Working with the experts: Faculty and student contributions to metadata for Cuban theater collections at the Cuban Heritage Collection

Matt Carruthers, University of Miami Libraries, May 21, 2013

Cuban Heritage Collection

• Cuba and Cuban Diaspora • Collections heavily used by

students and faculty

UM Digital Collections

• Currently 88 digital collections publicly available

• http://merrick.library.miami.edu

Project Overview

• Dr. Lillian Manzor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures • Champion of Digital Humanities • Director of the Cuban Theater Digital Archive

• http://cubantheater.org

Project Overview

• Project goals: • Utilize existing subject expertise • Introduce budding humanities scholars to incorporating

digital resources into their research • Growing Digital Humanities movement

Project Overview

• Graduate course on 20th Century Latin American Literature

• Students doing research with CHC collections focused on Cuban theater

• Collaboration with the Library to introduce students to the process of creating digital resources

Project Overview

• Students choose a small number of objects from the archival collections

• Create structured metadata • Add metadata and digitized objects to CTDA and UML

Digital Collections

Challenges

• Teaching fundamentals of metadata creation • Only one in-class session • Used Blackboard to facilitate further communication

Challenges

• What is the best way to capture and store the metadata? • Utilize web form in CDTA

Challenges

• Lag time between when students complete their projects and when they see the finished product online

• Digitization efforts must be balanced with other concurrent projects in the Library

Finished Product

• Digitized objects and metadata will be presented in both CTDA and UML Digital Collections

Benefits

• Students: • Hands-on experience structuring information • Learn value of Digital Humanities, both in performing and

disseminating their research • Library

• Significant value added to metadata by students’ subject expertise

• Opportunity for the Library to engage more broadly with faculty and students

Thank You!