Tracing the lineage of Story Maps assets

[HimanshuMistry]

It would be great to find/trace source of the data/asset/owner on a given StoryMap (especially in academic settings). Example: A faculty has been curating a collaborative StoryMap from various students or student groups over three semesters. If some of those students have graduated and links are broken, some way of tracing the lineage or the root of the data/asset/creator would be great for various reasons - transferring data, relinking or copying an asset, getting permission for publishing an asset or citing/giving correct attribution.

[OwenGeo]

@HimanshuMistry - Thank you for this feedback. Could you provide some more detail about this situation? I'm not sure what information you are looking for. What types links can be broken and what information would you be looking to be recorded automatically?

There are already multiple places in a story where authors can record information like this such as the attribution field for media and the credits section at the end of the story. If you are already aware of these, please share some details about why or how these do not meet your need.

[HimanshuMistry]

@OwenGeo 

Sure. (this is not about credit section).

I will try further to explain the same example:  Let's say I am the faculty member teaching 'food studies' class every semester. Since last three years, let's say I have taught this class for 6 times with about 20 students in each class. I ask Story Maps as a final project from each student, which then  I stitch it into a larger collection of Story Maps - now it has grown to 120 stories with various web maps, images, videos,  and such assets, and is published publicly. Students from the first two years have graduated i.e. they do not have access to their Story Maps as they are not currently enrolled (SSO determination). So let's walk through a few hypothetical scenarios:

1. Another researcher "R" sees a specific story in that collection or a specific asset they want to either cite or copy and reaches out to me. It is a mammoth task for me to go and find in a story what those assets are and find out who created it so I can ask that graduated student about prospective researcher "R". 

2. Same case and I left the university, now the admin needs to identify the owner of the asset to ask for permission or citation, which is a hassle. 

3. A graduated student's story has been incorporated, cited, or embedded by various researchers. This student comes back after 3 years and wants his assets/data moved to his personal account. If the data is copied thats great but if the student does not want to share this data. Now how do one find out where all this has been cited? What links will be broken? 

If there is some way to trace the lineage of all assets, it will become very easy to locate, cite, copy, transfer or move that asset. Hope this clarifies my idea.

[tt5vw1]

Additional thoughts that could facilitate this idea:

• For each StoryMap item description, there is a section that lists all the linked assets within (i.e. layers within a web map), and also a section that lists the places (within the AGOL ecosystem) where this particular StoryMap has been linked