Levels of description - File Item Part hierarchy

[Julie Jägerová]

Hi everybody, 

We are currently working on AtoM Fiding aid for our Archives, and we have one question concerning levels of description and their behaviour. In general, we'll work with this hierarchy: Fonds - Sub-fonds - Series - Sub-series - Files - Items. Nevertheless, there is a possibility to define a Part as well. Where can we place "Part" in the AtoM structure? I suppose that a Part can develop a Sub-serie or a File. Is there any specific recommendation from AtoM creators to use "Part" in the archival description hierarchy, in order to avoid using it wrong? Can we use Part to develop Item, for instance? (This doesn't seem logical to me, item should be the indivisible part.)

Thanks a lot for your answers !

Julie

Archives of ULB, Belgium 

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Julie, 

AtoM's flexible enough in its design that there's no real "wrong" way to use the levels - all levels of description are maintained in a user-editable taxonomy (an administrator can navigate to Manage > Taxonomies > Levels of description and add new levels, modify existing ones, or delete unused levels), and internally, the level is just a property - at the database level there's no difference between a top-level fonds or collection and an item other than a property for the level. So: if it works for your arrangement and description needs, then you're doing it right! And if you're not using Part, you can always delete from the Levels taxonomy, or modify it to suit your needs. 

That said, I can provide further context about why we included "Part" as one of the default levels of description available in AtoM on installation. 

As you may know, AtoM currently has a 1:1 relationship between an information object (a generic name for an archival description) and a digital object. This means that only one digital object can be directly attached to one description - you can't add 2 different images to a single description, for example. This design decision was made very early in AtoM's development to ensure that any descriptive metadata - even just a title or short description - is ALWAYS kept on the information object. The digital object tables in AtoM only hold technical metadata such as filename, media type, format, file size, etc. So, if for example you scanned all the pages of a book and wanted to name each page (page 1, page 2, etc), then technically this title would require an associated information object to hold the title. 

A book should be viewed as a complete item however, so we wanted to give users a default level of description that might be used for displaying these component parts on separate child descriptions below the item level. Another example might be adding a level of description called "View" for a physical object, to include photographs of different sides of an item. 

I think that if we had the option to revisit this data model decision, we might make a different choice now, having seen more how our community wants to use AtoM. Changing the underlying data model at this level would be a pretty major change that would definitely require further analysis, as well as community support for Artefactual to implement. 

However, in the long term, Artefactual will still aim for these changes in a future replacement digital object management module for AtoM (for example, something built outside of Symfony as a replacement component and potential candidate for inclusion in a next-generation AtoM3 release). Additionally, adding a compound digital object viewer to AtoM (such as IIIF support, and adding an IIIF viewer client) might allow us to improve the end user experience of being able to browse inside items while still maintaining the current data model. 

So, in summary: the "Part" level was an example provided to help users find workarounds for the current 1:1 digital object to description limitation, by adding sub-item descriptions for parts, pages, views, etc. You can delete the level of description if you're not using it, add your own sub-item levels (such as page, view, etc), or modify the existing Part term. 

Cheers, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

he / him

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AtoM Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ica-atom-user...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ica-atom-users/e63bb440-7afd-4f93-94a7-94e62419b741n%40googlegroups.com.

[Julie Jägerová]

Hi Dan, 

Thank you very much for your immediate answer! Thank you for explaining the reasons for including Parts, that's exactly what our IT specialist thought :)

Cheers, 

Julie

čt 4. 2. 2021 v 15:56 odesílatel Dan Gillean <d...@artefactual.com> napsal:

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "AtoM Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/ica-atom-users/v6s6e-DJuFQ/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to ica-atom-user...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ica-atom-users/CAC1FhZJZBgLOW0ah5bboe76gQviAgq4vN%2BD_Vu8zJAGe96WS3Q%40mail.gmail.com.