Tropy for Research Photo Management: Create Customized Templates

Metadata templates are forms that allow you to record information about your items in ways that are useful to you. You can select from the templates provided in Tropy, or you can create your own.

The Tropy built-in templates are locked and cannot be edited. They include the following three templates. We will focus on Item Templates in this part.

• Item templates
  • Tropy Generic 
    • Default template intended to provide a basic framework that applies to many kinds of research materials; sufficient for many users.
    • Contains 10 fields. 
  • Tropy Correspondence
    • Intended for correspondence (e.g. letters, emails), a common source type in archival research.
    • Contains 12 fields: 10 from Topy Generic and the additional Recipient and Location. 
  • Dublin Core
    • Contains 15 fields from the Dublin Core™ Metadata Element Set.
• Tropy Photo
  It includes fields specific to individual photos from the camera, such as file name, image size in pixels, and file size. 
• Tropy Selection

Watch the YouTube video Metadata Templates in Tropy to understand how metadata templates are designed to work in Tropy. 

If the default templates don’t include the metadata fields you need, Tropy allows you to customize templates to better suit your materials. Caution from Tropy documentation: "Tropy currently only allows fields that have URIs in an existing metadata schema. This means that if you have no familiarity with metadata schemas, you are much better off working with an existing template rather than trying to create your own from scratch."

Before creating a custom template, we highly recommend browsing the existing templates. Find one that closely matches your needs, then duplicate and customize it to suit your project.

For example, in this guide, we’ll use the Tropy Correspondence template as a starting point for adaptation. We will create a customized template, "John Biggers Papers at Emory University," to better describe our materials. We begin with "Tropy Correspondence" because most of the materials are letters.

• Go to Tropy -> Preferences -> Templates
• Select Tropy Correspondence, duplicate it. 
• Change Name, URI, Type, Creator, Description 
  • Name: "John Biggers Papers at Emory University". 
  • URI: https://tropy.org/v1/templates/id#wSTvmk1x
    Name and URI must be unique. Tropy will automatically update the URI. You can use this auto-generated URI unless you prefer to create your own.
  • Type: Item Template.
    Keep it the same as the original template type. 
  • Creator: Fondren Library.
    This refers to the individual or institution that created the template.
  • Description: Template for John Biggers Papers at Emory University.
    A brief description of your template. 
• Click the Create button to create this new metadata template. 

There are three basic ways to customize your newly created template. We will continue the example from the above section. 

1. Keep the field, but change the field label
   • The Property Name is what will appear in the template. The Property is commonly referred to as the field. We’ll use "field" throughout this guide. If you'd like it to display something different, you can enter your preferred text in the Label input text box. For instance, for the Creator field, we will change the label to Author/Sender. This could be more intuitive when working with letters. Therefore, Author/Sender will display in the template instead of Creator. 
   • You can add a hint in the Hint field, such as "Author/Sender of the letter," to remind people what to enter in this field. Below is a screenshot of the Creator field after customization. Hints can be helpful if your project has collaborators, or you know you will return to the project much later. 
     
   • Below is what appears in the template John Biggers Papers at Emory University.ttp for the Creator field {"datatype":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string","hint":"Author/sender of the letter","isConstant":false,"isRequired":false,"label":"Author/Sender","property":"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator","value":null},
2. Use a default value in a field
   • For the Source field, we will create a default value to apply to all items using this template: "Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, Emory Libraries, Emory University." 
     Because we are using this template to describe items from a single collection, all images will have the same archive name. We enter the archive name as a default value, so that we don't have to enter the information for each individual item. 
   • Check the Is read-only box to lock the field and prevent the information from being edited. Below is a screenshot of the Source field after customization.
     
   • Below is what appears in the template John Biggers Papers at Emory University.ttp for the Source field
     {"datatype":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string","hint":"Name of the holding archive","isConstant":true,"isRequired":false,"label":"Archive","property":"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/source","value":"Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, Emory Libraries, Emory University"},
3. Add/remove fields
   • Click the plus sign to add a new field. (You can click the minus sign to delete an existing field.)
   • Choose the field name
     Enter the metadata term in the Property field to search, and select the desired one from the search results.  You are limited by the terms of the loaded vocabularies.  Each field in a Tropy metadata template must be linked to a term from an existing metadata standard. Refer to the box at the bottom of this page to see how to load a new vocabulary. We will search for "Coverage" and select "Coverage dcterms:coverage" as the new field's name. (Note: "dcterms:coverage" means the term is from the DCMI Metadata Terms.) You have to have some familiarity with metadata schemas to come up with proper search terms. Here we use "Coverage" for "Job Application University". 
     
   • Property: Coverage dcterms:coverage, the name of the new field, we use it to specify the university where Biggers is applying for a job.
     • Again, you can only search from the existing vocabularies and select one term from the search results.  The existing vocabularies are vocabularies shipped with Tropy. 
     • Each field in a metadata template must be linked to a term from a recognized standard. Currently, each field can only be used once per template. Because Coverage dc:coverage has been used. You have to use a different one.  It's best to use an existing metadata standard when recording metadata, as it ensures consistency within your project and aligns with broader scholarly practices.
   • Label: Job Application University
     This is what appears in the customized template. We want to read "Job Application University" instead of "Coverage" for the Coverage field in the template. 
   • Datatype: xsd:string
     • Tropy uses the datatype indicated by template fields as a hint for how to interpret values. There are three datatypes in Tropy. They are xsd:integer, tropy:date, and xsd:string as a text value. Because this is a text field, we will choose xsd:string. 
     • To understand more about datatypes, go to Understanding Vocabularies at the Tropy forum. 
   • Is mandatory field: no
     You can decide whether this is a mandatory field or not. 
   • Hint: The university where Biggers is applying for a job
   • Default Value: none
   • Is read-only: no
     You can decide whether this is a read-only field or not. Below is a screenshot of the Coverage field after customization.
     
   • Below is what appears in the template John Biggers Papers at Emory University.ttp for the Coverage field
     {"datatype":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string","hint":"The university where Biggers is applying for a job","isConstant":false,"isRequired":false,"label":"Job Application University","property":"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/coverage","value":null},

• Select the template to share in Tropy Preferences -> Templates, then export it as .ttp file. We have exported John Biggers Papers at Emory University template as a John Biggers Papers at Emory University.ttp.  
• Share the .ttp file via email/cloud storage/etc.
• To use a template shared with you, download the .ttp file, then open Tropy -> Settings -> Templates -> Import (down arrow), then follow the onscreen prompts. You can then delete the .ttp file.

Technical Note: Based on this discussion about Testing portable project files on the Tropy forum, Tropy stores your vocabularies and templates in an ontology.db file in your user data folder (Help -> Show User-Data Folder). This folder contains myriad settings for your local Tropy installation (such as recently opened projects, the position of the window on your screen, the size of various widgets, your preferences, template files, etc.) - thus, you can delete the .ttp from your Downloads folder after importing.

• Tropy is shipped with several commonly used vocabularies. They include Dublin Core metadata (both elements and terms), RDF vocabularies, Europeana Data Model, and related vocabularies.
• To add a vocabulary to Tropy, click the + in the bottom left corner. The vocabularies must be in .ttl or .n3 file format to import. Once you have imported a new vocabulary, the vocabulary's name will appear in the list of vocabularies, and the terms will be available in the template editor.
• If you don't see the suitable vocabulary you want to use, consult a metadata specialist or a metadata expert in your subject area to install the vocabulary. 
  • For instance, the Visual Resources Center at the University of Chicago lists four metadata schemas (i.e., VRA Core 4.0, Categories for the Description of Works of Art, Archaeo Core, Costume Core) and has created two customized Tropy templates for managing images and data for art history research projects. 
  • You can search from a large list of vocabularies from Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV). To download a vocabulary's .n3 file, select the vocabulary, scroll down to the version timeline, and click on the corresponding version to download.