After selecting and digitizing resources from the Katharine Emma Maltwood fonds, I set about to apply Dublin Core metadata to the materials within the digital collections content management software, CONTENTdm client. Drawing from the Library of Congress Subject Heading search (LCSH) online portal I selected over 60 unique subject heading terms to represent the collection. Genre terms were developed using the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) available online from the Getty Research Institute. Each record was provided a concise description of the object's attributes, along with information about the artefact's title, creator, provenance, as well as access and use rights. Completed records were then published on the University of Victoria Libraries' online digital collection interface for use by students, researchers, and interested members of the public. Finally, to increase the collection's discoverability and to link it directly to UVic Libraries' website, a landing page featuring a brief explanation about the collection, links to related resources, and images from the fonds was created.
Scanned images are uploaded to CONTENTdm and metadata is added to each resource on a local server. Each record contains an array of descriptive information for an array of public users, as well as data for internal use by members of the Libraries' digitization team.
Once the metadata for each item is completed, the resources are published online. The Katharine Maltwood collection is now is discoverable and searchable along with the UVic Libraries' other digital collections.
The Library of Congress Linked Data Service provides users with access to a variety of Library of Congress standards and vocabularies including a comprehensive subject heading search.
The publicly accessible CONTENTdm web interface allows users to view digital surrogates of collections materials in great detail. The resources in the Katharine Maltwood fonds are digitized at 600 dpi and saved as lossless compression tiffs allowing for a balance of detailed views and moderate file sizes.
Each record is created with care to ensure accuracy and useability. Single and compound objects (artefacts possessing two or more associated images) are presented as unique records within the software's internal interface. Metadata may be added both individually record by record, or in batches wherever equivalent information is required.
Record metadata is searchable and can be linked to other related information on the web connecting users to exponentially more information about their subject of inquiry.