For the 8th tool exercise of Digital Methods 1, we worked with meta-data and attempted to categorize, describe, group and identify items from the Clemson University Archives. This exercise used a google sheet, and headings regarding the meta-data types that librarians and historians may use to classify primary source documents within archives and to see how their identifiers are created in the process. We were given three initial examples, and the corresponding meta-data, which will be shown below. The 3 examples were in rows 1, 2, and 3, and their corresponding identifications were placed to the right in the columns.
![](https://paigemagoto.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screen-Shot-2023-11-17-at-3.58.53-PM-1024x369.png)
![](https://paigemagoto.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screen-Shot-2023-11-17-at-4.00.17-PM-1024x351.png)
Candidly, I had a really hard time identifying the subject column of this activity, and even highlighted this column red, barely filling out this column in the other items I took form archives. This column had instructions (below), detailing how you can use the Library of Congress and their standardized subject headings to keep things organized at a national level, rather than at an institutional level to sort things. I think with a bit more instruction, and hands on activity with the searching interface of the library of congress, I could be more useful using the library of congress’ sorting system. What I fund to not be so useful was how specific some of the search terms were, almost as if they were created from an item to item bases rather than having umbrella terms that would encompass larger amounts of archival material.
RECOMMENDED: The Topic of this content of the Resource. Use keywords from the controlled vocabularies, Library of Congress Subject Headings at [URL].
If applying more than one keyword, separate by semicolon.
Select the most significant and unique subject keywords from the Titles or Description information, or from within a text resource. If the subject of the item is a person or an organization, use the same from of the name as you would if the person or organization were a Creator or Contributor.
Subject heading Instructions
Below are some examples of the types of items were were creating metadata for, through the Clemson University Archives.
![](https://paigemagoto.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screen-Shot-2023-11-22-at-5.01.53-PM-1024x820.png)
![](https://paigemagoto.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screen-Shot-2023-11-22-at-5.01.44-PM-636x1024.png)
![](https://paigemagoto.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screen-Shot-2023-11-22-at-5.02.06-PM-643x1024.png)
![](https://paigemagoto.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screen-Shot-2023-11-22-at-5.00.37-PM-259x1024.png)
![](https://paigemagoto.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screen-Shot-2023-11-22-at-5.01.00-PM-392x1024.png)
![](https://paigemagoto.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/ua100_001020-1-1-1024x833.jpg)
Metadata is incredibly important in the digital word of humanities without metadata, online archives and data bases would be incredibly hard to navigate, and the information needed to cite a primary source would be nearly impossible to find. Having correct an updated metadata is pertinent to a historians research, and the archivist’s organization. I will probably use metadata often within the rest of my career as a historians.