Introduction
This data story describes the IISG's 'finding aids' as Linked Data (RDF). The EAD records are transcribed using https://github.com/ivozandhuis/ead2rico/tree/main by Ivo Zandhuis. We already present the data via this data story in order to get feedback. For comments please use this link https://github.com/ivozandhuis/ead2rico/issues/new/choose . This data story starts with retrieving basic characteristics (e.g. on size or occurrences) and then slowly builds up to more advanced examples.
How many RecordSets are there?
What classes are used to describe the finding aids?
What access levels exist?
Details on use.
Languages used in RecordSets.
Archives are described with a subject. This could be "Persons", "Organisations", "Geographical Names", "Material Type" and "Theme". Below is a visualisation of the archives by theme.
More elaborate questions
In this section we cover questions that are of more use to the archivist / collection processor / record manager.
Looking for a year in a description
We start out by asking, what record sets mention '2025' in either access or usage? (question contributed by Frank de Jong)
Header sections in EAD and VUFind/Catalog not congruent
On https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/ARCH04352/ArchiveContentAndStructure#tabnav we can find in the top box the string "Paramaribo,1978". However, when SPARQLing for that string in "Historical Notes", we did not find it at all. So why is that?
Below we search for the string "Paramaribo, 1978" in -any- header. And then we do find the affiliated RecordSet. We also see, that the underlying header is 'geschiedenis'. Meaning that 'Geschiedenis' is the actual header described in EAD. But to summarise all the different headers, in VUFind, we thus have an aggregated section "Biographical/Historical Note".
Below we list all the available 'head'/title descriptions in EAD by how often they occur.
Searching for date ranges in descriptions
Sometimes we want to search not for a single year, but for a range of years (question provided by Simon Huber). Unfortunately, these descriptions are 'strings' as opposed to 'dates'. Dates would allow us to filter for years and even allows for calculus (e.g. all items 5 years after a given date). However, regex, a very powerful string matching technique, allows us to retrieve comparable results. This query provides you all strings that have a 4 digit 'word' in it, that starts with 20, as 3rd digit has a 0, or 1, or 2, or 3, and as 4th character anything between 0 and 9. Thus going for dates from 2000-2039.
If you click on the query, you see other examples, query for any date in the 20th century and any date after 2000.
Looking for living persons in descriptions
A special case for looking into date ranges is to question which sections contain information on (living) persons (provided by Simon Huber), This relates for example to the archive donator. Commonly, these persons are mentioned with their name, followed by their birth date and when deceased their death date. For example 'Jane Doe (1941-2017)' or 'Janet Doe (1981-)'. We can also use regex to search for a pattern resembling the (xxxx-) notation, while excluding completed periods (xxxx-xxxx). Obviously, it needs to be remembered that due to small inconsistencies not 'all living persons' will be picked up in this way. Also, we might pick up on descriptions that are about other things for which the (xxxx-) notation is common (e.g a still existing group or party). This particular query search start/birth dates from 1920 upto and including 1999.
Search by Subject
First determine a subject type, then your search string. Subjects are of type (in brackets VU-find terms):
- rico:Person ("Persons");
- rico:CorporateBody ("Organizations");
- rico:Thing("Themes" and "Material Type");
- rico:Place("Geographic Names"). Note that in the Records and Context vocabulary there is by default no representation for "Theme" or "Material Type". Obviously, we can add this to the data as IISG specific subjects. For now, you can select 'Thing' and then a word in the title of a "Theme" or "Material Type". E.g. if you select "Thing" and search for "photo", you will find all collections with material type "photo".
Basic visual inspection of a record set
Record Sets come in all shapes and sizes. Usually 'length' of an archive is used to get an indication of the size. However, this does not say anything about the layeredness of an archive or collection. E.g. does it have many layers, and are these layers 'flat' or subdivided many times over? A visualisation based on the rico:Series level can help us out here. Compare the figure below with https://hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00100, to get a feel for the difference in build up of the various collections. (Hint: copy the url in the search box below).
Do you have something on ...? (search)
NB: searches in title, header, or paragraph.
This search is not indexed, so takes 30-60 seconds to run
Search is CaSe SeNsItIvE.