What do you do when you have a new metadata librarian and several upcoming library platforms to implement? Well, of course you come together to build a brand new thesaurus and tidy up your controlled vocabulary! This presentation will explore how Iowa State University's librarians and archivists worked together to provide an improved user experience for researchers using the library's unique collections. The goal of the thesaurus is to provide focused, consistent browsing terms for the collections. With the creation of the thesaurus and upcoming public-facing platforms such as Islandora (a digital asset management system) and SKCA (an archives management system), the question of consolidating and determining preferred authority terms was raised. Thus, the work of the controlled authority names (personal, corporate, and ISU names) groups began. With these projects, collocating materials with common themes would be streamlined and facilitate browsing across unique collections such as the digital objects in Digital Collections, archival collections in Special Collections and University Archives, and potentially other library collections such as the data repository. This session will discuss the strategies, workflows, documentation, future plans, and lessons learned in this collaborative adventure which involved many of the University Library's units such as Special Collections and University Archives, Metadata and Cataloging, and Digital Initiatives.
Session attendees will come away with:
- The benefits of a specialized vocabulary and why others might consider implementing similar projects
- Insights into lessons learned from a large team effort
- Tips on project management - Keeping the process focused and user-centered
- Ways to devise projects which will benefit units library-wide and how these might lead to future collaborations