1. Working with the experts:
Faculty and student contributions to metadata for
Cuban theater collections at the Cuban Heritage
Collection
Matt Carruthers, University of Miami Libraries, May 21, 2013

2. Cuban Heritage Collection
• Cuba and Cuban Diaspora
• Collections heavily used by
students and faculty

3. UM Digital Collections
• Currently 88 digital
collections publicly
available
• http://merrick.library.miami.edu

4. Project Overview
• Dr. Lillian Manzor, Department of Modern
Languages and Literatures
• Champion of Digital Humanities
• Director of the Cuban Theater Digital Archive
• http://cubantheater.org

5. Project Overview
• Project goals:
• Utilize existing subject expertise
• Introduce budding humanities scholars to incorporating
digital resources into their research
• Growing Digital Humanities movement

6. Project Overview
• Graduate course on 20th Century Latin American
Literature
• Students doing research with CHC collections focused on
Cuban theater
• Collaboration with the Library to introduce students to
the process of creating digital resources

7. Project Overview
• Students choose a small number of objects from the
archival collections
• Create structured metadata
• Add metadata and digitized objects to CTDA and UML
Digital Collections

8. Challenges
• Teaching fundamentals of metadata creation
• Only one in-class session
• Used Blackboard to facilitate further communication

9. Challenges
• What is the best way to
capture and store the
metadata?
• Utilize web form in CDTA

10. Challenges
• Lag time between when students complete their projects
and when they see the finished product online
• Digitization efforts must be balanced with other
concurrent projects in the Library

11. Finished Product
• Digitized objects and metadata will be presented in both
CTDA and UML Digital Collections

12. Benefits
• Students:
• Hands-on experience structuring information
• Learn value of Digital Humanities, both in performing and
disseminating their research
• Library
• Significant value added to metadata by students’ subject
expertise
• Opportunity for the Library to engage more broadly with
faculty and students

13. Thank You!