September 21, 2021
This meeting was held on September 21, 2021 via Zoom. Jen Palmentiero, Digital Services Manager at Southeastern, provided a demo of the EmpireADC Finding Aid Creation Tool.
A recording of the meeting is not available owing to technical difficulties. But Jen subsequently recorded a video tutorial of the EmpireADC Finding Aid Creation Tool.
----------------------------------------------------
Q and A followed the demo:
Question: Another organization in our town has collections about the same people. If we both contribute finding aids, can I link from mine to theirs?
Answer: Yes, there are multiple ways to bring similar collections together. You can provide hyperlinks to other finding aids (either in EmpireADC or elsewhere on the web) in the Related Materials element. The Controlled Access Headings (Personal Names, etc.) is another way to bring similar finding aids together within EmpireADC.
Question: I can see people at my organization arguing against EmpireADC saying "why can't we just put finding aids on our website?"
Answer: EmpireADC provides the ability to search across multiple finding aids, which you likely can't do from your website. It also brings together similar collections from multiple organizations. Also if you create structured/encoded container lists, you can get users right into the box or folder they need. Some organizations have MARC records for their archival collections in their catalogs, but MARC records aren't discoverable on the open web; EmpireADC records are.
Question: Can the finding aids be searchable outside of EmpireADC.
Yes: The finding aids are findable via search engines.
Question: Is there any thought about making EmpireADC finding aids available through ArchiveGrid.
Answer: Yes, we plan to facilitate sharing with ArchiveGrid (an OCLC service) and also the NAFAN portal (a national finding aid aggregation which is in the planning stage).
EmpireADC Finding Aid Creation Tool
The playlist includes the following videos to give you step-by-step instruction on Empire ADC: