Week 5, July 13-19

As of now I am knee deep into the World War 2 section of the "Historical Materials and Military Regulations" part of the collections. From a subjects/keyword standpoint, there is a vast array of material that encompasses crimes of war from American soldiers to the Nuremberg trials, and much more. This has allowed me to do some external research for the purpose of finding keywords that may have been used by other databases on the same material, or coming up keywords myself. The challenge behind doing the former is finding something not too specific, but also not too general. At times I have put myself into the shoes of a researcher not knowing exactly what they are looking for, but they have a subject in mind. This role-playing has been a creative way with coming up with keywords that could allow a searcher to stumble into these documents and have them be a relevant find.

Another real challenge I faced was devising a metadata schema. Each category within the "Historical Materials and Military Regulations" had unique and specific metadata particular to them and them alone. In order to classify them correctly, each spreadsheet was tailored for them so as to do justice to the data contained in each. Some may think this is tedious, but the information exemplifies the character of these resources, so that the individuality allows for redundancy to never set-in. Looking ahead, there will be more WW2 material. If I can finish it by next blog post, I will silently celebrate. If it isn't finished, I know that I will be in a good position to finish it next week and be ready for the next phase!