Tutorial 3

Tutorial 3

Create a new Item

You can use the Create a new Item form to add a new Item to the database. In the DAAP, Item is used to represent any published work, any person (or group of people), any institution, or any place in the world.

We also use Item to represent common objects, processes and ideas: "paper", "offset printing", "softcover binding” in the database.

An Item page for a published work may become richly detailed, with lots of information attached to it. While an Item page for a process, such as "softcover binding", may be simple, comprising only a basic definition.

Step 1

Before attempting to add a new Item to the database, you must make sure that the Item you want to add is not already included. You can help us to avoid duplication by searching for any Item you wish to add first. Use the search bar in the upper right corner of the Main Page to search the DAAP.

You must be logged in to Create a new item. If not, an error message will be shown:

Login to your account via this link, or find the Log in button in the upper right corner of the Main Page.

Step 2

Make sure the item you want to add is not already in the database before you attempt to add it. You can do this by searching for it using the search bar in the top right corner of the Main Page containing the text “Search DAAP”.

Step 3

Then, start adding the details into the form on the Create a new Item page.

Language: Here you choose the language you will use to describe the item. If the original language of the work is different from English, there will be opportunity at a later stage (i.e. statement editing) to indicate that. For search purposes all item labels and descriptions have to be in English (NB: NOT British English, as that would create discrepancies in the database). Please enter “en” for English in this field, if it’s not your default language already.

Label: The Label is like a title – how this "thing" is referred to in the database. If your item is a publication or artwork its title would be the Label. If your item is a person this would be the person’s name, and so on.

Description: Your description should be a very short statement (max 250 characters) that distinguishes one thing in the database from another. If two items in the database would have the same label, for instance two artworks both called "untitled", the descriptive text would help the user quickly distinguish between the two.

Once the item is created, the description will appear at the top of the item page (see Step4).

Aliases, pipe-separated: Aliases are alternative ways of spelling or calling the item. For example, aliases for the city "New York" would be "NYC", or "New York City", etc. There is no limit to the number of aliases that can be added, they just need to be separated by the pipe symbol | .

Here we have entered the details for the publication Surviving art school : an artist of colour tool kit.

Step 4

Press the “Create” button to finalise this step. In the next tutorials we’ll show you how we added this item to the DAAP database and you can follow along the steps with the item you want to add.