
◦ Government, Political and Social Activists
◦ Organizations, Local Societies and
Institutional Records
◦ Labor and Working Class History

4. LibGuides as Subject Guide

9. LibGuide Use

10. Faceted Browsing of Finding
Aids
 Users could find
items on more than
one dimension
 Discover
collections without
using a specific
keyword
 Allow for browsing
collections in a
format that was
more than a list

11. Subject Headings
 Idea to use existing
subject headings to
create word cloud
 Problem: too many
terms
 Solution: “Tags” to
define and/or limit
vocabulary to apply
uniformly

13. EAD XML Export
When EAD XML subject heading is
exported from Archivists’ Toolkit:
<subject source=“lcsh”>Astronomers—
Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh</subject>

14. EAD Code Tags Export
When Tags are exported from
Archivists’ Toolkit:
<subject source=“ulstag”> Personal
papers</subject>

16. JSON Data File

17. Our Process
 Step 1: EAD gets fed through the
XSLT Style Sheet. Output = Tab
delimited text file
 Step 2: Tab delimited text gets
converted to comma separated text
(CSV)
 Step 3: Python script converts CSV to
JSON file
 Step 4: HTML file interacts with JSON

18. ULS Tags Terms
 Architecture  Labor
 Associations  Personal Papers
 Business &  Politics
Industry  Social Action
 Churches &  Transportation
Synagogues  University of
 Education Pittsburgh
 Environment  Women
 Government

19. Browse Feature on Home
Page

24. What We Learned
 Goal: subject guides as way for
researchers to browse collections
 LibGuides more useful as an
instructional tool than as a subject
guide
 Faceted browsing of finding aids met
our users’ needs the best