News

DTES RESEARCH
ACCESS PORTAL

Describing items in the DTES RAP to make them easier to find

By Bob Yeates
Senior Assistant Professor
Okayama University

As part of our newly launched News section, we’re bringing you stories that share the history of the Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal (DTES RAP). A version of this article was originally posted June 19, 2020 on the Supporting Transparent & Open Research Engagement & Exchange (STOREE) Project website. The STOREE Project aims to support community- and university-led initiatives targeted at increasing the accessibility of research. They are frequent partners with the Making Research Accessible initiative and have collaborated on the creation of the DTES RAP.

Participants work on laptops to add metadata to DTES RAP items.

During my year as a research assistant for the Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal (DTES RAP), I worked with several aspects of the DTES RAP’s development. One that stands out is working on the metadata schema. Metadata relates to how we describe content, including its format, creator, and “aboutness,” to make it more discoverable for users. In this role, I saw how challenging and involved the process can be. The metadata needs to accurately reflect the scope of items available through the DTES RAP and the language needs to be appropriate to the content and to the diversity of its users. For example, “Substance Use” is a preferred term to “Substance Abuse” in the community.

A highlight of working on the metadata schema was I learned that efforts to describe things both non-judgmentally and usefully can be a long, iterative process; gaining feedback from a broad segment of information professionals, as well as the user community, is vital.

Another major part of my position was assisting in putting together a session to involve and solicit feedback from community leaders  on the DTES RAP’s development. I was glad of the opportunity to add concrete, practical experience to the theoretical principles I was learning in the Library and Information Studies program. I researched how other institutions around the world handled evaluating various digital initiatives, from community heritage projects in Indonesia, to digital mapping in Scotland, to health databases in Canada. Participating in and analyzing the discussions from the session over the following months were highly rewarding aspects of this position. Among the many things I learned during this process were how critical community engagement is with a project of this kind, and how multifaceted are the considerations in appropriately engaging with end-users so that they are included and heard, and that their valuable feedback is successfully implemented as much as possible.

Bob Yeates, MLIS, PhD (English) was a research assistant at UBC from February 2019 to March 2020. He is now a Senior Assistant Professor at Okayama University in Japan.

—-

Do you have questions or feedback about this article? Do you have an idea for the news section? Please reach out to community engagement librarian Nick Ubels at nick.ubels@ubc.ca