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MDOS MetaChat with SNAC

June 4, 2026 at 2pm ET

Speakers: Ugoma Smoke, Maristella Feustle, Scotty Beland, Jerry Simmons

Ugoma- Hi everyone, my name is Ugoma Smoke. I’m a Metadata Specialist with the University of Maryland, and I’m based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I have over 10 years working in libraries and archives. With an MLIS degree in Museum Collections, Archives, and Digital Preservation. I’ve been involved with the SNAC project since 2023, originally as an archival consultant, so I’ve been working with the community for about three years now.

I currently serve as chair of SNAC’s Editorial Standards and Policy Working Group, where we support a range of collaborative efforts, including the Enslaved Description Group and the Indigenous Description Group. I also serve on the MDOS Steering Committee.

Joining me today are a few colleagues from across SNAC. We have Scotty Beland, who chairs the Outreach Working Group and will share a bit later about SNACSchool. We’re also joined by Jerry Simmons, who brings a long and deep history with SNAC, continues as the lead trainer for SNACSchool, and has also stepped into the role of SNAC Director over the past year.

And finally, we have Maristella Feustle, who is also a speaker today.

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Presentation Roadmap

Introductions

Get to Know Us

Using SNAC for Research

What is SNAC?
What Can SNAC Do?
Live Demo

OpenRefine (ArchivesSpace)
Q&A

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SNACCooperative

Get to Know Us

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SNAC: Get to Know Us

SNAC Operations Team

Jerry Simmons (SNAC Director): University of Virginia

Sarah Wells (Director): IATH, University of Virginia

Diana Marsh (PI): IndigenizeSNAC Project, University of Maryland

Scotty Beland (Chair): Outreach Working Group, University of Maryland

Maristella Feustle (Chair): Technical Infrastructure Working Group, University of North Texas

Ugoma Smoke (Chair): Editorial Standards Working Group, University of Maryland

Bernetiae Reed (Chair): Enslaved Description Group, Researcher/Genealogist

Evie Giaconia (Chair): Indigenous Description Group, University of Maryland

Ugoma- SNAC operates as a cooperative community, where working groups and committees collaborate to improve how people, families, and organizations are described and connected across historical records. Together, members help make archival materials easier to find by linking collections across institutions.

This structure is often shown through the SNAC Cooperative Organizational Chart, which helps map out how the different parts of the community connect, including the SNAC Operations Team and the various working groups.

The Cooperative is supported by leadership, technical teams, editorial standards, outreach efforts, and training programs like SNACSchool, all working toward a shared goal: improving access to primary sources through collaboration, shared standards, and ongoing community contribution.

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SNAC: Resource Library

Ugoma- In this next section, I want to give you a quick sense of the kinds of support and guidance that exist within SNAC, especially if you’re coming from archival description, metadata work, or research data environments.

Editorial Policies

We start with editorial policies. The SNAC Editorial Standards Working Group has developed a set of 12 core policies that guide how we create, edit, and maintain records. These shape everyday editorial decisions, including how we handle citations, construct entity descriptions, make demographic statements, apply naming conventions, and ensure we’re working in an ethical and consistent way..

SNACSchool Training Materials

Moving into training, SNACSchool materials are designed to support editors at all levels. Whether you are just getting started or already working more deeply with entity editing, these resources are meant to walk you through the full workflow.

That includes introductory content like Archives 101 and SNAC History, as well as more advanced research and methods-based modules, including Module 6 and the IndigenizeSNAC version of the materials.

Core Editorial Workflows

You’ll also find very practical, hands-on guides for creating and editing records, merging entities, and managing relationships. There are quick reference sheets for working with persons, families, and corporate bodies, along with guidance on authority control, image handling, and troubleshooting common issues in the system.

The goal here is really to make editorial work in SNAC more transparent and easier to navigate, especially for people working in archival and metadata contexts.

Technical Resources

On the technical side, SNAC also provides a range of resources for both editors and developers. For those working more technically, there is an API with documentation, command references, examples, and a test environment. The codebase is also available through GitHub for those who want to explore or contribute at that level.

OpenRefine & ArchivesSpace Support

For data transformation and batch editing workflows, there are OpenRefine resources which Maristella will talk more about, including the SNAC OpenRefine extension, installation guides, documentation, and webinars. This is especially useful for metadata cleanup and reconciliation work.

There are also tools and documentation for integrating SNAC with ArchivesSpace, including a plugin, user guide, and demo materials, which can help bridge archival management systems with SNAC workflows.

Community Learning & Workshops

And finally, there are community-facing resources like workshops and tutorial guides, which are designed to support knowledge sharing and skill building across the SNAC community.

SNAC FAQ & Support

To wrap this section up, the SNAC FAQ is a helpful starting point for common questions about creating, editing, or improving records. It also points you toward where to get support. SNAC isn’t a traditional reference service, but there are clear pathways for guidance and collaboration when you need help working through a description or workflow.

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SNAC: Get Involved

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SNACCooperative

What is SNAC?

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SNAC stands for (Social Networks and Archival Context).

SNAC is an online tool that:

Aggregates descriptions of:

People
Organizations (Corporate Bodies)
Families

Who created or are subjects of archives, and links out to descriptions of their collections across the world.

What is SNAC?

Ugoma- What is SNAC?

For anyone unfamiliar with SNAC, is stands for Social Networks and Archival Context. I also included a QR code on this slide if you’d like to learn more about the platform and explore it further..

SNAC is an online tool that aggregates descriptions of people, organizations, and families connected to archival collections. It links users to collections held across many different institutions and helps connect records through social and historical relationships.

SNAC was created by Daniel Pitti out of the University of Virginia to address the challenge of dispersion across archival collections by connecting distributed historical records through a “social-document network.

SNAC has been around for nearly 15 years, and in that time, it has proven itself to be a reliable and enduring platform. It’s not just something experimental, it’s something that has been tested, used, and refined by archivists, librarians, and scholars across institutions large and small.

But what makes SNAC truly powerful is its versatility. For those of us working in GLAM professions, SNAC helps bridge collections across institutions, revealing relationships between people, places, and documents that might otherwise stay siloed. It's a discovery tool, a research aid, and a metadata backbone all in one.

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What is (behind) SNAC?

A schema knowns as EAC-CPF (Encoded Archival Context for Corporate body, Person and Family names) that created or are documented in historical resources (primary source documents), and their connections to one another in primary source documents.

If we’re asking what’s really running behind SNAC, a big part of the answer is its standards layer.

EAC-CPF or Encoded Archival Context for Corporate body, Person and Family Names, is the standard running in SNAC’s background. This standard enables description of organizations, persons and families who created or who are subjects in cultural heritage resources. SNAC also enables contextual relationship linking to the cultural heritage materials wherever they are described around the world, and it enables contextual relationship links between entities described in the system. We’ll see examples of these links soon.

EAC-CPF works hand-in-hand with EAD (Encoded Archival Context, Encoded Archival Description), a widely-used archival standard for marking up and sharing archives finding aids.

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What does SNAC do?

SNAC provides a way for researchers to locate and understand the physical proximity of cultural heritage materials around the globe.

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Anatomy of a SNAC Record:

The tabs:

Biography (the display default)
Resources (archival materials)
Relationships (other entities in SNAC)
Places (geo places in context)
Subjects (topical descriptors)
Occupations
Activities (specific to organizations)

Ugoma- I’ll be giving you a live demo of this in just a moment, but I want to quickly show you what you’ll be looking at once you run a search.

After you search in SNAC, you’ll click the blue link in the results list to open the full record. From there, the record is organized into a set of tabs that help break down different kinds of information.

The Biography tab is what you’ll see by default, and it gives you the main overview of the entity.

Then you have Resources, which connects you to related archival materials.

Relationships shows how the entity connects to other people, organizations, or families in SNAC.

Places gives you geographic context, while Subjects covers topical descriptors.

You’ll also see Occupations, and for organizations specifically, Activities, which help capture what the entity is doing or has done over time.

So instead of one long record, SNAC is really structured as a set of linked views that let you move through context in different ways.

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Preferred name

Variant name(s)

Biography/

History

Related resources

Relationships

Subjects

Occupations

Activities (corporate bodies)

An image via WikiCommons

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SNACCooperative

OpenRefine and SNAC-ifying your Data

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Why OpenRefine?

Saving time and repurposing existing data where possible
The same program lets you clean up / rearrange your data and upload it to SNAC (with the plugin)
Graphical interface - only work with code if you want to
Ability to handle numerous file and data types
Connections with other systems and vocabularies
Easy to reuse and share data and workflows

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Three kinds of data

Corporate bodies, persons, and families (CPF)
Associated collections
Links between CPFs

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You’ll Never OpenRefine Alone

Updated documentation in progress
SNAC Cooperative channel on YouTube - tutorials and demonstrations
SNAC Cooperative on GitHub
SNAC outreach and training events

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Benefits and Added value

You learn a lot about your collections, creators, and contributors through assembling this data
Systematic, consistent approach to bio/historical notes
Having SNAC in your workflow adds a new dimension to processing
The distinguishing nature of connections within a collection, and within a constellation
Efficiency - save the time of your users, colleagues, and sometimes your future self!

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Want to Connect with Us?

We’ll be at SAA NOLA!

July 29: Offering SNACSchool Create and Edit @ Tulane University
July 30 and 31: We will have an info table in the registration hall

SNACSchool

Research and Reference

July 8 & September 23 (both virtual)

Create and Edit

July 29 (in person), August 26 & October 14 (both virtual)

Tech Workshop

December 14 (virtual)

Merge-a-thon

November 12 (details to come)

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Want to Connect with Us?

Keep up with the Cooperative

portal.snaccooperative.org

Public SNACSchool offerings and other events

News and announcements about SNAC, the IndigenizeSNAC project, and calls for collaboration

Questions/Comments?

Email: snac.cooperative@gmail.com

Learn more about the IndigenizeSNAC Project

snac.ischool.umd.edu

Email: indigenizesnac@umd.edu

Follow us on Social Media

https://linktr.ee/snac.cooperative