MDOS Mini-Newsletter - February 2022

Dear colleagues,

The MDOS Steering Committee would like to share February’s MDOS Mini-Newsletter with you, and thanks for reading!

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Metadata Resources of the Month

The Metadata Resource we’d like to highlight this February is Project STAND’s (STudent Activism Now Documented) Archiving Student Activism Toolkit, created by Annalise Berdini, Rich Bernier, Valencia Johnson, Maggie McNeely, and Lydia Tang on behalf of Project STAND in November 2019. Project STAND is self-described on their Mission webpage as “a radical grassroots archival consortia project between colleges and universities around the country; to create a centralized digital space highlighting analog and digital collections emphasizing student activism in marginalized communities.” The Toolkit provides valuable guidance on all aspects of the process of archiving student activism; Section 11. Arrangement and Description is perhaps most relevant to Metadata and Digital Object Section members' particular area of focus, addressing important issues such as the lag time between our descriptive standards and the language people may use to self-identify, and the need for cultural competency in description.

Project STAND’s website: https://standarchives.com/

Project STAND’s Archiving Student Activism Toolkit: https://standarchives.com/project-stand-toolkit/

Metadata Figure of the Month

George Herbert Putnam (1861 to 1955) was the first professional librarian to serve as Librarian of Congress (although the 8th person to hold the role), for four decades, from 1899 to 1939. He had previous experience since 1884 as Librarian of the Minneapolis Athenaeum, of the Minneapolis Public Library, and of the Boston Public Library. He and Melvil Dewey (inventory of the Dewey Decimal classification system) testified before the Congressional Joint Committee on the Library in 1896, advocating for the expansion of the Library of Congress' mission. His accomplishments include achieving the transfer of presidential and state papers to the Library of Congress and expanding the range of languages and cultures represented in the Library's collections. He contributed to the development of the classification scheme now known as the Library of Congress Classification system, incorporating his experience creating the Putnam Classification System at the Minneapolis Public Library.

Source: "Herbert Putnam (1861-1955), 8th Librarian of Congress 1899-1939." The Library of Congress. URL: https://www.loc.gov/item/n85185518/herbert-putnam-1861-1955/

All the best,

 The MDOS Steering Committee