Using the Metadata
Individual records in the collection provide detailed information about each project participant and interview. Unique identifying information - name, date and place of birth, date of interview and interviewer - are at the top of each record. Most participants provided descriptions of their affiliations with the test site. Records also contain metadata that describes the contents of the interview using uniform term lists for tests and experiments, agencies, individuals, locations and subjects.Metadata was created using qualified Dublin Core and controlled vocabulary was selected from several sources such as the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, Library of Congress Name Authority, the Getty Thesaurus for Geographic Names, and U.S. Nuclear Tests. These fields also function as a collection-wide index to identify interview records containing the same descriptive terms; click on terms in the metadata to retrieve other transcripts in which the same theme is discussed.
UNLV digitization librarian Cory Lampert explains development of the project’s metadata to visiting scholar Kayoko Yoshida of the Japan Oral History Association, Summer 2007.
Project participants often used abbreviations and acronyms when speaking about the various organizations related to the Nevada Test Site. Institutions were also reorganized and/or renamed over time. Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories (LANL, LLNL, SNL) went through several name changes. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was the predecessor to the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) and the present-day Department of Energy (DOE). Primary Cold War test site contractors were Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company (REECo); Edgerton, Germashausen and Grier (EG&G); Holmes and Narver. The Department of Defense (DoD) nuclear weapons programs began as the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP), later became the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) and finally the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
