How to Handle Undated or Approximate Dates in DSpace
Joshua C.
Baer,Helen
Hi Josh,
We have the same issue, but backwards: we have ISO dates but often we really should have used "undated", "1960's", or "approximately 1955", etc. My hope is to institute DACS-friendly dates and start using the guidelines in Cataloging Cultural Objects to specify actual date ranges associated with uncertain and ambiguous dates. In these examples, date.created is DACS and date.earliest and date.latest are ISO:
date.created = 1960s
date.earliest = 1960
date.latest = 1969
and
date.created = 1960 September [1?]
date.earliest = 1960-09-01
date.latest = 1960-09-30
Then, I want to have a developer add a date search (not browse) so we can treat those ISO dates as dates and use them fully. But that's out in the future. With 90,000 records in our repository, it's a big job but not impossible. Also, check out the recent Code4Lib article about scrubbing dates in ArchivesSpace: https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/14443. Neat project at Yale, at large scale.
Best,
Helen
From: dspace-c...@googlegroups.com <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Joshua C.
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2019 7:08 AM
To: DSpace Community <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [dspace-community] How to Handle Undated or Approximate Dates in DSpace
Hi there! I work for a library and archive with limited technological/institutional support, so we're using DSpace as our digital repository. However, an issue I've noticed while digging around in the sandbox is that dc.date is a required field and can only accept numeric characters. However, my institution has a lot of undated or approximately dated items. We use DACS/EAD for finding aids and these are handled by labeling items as "undated", "1960's", or "approximately 1955". As you can see, this makes it nearly impossible to accurately ingest these items. I was wondering how other institutions have worked around this issue? I understand that most users are academic libraries etc. that use DSpace for theses, dissertations, and whatnot that have solid dates so it may not be an issue for most. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
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