The Milner Metadata team presented at the 2024 Core Forum held from November 14-16 in Minneapolis. Core is a division of the American Library Association (ALA) that focuses on “leadership, infrastructures, and futures” for library professionals in metadata, preservation, technology, management, and building operations.
Metadata Librarian Emily Baldoni, Metadata Specialist Maddi Loiselle, and Metadata and Cataloging Librarian Angela Yon presented their project “Looking Beyond Your Digital Repository: Metadata for Storytelling,” which focused on the World War I Illinois State Normal University Service Records digital collection they worked on from August 2023-March 2024.
Digitization Coordinator Karmine Beecroft organized the digitizing of the collection from June-December 2022 and arranged volunteers to transcribe the many documents and letters in the collection with the crowdsourced transcription service “From the Page” from February-April 2023. Beecroft provided a wealth of knowledge for the team and was quick to respond to questions.
The metadata team presented the history of the collection, noting the tremendous labor from Illinois State University’s first librarian, Ange Milner, who created a roster of Illinois State Normal University students and affiliates who participated in World War I. Milner sent out surveys to each student and affiliate and corresponded with many of them. She wrote thoughtful and personalized letters to each person who responded to her survey request, and saved as many photos, newspaper clippings, postcards, and letters she and her 14-year-old assistant Kenneth R. Pringle could find.
The team discussed their approach to the project with the collections as data framework in mind and the descriptive metadata they created informed their decision of what types of information to pull out of each file. For example, they documented enlistment and discharge dates, dates sent overseas, and what units they served with. They also chose to document information that would be hidden from public view, including coordinates for each place affiliates were stationed and URLs to name authority files and geographic locations for future linked data use.
The geographic coordinates dataset was imported into ArcGIS Reference System and customized to create a large interactive map visualization that pinpoints each affiliate and can be faceted by military branch or service organization. The team also documented dates from each file to create a timeline using Histropedia. For some more well-known individuals, they plotted significant dates before and after the war.
Once the collection was fully uploaded, they explored the transcription text using text analysis tool Voyant to see if there were any topics, patterns, or insights they missed during initial metadata production.
The team combined these tools to create the StoryMap “Over There” that houses narratives of different events the affiliates experienced, including specific battles and campaigns, the Influenza Epidemic of 1918, the Red Cross involvement in the Russian Civil War, Women in WWI, and the Pioneer Infantry.
The team had the second most attended session of their timeslot with 62 attendees and even voted one of the best sessions of the Core Forum.
Visit the World War I Illinois State Normal University Service Records for more Illinois State Normal University students, faculty, and staff experience in World War I.
