About this course
Keeping track of your physical and digital documents, your work progress, and your publication requires preparation and forethought. In this course, you’ll explore various tools and methods for tracking and managing your project.
What you'll learn
- to apply organizational practices when publishing historical documents.
- to identify how you can use metadata to control information while developing your project.
- to identify the kinds of systems you can use to control information while developing your project.
- to develop a system for organizing your documents.
Additional Resources
University of North Carolina Library’s metadata standards
Digital Curation Center’s list of metadata standards for digital projects
Library of Congress Authorities
Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)
TEI P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange
Course Content
Course Glossary
- Authority Name
A version of a person’s name that is used every time when referencing that individual, such as in annotation or metadata.
- Controlled Vocabularies
A consistent or standardized way of describing data. For example, one practitioner working with poems may choose to describe the creators of these source materials as "Author," whereas a practitioner working with correspondence may choose to describe the creators of those source materials as "Sender." Regardless of what these practitioners choose, both have used a controlled vocabulary by standardizing how they describe the source material's creator. Practitioners can develop their own controlled vocabulary, use an existing controlled vocabulary, or a combination of both. Examples of existing controlled vocabularies can be found at the University of North Carolina Library: https://guides.lib.unc.edu/c.php?g=8749&p=44502.
- Documentation
The process of writing down the policy decisions that you have made in order to share them with readers and ensure that you apply them consistently.
- Document Control
The application of a system for locating specific documents or groups of documents in your collection. Creating such a system involves defining what metadata needs to be collected for each document, and then consistently and accurately collecting that metadata.
- Document Organization
A structure developed for creating meaningful divisions between documents. Closely related to document control, document organization refers to the framework by which documents are organized, whereas document control refers to the practical application of that framework.
- Metadata
Essentially, data about data. It can be used to describe the content, physical or structural features, and/or administrative elements of data. In providing such descriptions, metadata supports the management and discoverability of data. See the University of North Carolina Library's definition of metadata for more information: https://guides.lib.unc.edu/metadata/definition.