claudia m. friedel

home | about| resume | projects | archive questionnaire

Archival Questionnaire
Gain control of your assets [digital and analog, documentation, files, and ephemera] in order to inform yourself about your practice and reframe your digital initiatives.

BASE

How do you envision the archive in your everyday practice?
What would your dream baby archive be like?
What do you want to know about your assets?
What do you want to learn from your assets?
What relationships and research is important to hold onto?
Current spaces where your assets [digital and analog, documentation, files, and ephemera] live.

PERIMETER

In depth look at recurring habits of your key administrative concepts.

Do you have a set workflow for file and asset management?
When was it originally implemented?
Who was involved in the dialogue that ultimately determined the steps of the workflow?
What do you see as the biggest hurdle?
What is your basic workflow?
How much of your workflow is collaborative?
What tools do you use for file sharing and communication?
Who has clearance to manipulate the metadata?
What are biggest concerns in terms of data consistency?
How did you centralize your data?
What tools did you implement in doing so?
Where are your silos created?
Is there a plan to bridge them?
How often do you revisit your process and who is involved?

CORE

After the Perimeter is established we will then move deeper into your content’s purview with the intent to seek, define, and analyze a strategy with a realistic execution to wrangle your assets and integrate archival workflows into your everyday practice.

GLOSSARY

Controlled Vocabulary

A controlled vocabulary is an organized arrangement of words and phrases used to index content and/or to retrieve content through browsing or searching. It typically includes preferred and variant terms and has a defined scope or describes a specific domain.

The Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus is an example of a controlled vocabulary and is an industry standard.

A local controlled vocabulary would be a list of words you use to describe assets in your archive.

Metadata
Metadata summarizes basic information about data, which can make finding and working with particular instances of data easier. For example, author, date created and date modified, and file size are examples of very basic document metadata. Having the ability to filter through that metadata makes it much easier for someone to locate a specific document.