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Welcome to this introduction to the Tufts University, Digital Collections and Archives Submission Agreement Builder Tool.
This three part demonstration will provide you with a behind the scenes look at setting up Transfer Agreement Forms
for various records producers, completing the form from the producers point of view, and finalizing the form and transfer.
However, before we begin with Part 1: Setting up a Transfer Agreement Form Template, I would like to draw your attention
to the Preservation Rules that DCA has available for review. These rules provide basic information to producers
regarding what will be done to preserve their records, from paper, 3-dimensional objects, or Word Perfect files from twenty years ago.
Unlike the bulk of the submission agreement tool, these rules are not behind password protection,
and are accessible to anyone who is interested in reviewing them.
Let us begin.
To access the Submission Agreement Builder Tool for the creation and management of Transfer Agreement Forms,
it is necessary to log in.This process allows us to authenticate users and provide appropriate restrictions & levels of confidentiality for access.
to our accession information. It also makes sure that only authorized personnel complete transfers for an office or donor.
Once we are logged in, the first step is to select the administrative tools option from the left hand navigation panel.
First, we select the Manage Offices and Units option to ensure that the office or donor is listed.
We have also created a few generic listings for alumni, non-Tufts related donors, and for materials of unknown provanence.
If an office does not appear on the list, adding a new one is as simple as typing in the information.
And selecting the “Update office” button.
The addition is confirmed by the dialog box changing to a green color.
Next, return to the administrative tools menu
We will now associate authorized users with the office we have created.
If the person submitting records does not already have an entry, select the text to add a new user.
Then just fill in the form with the local username and the first name and last name.
And select the associated office from the list in the “Add a new Office box”
Finally, select the “Add user” button.
Then return to the Administrative tools menu.
Now that we have set up our office and our users, it is time to create a template for our Transfer Agreement Form.
From this menu, we can create new templates, or we can edit templates we have made previously.
For this demonstration, we will focus on the creation of a new template.
The first series of fields we encounter allows us to describe the record creator.
This is the person or office responsible for the creation of the records being transferred.
We can also enter a unique identifier for this creator, as well as a contact email address, if applicable.
DCA uses the ID field to associate record creators with record context records, or RCRs,
that are the basis of our Encoded Archival Context, or EAC, records.
While the name field is required, the ID and email fields are optional.
Next, we enter information about the record producer. This is the person responsible for the transfer of the records.
The producer is often different from the record creator. For example, the university president may be responsible for the
creation of the records, but it is the administrative assistant who is responsible for the transfer of the records,
and thus is the producer. For our templates, the producer corresponds to the users associated with an office or unit.
The next field ties the information in the template to the office we have added previously.
The archive endorsement field can be used as a way of encoding the date on which the archives and the records producer have agreed
upon the terms of the transfer. This could be used locally to endorse the date of the template.
The next series of fields allow us to describe what is being transferred and what terms apply to these records.
Examples of record types would be correspondence, meeting agendas and minutes, or office files.
The copyright field is repeatable in case portions of the records fall under different copyright ownership
and the access field is similarly repeatable in case some records has different restriction levels.
At the DCA we use the access field to correspond to our three levels of restriction: Open, Restricted for 20 years,
or Restricted for 75 years.
The next field allows us to connect the Transfer Agreement Form to an electronic dropbox for the transfer of digital files.
This is a key feature of the tool, in that it allows the producer to move directly from providing documentation about the transfer
to actually transferring the files.
The next section allows for greater description of the both the process and the records.
The activation date provides information on when the form officially goes into use while the expiration date allows for end date
to the terms of the agreement.
The retention alert date is available in case you are working with non-permanent records that may have a destruction date.
Finally, the warrant to collect field allows us to document the external authorizing statement that allows us to collect these materials.
This is a repeatable field in case multiple statutes or statements need to be referenced.
Next, we have built in the capacity to connect this transfer to other documentation.
In the case of the DCA, each transfer receives a records management job number.
We can also tie the transfer to any records surveys that might provide additional context for the materials transferred.
The recordkeeping systems field is not currently in use at the DCA,
but we built it for future accessions that we may take out of structured datasystems.
The remaining fields can be used to hard code information about all future accessions
or they can be left blank and filled in for each individual transfer.
The general records description is a free text field.
The format types is a repeatable field that can be selected in advance although in practice it is often easier to leave this blank
and let the producer fill in exactly the types of materials they are transferring.
The user interface provides a dropdown menu of options for this field.
The arrangement and naming schemes field has a dropbox list in the user interface and can be left blank at this level
unless you are sure that all future accessions will be arranged in a particular manner.
All records accessioned by the DCA are permanent, so we hardcode this information in to all templates
and we use DACS as our descriptive standard. Finally, the respect de fonds fields ties the accession to a specific collection.
With all of this information in place, we can now select the “Create this Transfer Template” button
and the transfer agreement form is in place for use by a producer submitting materials.
This completes the first part of our demonstration.
For information on completing a Transfer Agreement Form from the point of view of the records creator or producer,
proceed to the next video.