Projects

Metadata Required for Projects

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Check out our Metadata Guide for Projects. This downloadable document summarizes the metadata required to create a Project in a condensed, easy-to-reference document.

What is a Project?

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Projects in tDAR are an organizational resource that can be used to group a set of related information resources (documents, datasets, images, etc.). For example, a project may be a cultural resource management project, or a cultural preservation project completed by a federal, state, or private agency. It may also be a multi-year research effort in which collaborating researchers addressed a series of related research questions with a select set of data.

Why Create a Project?

Projects are designed to organize data resources and to help simplify the entry of metadata for documents, images, datasets, and other resource types. How can a Project simplify entry of metadata into tDAR? Once Project metadata are entered, you have the ability to “inherit” or reuse project-level metadata entered for any resource associated with that Project.

Projects carry their own metadata that is inherited by the resources that they contain; however, child resources can override inherited project metadata. For instance, if you enter the keywords “southwest” and “pueblo” for a particular project, any resources belonging to that project will also be discovered by searches for the keywords “southwest” and “pueblo”.

Creating a Project

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Creating a New Project

To create a new Project, locate the Upload button on the tDAR toolbar (You are able to access this toolbar and button on any page within tDAR). This will bring you to the Create and Organize Resources page. Clicking Project will take you to the Creating: New Project page.

Basic Information

Basic information for a project includes the record status and Project title.

Choosing a Record Status

By default, all records in tDAR are active. The status active means that they are visible to all users through searching and browsing. If you’re just starting out, you may choose to mark a Project with the status draft. Your resource will not be visible to other tDAR users until you make the status active.

The status does not inherit from a Project to resources inside that Project. Thus, a project may be marked as a draft or even deleted without affecting any of the resources within it.

Choose an Account to Bill From

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Additional Citation Information

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Abstract/Description

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Organize the Resources Within a Project

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tDAR Collections Membership

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Individual and Institutional Roles

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Project or Agency Specific Identifiers

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Spatial Terms

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Spatial terms describe the location of your project area. The spatial information entry section includes two separate components:

• geographic terms for general location keywords, including named regions, geographic features, states, towns, etc.
• a map that allows you to draw a box around your project area

If you draw a project location box that is 1 square mile or less in area, tDAR will display a wider box to other users to protect your project area/site location. What if I want to hide my site location?

Drawing a bounding box around your site

1. use the Google Map display to navigate to your site location
2. Click the Select Region button
3. draw a box that best approximates the area that your project investigated

Entering Coordinates Manually

If you know the exact coordinates of your project area, you can enter them manually into tDAR. Click on the checkbox next to Enter / View Coordinates. Coordinates can be entered in several different formats. For example:

• 40°44′55″N
• 53 08 50N
• Decimal: -73.9864

What if I want to hide my site location?

tDAR provides a number of options to protect the exact location of your project area and/or sites. If your bounding box is less than 1-mile square, tDAR will alter that box when it is displayed to users to obfuscate or hide the exact location. Alternatively, you may simply draw a wider box.

What if I entered my site location incorrectly?

Simply click the reset button. You may also click on the Enter / View Coordinates and adjust the spatial information manually.

Temporal Coverage

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Temporal coverage includes temporal keyword terms, calendar date ranges, and radiocarbon date ranges (if available) for the archaeological/cultural resources that your Project investigated.

Enter as many or as few temporal terms as you would like to describe the temporal coverage of your project. Use the add another temporal keyword box to add additional terms. Use the ” – ” box to delete a temporal term that you entered in error or that you would like to remove from your project description.

Coverage Dates

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Use the drop-down box to select either a calendar date or a radiocarbon date. Enter a calendar start date and a calendar end date for the sites or other archaeological/cultural resources that your project investigated.

Use only numeric values in the calendar date text boxes (Do not enter calendar era designations such as B.C.E. or A.D.). To denote a date in the B.C.E. designation, simply place a ” – ” before the date’s numeric value. Thus, ” – 200 ” is equivalent to ” 200 B. C. E.”

If available, enter a radiocarbon date by selecting radiocarbon date from the drop-down menu, and enter a start date and an end date for your Project’s archaeological resources.

Investigation Types

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Investigation types describe the various types of activities performed during a Project. Select as many or as few types that apply to your project.

You can hold your cursor over any investigation type to obtain a detailed description of the activities included in that investigation type.

Site Information

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The site information section includes the names of the sites investigated during your Project and a summary of the types of archaeological resources found at those sites.

Enter as many or as few site names as you would like to describe the work completed during your Project. Use the add another keyword to add more sites. Use the trashcan icon to delete site names that you entered in error or that you no longer would like to associate with the Project.

Select the Site Type descriptors that best describe the archaeological/cultural resources that occur at the sites you listed in the Site Name text boxes.

Click on the ” + ” box next to a site type to open a more detailed list of descriptions for that particular site type. Select all the type descriptions that apply to the sites you listed above in the Site Name text boxes.

Material Types

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The material types section describes the types of materials that were collected, analyzed, or discussed as part of your Project. Select as many or as few that apply to your Project.

What if my material type is not listed?

If a material type you’re expecting is not listed above, you have two options:

1. Enter the material type in the General Keywords section
2. Contact tDAR and ask for it to be added

Cultural Terms

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Cultural terms describe the archaeological cultures and/or historic population groups who are affiliated with the cultural resources in your Project. Select as many or as few cultural terms as you would like to describe the groups of people affiliated with your project’s research.

Within tDAR, cultural terms can be specific or general. tDAR will mark specific cultural terms with their generalized equivalents (e.g., “Early Woodland” is also marked as “Woodland”). Thus, if you select the specific cultural term “Early Woodland”, your record will also be found by a user who searches for the more general term “Woodland”.

Click on the ” + ” box next to a cultural term to open a list of more specific cultural terms.

What if the cultural term I want to use is not listed?

If a cultural term you’d like to use is not listed, please add it to the Other section at the bottom of the cultural terms section. Data curators review these terms regularly and update the list of cultural terms to reflect commonly entered values.

General Keywords

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General keywords allow you to add any additional terms that are not included in the other Project metadata. This may include specific types of investigations undertaken as part of your Project (e.g., “material sourcing”, “ceramic petrography”, “experimental archaeology”), specific site types (“rock gardens”, “ground stone production area”, “shrine”), etc.

Enter these keywords into the text provided. If you decide to enter additional keywords, enter succinct keyword terms that accurately describe your project. Also, enter succinct terms that researchers in your area use commonly.

Individual and Institutional Credit

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Individual and institutional credit fields allow you to record the roles that various people and institutions played in the completion of your Project.

The Person field captures the names, contact information, and roles of the different people that contributed to your Project. When you begin to type in any of the listed fields, tDAR will suggest users that are already in tDAR. Begin entering text into any of the following fields to obtain a drop-down list of registered tDAR users:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Institution
• Email

Select a user that matches the person you would like to enter. If you do not find the person in the drop-down list, enter that person and their current contact information (i.e., current email address and current institutional affiliation) as accurately as you can. If you are unsure of a person’s email address and their current institutional affiliation, please leave those record boxes blank. Finally, select the role that this person played in your Project.

The Institution field captures the names and roles of institutions that contributed to your project. Begin entering text in the Institution Name record box to obtain a drop-down list of institutions currently entered into tDAR. Select the institution that matches the one you would like to enter. If you do not find that institution in the drop-down list, enter the full name manually.

To add additional persons and/or institutions, click on the add another and the Person or Institution buttons.

If a person or an institution played more than one role in your Project, you will need to create a separate record for that person or institution to record that role.

Museum or Archive Collections

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The source collection field allows you to enter the museum or archive accession that contains the artifacts, original photographs, or original notes that are described in this tDAR record.

Notes

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The Notes field allows you to enter any additional information about your Project that is not captured in the project metadata fields. This field acts as a comments section, where you can enter a small narrative that might help other users better understand some important aspects of your project.

Select the type of note you wish to create from the Type drop-down box. Enter your note in the text field provided.

Access Rights

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At the Project level, access rights allow you (the project creator) to specify users who can edit this Project metadata and its records. Note that access rights allow you to control only who can edit this information (it does not control project visibility).

These access rights do not control the individual resources associated with the Project. You must manage the access rights of these individual information resources separately.

Enter the names of persons who have the right to edit the Project metadata. You can grant access rights only to registered tDAR users. When you begin to type in any of the text boxes provided, tDAR will provide suggestions to you from among its registered users. Select the tDAR user(s) that have the right to edit your Project metadata.

Done? Time to Save

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Once you’ve completed your Project entry, click the Save button at the bottom of the project page or on the toolbar at the top of the page to save your metadata.

You will then be taken to a screen that displays your project metadata as it appears to other users. This screen also displays any information resources that you have associated with this project. To edit the project metadata, click Edit on the view page toolbar.

Editing a Project

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After you have created and saved project metadata, you may continue to update and/or change that information by editing the Project.

To Edit Project Metadata

If you have just successfully submitted/saved Project metadata, you are currently viewing the project information display page. If you are performing another task in tDAR, you will need to navigate to this page.

1. Locate project toolbar below the main tDAR toolbar.
2. Click on the button labeled Edit.
3. Scroll through the project metadata entry sections to locate the fields you wish to update or change (for information on how to enter information into these metadata fields, see the section Creating a Project above).

Inheriting Project Metadata

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Now that you have successfully created a Project, you can now re-use that information to simplify metadata entry for resources you want to associate with your Project.

First, you will need to create a resource that is associated with your Project. In the Project toolbar, click the add new resource to Project.

Second, you can create a new resource by holding your cursor over the “Upload” button in the tDAR toolbar. Select the type of resource you want to create:

• Coding sheet
• Dataset
• Document
• Image
• Ontology

Once you have selected the type of resource you wish to add, you will be taken to the metadata entry screen for that resource. The metadata entry screens will present with your options to inherit metadata from the Project level to the resource you are creating.

How do I inherit Metadata from a Project?

1. In the General Information section for your resource, select the Project with which this resource is associated
2. In any keyword section on the resource metadata entry page, click the Inherit values from …. box to inherit metadata from your associated project

What if I change the values in my project?

If you change any metadata values at the Project level, tDAR will update those inherited values at the resource level.

For example, if you change Investigation Types for your Project, any resource that inherited Investigation Types from that Project will be automatically updated.

What if I only want to inherit “some” of the values in my Project?

tDAR allows you to inherit values section by section.

You can also inherit values by clicking on the inherit values… box, and then un-select the box to make additional changes that are particular to that resource. For example, you can inherit the spatial information from a project to a related resource. You can then un-select the inherit values… box to add or subtract location keyword terms particular to that individual resource.

You can also use the project as a template for your resource entry. You can simply enable inheritance to copy the values from the Project, and then turn inheritance off to make specific changes.