Review: First Jour fixe at the German Federal Archives Berlin (DE)
On Wednesday 4 September 2013, the APEx team at the German Federal Archives Berlin (GFA) held its first Jour fixe on managing archival data in the Archives Portal Europe. As previously announced, the GFA decided to provide this monthly event: a two hour workshop for archivists who are eager to learn more about the practical aspects of providing data to the Portal.
The call to participate had been circulated via several mailing lists and applications heaped quickly.
The GFA is able to offer 7 computer working stations which deliberately keep the number of participants reasonable in order to allow for productive and individual engagements.
To start out, the Technical Coordinator of the Archives Portal Europe performed an exemplary data ingestion into the Content Checker environment via the Dashboard, followed by a brief presentation of the Data Preparation Tool (DPT). Subsequently each participant was provided with a test account in the Content Checker Dashboard and some test files. Following the Technical Coordinator's instructions, the archivists were able to create their own EAG and eventually upload the respective EAD files: the files where converted, validated and finally published. In the end, a holdings guide was created. Apart from a trial of the DPT, the Technical Coordinator additionally presented the Europeana conversion tool which gave the participants further insight into these processes.
Clearly, the most fundamental outcome of this workshop was to see that the EAD files which were brought along by some archivist, exported by their own database, could be ingested smoothly and without any problems.
In the end, the feedback on the Jour fixe was very positive. The participants appreciated
- the possibility of receiving detailed information from a specialist
- the ultimately easy way of providing own data into the Archives Portal Europe
Next Jour fixe dates are: 2 October, 6 November, 4 December
