Manual Entry

Process

1. Log into the Digital Archive
2. Select the collection you would like to add to
3. Click “submit a new item from the collection”
4. Follow prompts, inputting, selecting and adding appropriate information
5. Select and upload file.
6. Review, add License, and Submit

Benefits

Form Suggestions

After typing the same string in a given field a number of times, the browser starts to remember what you wrote, so there is a crude sort of error-checking that allows you to notice and avoid any names which are spelled incorrectly between each successive item in the collection. Additionally, it helps prevent you from introducing any new typing errors.

Simplicity

The prompts and progress are very simple and require little to no knowledge of the underlying metadata schema of dublin core or of the template underneath. Adding items to the collection, then, requires very little training (ideal for intermittent student or otherwise low-wage workers).

Direct Addition

There is a steady and consistent flow from entering metadata about an item to adding it to the archive for everyone to see. This makes for measurable and consistent progress which can be easily tracked and monitored (again ideal for low-wage workers).

Drawbacks

Imprecise or Incorrect

The first easily perceptible problem you find when you go through this method is the limit placed on the specificity of the metadata you can select. For the project in question (a weekly college magazine), this meant that writers, editors, photographers, illustrators, etc. were all to be grouped and added equally as "authors" (dc.contributor.author) in the dublin core standard. Additionally, the volume and number information (dc.relation.ispartofseries) logged under dc.description.

Obscured and Uncontrolled

Relating with the first, the web interface leaves you with very little idea at first glance what the information entered into each field is eventually catalogued as in relation to the dublin core standard qualifier set. The listed Title field in our item submission form wrote to dc.title.alternative, and there was only one ‘Description’ field which went to the generic dc.description.

Redundant

The next problem you encounter after you've done more than three of these is the amount of duplicate information you have to input doing these for hours on end. Each item required you to rewrite 5-15 contributor names, the publisher, the title, the type, the description string, and the copyright information each time.

Direct Addition

Though also a benefit, directly adding an item after just finishing up the first pass requires constant authentication, a steady stream of small, new changes to the database, and without review and relation between articles around the same time, possibly misses out on cross-referencing. It also makes editing past entries or mistakes en masse very, very difficult (submissions page has poor usability).