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CollectiveAccess
CollectiveAccess (CA) is the database system we use to manage our collection. At its core, it’s built around describing, tracking, and making searchable every item we have, whether that’s a film reel, a videotape, an audio cassette, or a digital file. While it can look complicated at first, the same basic ideas apply across all formats.
Every physical (or digital) item in the collection is entered as an object record. An object would be, for example, my specific copy of the Where the Wild Things Are (2009) movie on Blu-ray that I have at home. For a physical object record, it will usually contain its title, format (e.g., U-matic), date, condition notes, barcode number, and so on. If we are adding data to a record, it will usually be the object record. For example, if we are digitizing a VHS tape and find that the end of the tape cuts to static before the program ends, we can add that to the object record as an "Archivist Note."
The other core record type in CollectiveAccess is the occurrence, or "work." This is the intellectual idea of the item. So, my physical Blu-ray copy is the object, but Where the Wild Things, the 2009 film, is the "work." Every Blu-ray copy of the film in the world would be an object of that work. Historically, we have often only had object records for each item in CollectiveAccess, but the metadata team has begun to make efforts lately to create more work records that isolate the intellectual metadata for the items.
That "Archivist Note" is an attribute, and so is the format, duration, condition, and so on. Any metadata field we can define for a record in CollectiveAccess is an attribute. We can also create new attributes as we need to, although this is rare. When the Peabody Awards Collection records were migrated into CollectiveAccess, we had to create some new, specialized attributes, like the "Peabody Awards Entry Category."
Records in CollectiveAccess can be related to other records. This is how we define the relationship between a physical object and the collection that it's in, the physical object and a related digital object (such as the digital preservation copy of the item), and so on. There are an abundance of relationship types to fit the relationship you are trying to define.
The actual viewable files on CollectiveAccess are media representations. We attach media representations to the physical or digital object that they were created from. By default, an object's media representation will show up when you go to the page for a particular object, making it simple to view or listen to the object within it's record if we have digitized it.
The media representations have to be replaced occasionally, as we sometimes have new transfers or proxies to add to a record and need to remove an older one, but this can be a tricky process. Since the representation is related to the object, and exists as a record of its own, when you first navigate to the representation from the object's page, the "Delete" option on that page is actually deleting the relationship, not the representation itself. To delete the representation and not the relationship, you have to navigate to the "Full Record" and delete from there.
Records in CollectiveAccess also have a log showing what changes have been made to that record from the time of its creation. This can be very useful when you're trying to figure out historic problems with an item, locate original or outdated metadata that might be relevant to a question, or other similar issues.