Set ‘Author’ to your name to show that you are working on this page, and preview the page so you can compare its metadata with PastPerfect and old American Centuries.

1. In the right column of the editing screen, change the Author to your name (pick from the dropdown). (If the right-hand column is not displayed, display it by clicking on the ‘gear’ icon in the top right corner, next to the ‘Publish’ button.)
2. Click on ‘Save draft’ in the top right.
3. Right click on ‘View Preview’ in the bottom left corner of your screen. A popup will open; choose ‘Open in a new tab’. This will display the page in a new browser tab as it appears to site visitors. Go to that tab.
4. Under the heading ‘Curatorial Info’ it will display the item’s metadata from PastPerfect, and provide a link to the PastPerfect page. You can also view the old American Centuries page for the item by following the link at the bottom of the ‘Details’ section. Please refer to the existing info about each item that can be found in the PastPerfect and old Centuries websites

Go back to your original tab (displaying the WordPress editing screen) to edit the item’s American Centuries metadata.

All of the relevant metadata fields are in the large center column, below the item title and label text.

5. All of the taxonomy fields are dropdowns: click on the box and wait a few seconds for the list of taxonomy terms to drop down. You can also start typing in the box and the list of terms will try to match your typing. A collection item may be assigned multiple values for any of these taxonomies if this is appropriate. Not all items need to have values for all taxonomies. For instance, our sample item (above) doesn’t need an Event assigned to it.
6. The ‘Creation date’ field accepts numbers and hyphens. Enter the date as YYYY-MM-DD, or YYYY-MM, or YYYY, depending on what you know. This format is important—it makes the date sorting work properly.
   If the PastPerfect record has a date, the year (only) will be pre-entered into your American Centuries date fields. (You can see the PastPerfect date information when you ‘Preview’ the front end view above). If the PastPerfect date is an exact date, fill in the month and day here in addition to the year.
7. If the PastPerfect date includes ‘circa’ or ‘c.’ or another notation, check the corresponding check box under ‘Date circa’. It is important that none of this ‘circa’ information is typed in the ‘Creation date’ field—only numbers and hyphens.
8. If the PastPerfect metadata has a date range (usually labeled ‘Years’ in the ‘Curatorial info’ on the American Centuries front end), enter the earliest year in the ‘Earliest creation year’ field, and the latest year in the ‘Latest creation year’ field. (If the PastPerfect date is a single specific year, that year will be pre-entered in both of these fields, too.)

If a date field contains ‘1500’, this is just a convention—it represents ‘no date’ and is equivalent to leaving the field blank. All collection items need to have dates, even if it’s a wide date range.

When you are finished entering metadata, go to the right-hand column to track your work.

9. Leave any notes for the reviewer in the ‘Editors’ notes’ box. In particular, if you notice errors in the title or label, note them here.
10. Check the ‘Pending review’ box. This will change the page’s status to ‘Pending’ so that a reviewer can tell that this page’s metadata is ready for review.
11. Save your work by clicking on ‘Save as pending’ in the top right.
12. A black box will appear in the lower left corner of your screen saying, “Draft saved. View Preview.” Click on the “View Preview” link to see the results of your work. (You can return to the editing screen by using your browser’s ‘Back’ button.)

To return to the ‘All Pages’ list to edit another collection item, click on the black box in the top left corner with the WordPress logo. (If you hover your mouse over it, a tooltip will say, “View Pages”.)