Metadata Protocol
The metadata, or descriptive records for each item follow national and international standards to provide better searching and browsing of the historic materials. There’s a three-part workflow to placing these items online in the Voices of the Eastern Shore website, and metadata records play a pivotal role in this process.
Digital images are sorted, numbered and metadata is created before the digital objects are uploaded into the trusted digital repository for the project, the Portal to Texas History (PTH) at the University of North Texas Libraries (UNTL). The images and metadata for each item are hosted and digitally preserved in PTH. PTH supports the export of metadata in several machine-readable formats which enable the images and metadata descriptions to be presented in FromThePage for transcription and subject tagging. Digital objects are pulled into FromThePage from PTH via the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF).
The metadata standards used for this project follow those established at UNTL to support its digital libraries infrastructure, as PTH serves as the trusted digital repository that provides the foundation for this project, upon which other services are built that make the Voices of the Eastern Shore website possible. The descriptive fields used for the project are briefly described below, please explore the Metadata page at UNTL for full documentation:
Title
A mandatory field for the official title of an object. If one does not exist, we create one in [brackets].
Examples:
- [Letter from Elizabeth Dennis Teackle and their father John Teackle, to her sister Sarah Upshur Teackle Bancker - February 26, 1812]
- [Account ledger of John Teackle, 1808-1820]
Creator
An optional field for who made this item.
Examples:
- Teackle, Elizabeth Uphsur
- Teackle, John, 1756-1817
Creation Date
An optional field that follows YYYY-MM-DD format but has other formats to express a date range.
Examples:
- 1799-05-13
- 1807/1820
Date added to PTH
Mandatory, the date an item was uploaded into the PTH system, this field is automated.
Example: 2024-12-06
Description
A required field that describes what the item is about.
Examples:
- Letter from Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to her sister Ann Upshur Eyre, written from Philadelphia. She mentions see various friends in town such as Paschall Hollingsworth, Mr. Davis, and Ben Wilcocks, and members of the Teackle family.
- This is a ledger of accounts for merchant John Teackle of Kegotank, dating from 1808-1820. Debtors included family members, business associates and other mercantile houses. He also loaned money to emancipated African Americans such as Isaac Crippen, George Planter, William Planter, Asariah Pepper, Joshua Cropper, Joseph Planter, John Jack and others. The accounts include names such as Littleton D. Teackle, Charles Nicoll Bancker, John Upshur, William Parramore, William P. Custis, John Custis, Henry Custis, John H. Bayly, Bagwell Wharton, Major William Conquest, Henry Sympson, James Montgomery, Elihu Chauncey, Zadock Shepherd, Bowie & Kurtz of Georgetown, George Snead and many others.
Subjects
A mandatory field supports users to find items by topic. This field is repeatable and supports most of the taxonomies used within the cultural heritage field (Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), Art and Architecture Thesaurus (Getty), etc.), as well as keywords.
Examples:
- Teackle, John, 1756-1817
- Teackle, Elizabeth Upshur, 1783-1837
Language
A required field that indicates the language of the item.
Examples:
- English
- French
- Chinese
Item Type
A mandatory field that supports users to browse a certain type of material, such as a book, ledger, letter, map, etc.
Institution
A required field that shows the repository in which the item is held.
Examples:
- Somerset County Historical Trust
- Library of Congress
Collection
A mandatory field that names the collection this item is in.
Example:
- Voices of the Eastern Shore
Identifier
An optional field that shows unique identifiers assigned to a digital object, such as a call number, accession number or OCLC number.
Examples:
- Accession or Local Control No: 2338-01-0011
- Call Number: MSS 2338, 2338-a, 2338-b
- Box 1 Archival Resource Key: ark:/67531/metapth1622648
Publication Information
An optional field that contains a preferred citation.
Example:
- Papers of the Quinby, Teackle, and Upshur families, 1759-1968
- Accession #2338
- Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.
Place Name
An optional field that shows the geographic location where a digital object was created or is about.
Examples:
- United States - Virginia - Accomack County - Kegotank
- United States - Maryland - Dorchester County - Cambridge