Here is a slightly revised copy of the Manual of how to submit to the Faculty Digital Archive.
One conceptual issue which would be good to think about that a number of you raised in class was the ways in which an object is defined by the archive. As you'll see the archive creates records which unite a digital object (an image or sound file) and contextual information of different kinds. This then becomes 'the object' in the database. I think it's useful to think of a photograph as a philosophical model for the presence of the 'object' in the record: a digital scan of a paper photograph could be thought of as many different kinds of object: there is the object photographed (e.g. a man with a dumpster), the paper photograph as object, the digital file as object and finally the record uniting the digital file with the catalogue information as an object. Think this through and make sure your descriptions (both the abstract summary and the more detailed 'curatorial notes' description address the question of 'what' it is that you are describing!
Remember - the abstract (description) is for a short summary of the object you have uploaded. Longer, more detailed information, and anything you think is important that doesn't fit in other fields should be put into the Description field - which we are using more like curatorial notes.
Also for those of you who are interested: here is the list of metadata (the fields to be filled in) that the makers of DSPACE have created, with definitions of the fields (you'll see that there are many ways to interpret these fields according to your needs):
http://www.dspace.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=141