Malta Parish Archives Project

Malta Parish Archives Project

Parish Archives Hero

Background

Goal Facilitate access to parish records microfilmed by the Malta Study Center between 1980 and 1989

Timeframe In 2014, the Center and the Archdiocese of Malta signed an agreement to scan all of the parish microfilms and make them available in HMML Reading Room

People Project developed by HMML staff, including: Dr. Daniel K. Gullo, Joseph S. Micallef Director of the Malta Study Center; Cláudia Garradas, Malta Study Center Site Director; and John Meyerhofer, Director of Information Systems

Partners Malta Study Center and Malta Diocese Archives

Tools

  • Using the HMML Data Portal's exported data and the converter Konbert, two visualizations of the parish archives were created to provide easy access to HMML Reading Room
  • Data was first imported into Google Sheets; then, using Awesome Table it was rendered onto an HTML page using JavaScript
  • Data used for the timeline was created the same way, but required manual entry of the begin and end dates by taking the earliest volume and latest volume to create the overall range of the Malta parish archives
  • Awesome Table was used again to create the visualization.
  • With data prepared for Awesome Table, the file was exported from Google Sheets as a CSV file and imported into Datawrapper.de.

Method

Parish Archives Sheet
Parish Archive Catalog

The data used for the timeline was created the same way, but required manual entry of the begin and end dates by taking the earliest volume and latest volume to create the overall range of the Malta parish archives. Awesome Table again was used for creating the visualization.

Parish Archive Timeline

With the data prepared for Awesome Table, the file was exported from Google Sheets as a .CSV and imported into Datawrapper.de. This with Datawrapper some custom addition of html style codes was added within the application to stylize the format.

Malta Parish Map

Method

  • 1

    Cataloging

    Metadata was corrected and prepared by Gullo and Garradas after consultation with Father Nicholas Doublet of the Archdiocese of Malta Archives. The metadata was originally gathered by Monsignor Dun Gwann Azzopardi in the 1980s.

  • 2

    Import of metadata

    Metadata was imported into HMML Reading Room and checked for errors.

  • 3

    Curated search in HMML Data Portal

    Each archive was searched individually and, with the full metadata, exported in JSON. This created several datasets, which would later be combined into a single sheet.

  • 4

    Konbert conversion of JSON and upload into Google Sheets

    Konbert was used to convert the JSON into .CSV files, selecting only those fields from the schema needed for the project. These .CSV files were then uploaded into two Google Sheets, with the timeline Google Sheet having manual date data added.

  • 5

    Modify Google Sheets and Link to Awesome Table

    Using Awesome Table, two projects were created: one as a catalog, and the other as a timeline. Parameters were set within the application and copied to the final website as iframe JavaScript.

  • 6

    Data Imported into Datawrapper

    Using the data prepared for Awesome Tables, a file was downloaded from Google Sheets as .CSV and imported into Datawrapper.de. Data was organized and modified to fit the application and custom HTML was used to stylize the tooltips.