{"id":35,"date":"2013-10-25T19:13:17","date_gmt":"2013-10-25T23:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/?p=35"},"modified":"2013-10-25T19:35:06","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T23:35:06","slug":"the-most-cryptic-finding-aid-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/2013\/10\/25\/the-most-cryptic-finding-aid-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"The most cryptic finding aid ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a world of bad finding aids, there are some that make you cringe. Did my<\/em> <\/strong>archives do that?<\/p>\n

This finding aid stands out because of the obvious hard work that went into it, but it is perhaps the least user-friendly thing I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the handy key from the bottom of page 3:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now that you know how to interpret it, have a gander at page 21 of the finding aid:<\/p>\n

\"Page<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s translate the \u201c1910\u2033 line. Here\u2019s an enlargement:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It reads \u201c1910 \u00a0\u00a0 2, 1, (1) \u00a0 \u00a0 1xc, 1relay\u201d<\/p>\n

This tells us that there are 6 photographic prints of the \u201ctrack\u201d team (which in this finding aid means any team that runs).<\/p>\n

In the position under the \u201cVarsity\u201d column header, \u201c2,1,(1)\u201d means four photographs are of the Varsity track team.\u00a0 Of these four, two are presumably from the same negative and definitely from 1910, one is from a different negative and definitely 1910, and one is from a third negative and probably from 1910.<\/p>\n

There are no photographs indicated under the column for the Junior Varsity team, but there are two \u201cother\u201d photographs.\u00a0 One is the cross-country team, and the other is the relay team.<\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s a lot that this\u00a0 finding aid is not saying.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no information about the photographs\u2019 sizes, or anything to help you retrieve the right folder.\u00a0 (These are portfolio-sized folders stored flat in drawers, which is scary, since a lot of the photos are small, but we\u2019ll let preservationists shudder about that.)<\/p>\n

Near the top on the right-hand side are the years 1930 and 1931.\u00a0 Does it take steeping in an Ivy League tradition to understand that \u201cH-Y\u201d means this is a photograph of a Harvard-Yale track meet?<\/p>\n

\"Page21<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve decoded this finding aid and converted it to EAD, but we didn’t convert some of the information– such as whether a date attribution was doubtful or whether more than one print might have come from the same negative.<\/p>\n

And we’re still being slightly mysterious.\u00a0 There are placeholders in the EAD version waiting for links to several dozen digitized images.<\/p>\n

So, is this more user-friendly? http:\/\/nrs.harvard.edu\/urn-3:HUL.ARCH:hua25013<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a world of bad finding aids, there are some that make you cringe. Did my archives do that? This finding aid stands out because of the obvious hard work that went into it, but it is perhaps the least user-friendly thing I\u2019ve ever seen.   Here\u2019s the handy key from the bottom of page […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5379,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114192,15206,114195,114193],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ead","category-finding-aids","category-retrospective-converstion","category-user-friendliness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5379"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/archivaldescription\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}