e_SAAUT_1000000000000000000000.tif

Rachel and I are approaching 200 digitized files, and I'm officially feeling the digioverload. After hours of OCRing strange fonts and google doc-ing dublin core, we must be at e_SAAUT_1000000000000000000000.tif by now, right?

SAA-UT digi in action

Although the process is time consuming, indeed, I'm proud of our progress: we've successfully digitized:

• Records of the Chapter's official formation and recognition by national SAA organization
• Meeting Minutes
• Events records
• Correspondence (some of it, anyway--SAA-UT-ers printed so many of their e-mails in 1994, and they were always busy corresponding with other chapters and invited speakers)
• Annual Reports
• Photos (including classic Dr. Gracy shots!)
• Angelina Eberly poster

Along the way, Rachel and I are learning more than we expected about the past activities of our energetic chapter. It's a treat to recognize names from the leadership of so many Austin repositories in these records and to take pride in our Chapter's legacy of connection with the broader SAA community. We were talking about how fun it would be to invite some of the stars of these records to visit us and share their memories--and to record their oral histories for the archives, of course! I'm hoping that providing access to these records will rekindle that original spark of magic and archival enthusiasm John Slate and Sharla Richards must have felt when they received word from SAA that our Chapter had been officially recognized.

THE BOX, courtesy of the Briscoe

After drafting an organizational schema, Rach and I are hoping to transition to the next phase of our project this weekend: DSpace. Ahhhhh! We've consulted with Dr. Galloway several times, and we're seeking advice from students and fellow SAA-UT-ers who are currently in her "Problems" class, so I'm hoping we can figure this out. Here's how our schema is looking:

Original (dis)order?

Sub-community: YEAR
Sub-sub community: Annual Reports
Collection: YEAR Annual Reports
Sub-sub community: Archives Week   
Collection: YEAR Archives Week
Sub-sub community: Meeting Minutes
Collection: YEAR Meeting Minutes
Sub-sub community: Events
Collection: YEAR Events
Sub-sub community: Finances
Collection: YEAR Finances
Sub-sub community: Marketing
Collection: YEAR Marketing
Sub-sub community: Correspondence
Collection: YEAR Correspondence
Sub-sub community: Administrative Records
Collection: YEAR Administrative Records
Sub-sub community: Website
Collection: YEAR Website



The multifaceted and flexible search functionality of DSpace should enable users to choose multiple points of entry into the collection--whether they want to search by year, by document type, by person, etc.

After we've determined how to establish this organizational hierarchy within DSpace, we'll need to do a "batch ingest" of our digitized records and figure out how to upload the corresponding metadata. Deep breath.

High five, Rach! 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...blast off to DSpace!

we're digi-nauts!