Digital Collection Project Best Practices

This document is a guide to data entry, configuration, and facet filtering for the digital collection projects at the Gerth Archives Special Collections using CONTENTdm, a digital asset management (DAM) system by OCLC, and provides a metadata template.    

Title

The title element is automatically created by a default setting. Although it can be renamed and modified, it is highly recommended to retain it as the main title element. This default field is related to other configurations in the DAM system.

Date Data Type

When the Date Data Type is selected, the data must comply with ISO 8601 formats. If invalid forms, such as "circa," "unknown," and "undated," are entered, they would affect the DAM system’s date search operation and prevent it from filtering the search results for a desired date range. 

Full Text Search Data Type

Only one field per collection can be designated for the purposes of activating the transcript functionality and populating text from PDF and EAD files automatically.

Facet Filtering

• Select "Yes" for both "Displayed" and "Searchable" in the DAM’s field properties configurations.  
• A maximum of five fields can be selected for facet filtering.
• Decade Filter: Filter by decade.  
• Language Filter: Filter by language If a collection contains materials in multiple languages.