Metadata Beyond the Library: Consultation and Collaboration with Faculty, Staff and Students

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Jason Kovari

Saturday, June 28, 2014 – 4:30-5:30pm
Las Vegas Convention Center, N253

Moving Beyond the “Back Room”: The Expanded Role for Metadata and Catalog Librarians On Campus
Lisa McFall, Metadata and Catalog Librarian, Hamilton College

Catalog and metadata librarians have traditionally been housed in a back room of the library, leaving many people to ponder what exactly the “technical services department” does. The variety of skills needed to bring digital humanities projects to fruition presents the perfect opportunity for catalog and metadata librarians to show exactly what they do and how faculty and students can benefit from their skills.

Hamilton College formed the Digital Humanities Initiative in 2010 after receiving a three-year Mellon Grant. The “collection development team” that was formed as a part of this initiative included members of both the library and the information technology department and was conceived to build collaborations around supporting faculty research and the resulting data collections. One of the primary responsibilities that developed was the metadata and catalog librarian’s role in assisting faculty in thinking about how they envisioned interacting with their information in the digital archive and how that would be reflected in the associated metadata. As each faculty member worked closely with student fellows on their projects, metadata-specific training sessions for students were incorporated into a two-week training program on digital humanities and into the Introduction to Digital Humanities class.

This presentation will provide examples and highlight materials and methods that can be used by metadata and catalog librarians to share their metadata expertise with a broader campus community.

Consultative Metadata Services at Cornell University Library
Jason Kovari, Head of Metadata Services and Web Archivist, Cornell University

Abstract: The complexity of digital research projects and growing interest in making content accessible online has brought an increasing number of consultation requests and collaborative projects to Cornell University Library’s (CUL) Metadata Services unit (http://lts.library.cornell.edu/metadata). Though faculty and graduate student attention to metadata and the library’s role as a collaborator has been on-the-rise, this is not a new phenomenon; since its founding, non-MARC metadata services at CUL have been chiefly consultative, facilitated by embedding metadata librarians within outward-facing virtual service units, such as DCAPS (http://dcaps.library.cornell.edu/) and RDMSG (http://data.research.cornell.edu/).

During the presentation, I will discuss staffing, services and governance structures as well as outreach methods to encourage non-library consultations and collaborations. I will strongly reference a number of projects where CUL’s Metadata Services provided consultative services and collaborative development with non-library groups, likely including “Freedom on the Move”, an in-development digital humanities project concerning runaway slave advertisements; consultation with researchers in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences working to make accessible images and research logs concerning early 20th century Alaskan glacial activity; and more.

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ALCTS Metadata IG ALA Annual 2014 Meeting Program

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Jason Kovari

Sunday, June 29, 2014 – 8:30 am to 10:00 am
Las Vegas Convention Center, room N263

We will feature two presentations followed by a business meeting during which new officers will be elected.

Metadata Migration to Islandora: Is There An Easy Way?
Sai Deng, Metadata Librarian and Associate Librarian, University of Central Florida Libraries

Presentation abstract:

This presentation will introduce UCF’s digital collection migration from DigiTool to Islandora, the new content management system for the state universities in Florida. It discusses the issues in DublinCore (DC) to MODS transformation, explores the possible options, the approach adopted and the tool used for MODS metadata editing.

As part of the state-wide Islandora implementation, UCF has been migrating its collections in DigiTool to MODS records for Islandora to ingest. In migrating from a less granular metadata schema to a more granular one, many issues are involved such as data ambiguity, overly generic data representation, the markup inadequacy in describing sub-elements and element relationships, and a less intricate data structure. Two options were explored: a. revamp the Library of Congress’s DC-MODS stylesheet to produce more desirable MODS metadata, b. edit the MODS records generated from a more generic stylesheet conversion. Due to the fact that the consensus needs to be reached among the state universities for any change, only some adjustments such as adding local subjects and online thesauri were made to the LC stylesheet state-wide, and the major work of MODS metadata editing fell on the individual university libraries. At UCF Libraries, Notepad++ was used to edit the MODS records, such as the first set of 847 records in the Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements (PRISM) collection. In batch editing the MODS metadata and dealing with the DC-MODS transformation problems, data patterns in author year, author role terms, publication places, corporate and conference names were identified, data normalization and cleaning was executed, and several types of mark up and editing were performed: authors were marked up to distinguish author year and role from name; personal, corporate and conference names were differentiated; the main entry and added entries were distinguished; subtitle was separated from the main title; publication place was distinguished from publisher; topical, temporal, geographic, genre subdivisions were marked up for subjects; and series name and other common fields were added for the collection.

This presentation addresses the common issues in DC-MODS metadata mapping and transformation, discusses possible solutions of customizing the XSLT stylesheet and editing the MODS XML records, and the balance that needs to be sought in pre- and post-transformation. It also raises some interesting questions in machine vs. human labor and utilizing the computer’s analytical power. It invites audience to participate in a wider discussion.

Discovering Isaac Leeser: Improving access to text collections with TEI markup
Nicole Arbuckle, Vice President, Metadata Services, Backstage Library Works
David McKnight, Director, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania

Presentation abstract:

In 2013, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries completed its Gershwind-Bennett Isaac Leeser Digital Repository project, which features access to the personal papers and publications of Isaac Leeser, one of the foremost American Jewish figures of the 19th century.

Penn Libraries established a template for collecting metadata from Leeser’s correspondence, teamed up with Backstage Library Works to complete TEI markup, and developed an online digital repository. The metadata files and the repository structure provide users with sophisticated tools for full-text search and discovery, with filters for details such as document type, date range, language, author and addressee.

In the presentation, David McKnight, Director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Penn, will discuss the background of the collection and the library’s preparation of transcriptions and descriptive metadata for the project. Nicole Arbuckle, Vice President of Metadata Services for Backstage Library Works, will discuss the use of that metadata in the TEI markup process.

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Midwinter 2014: Large-Scale Metadata Aggregation Strategies and Workflows

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Jason Kovari

ALCTS Metadata Interest Group at ALA Midwinter 2014
Date: Sunday, January 26, 2014
Time: 8:30am to 10am
Location: Pennsylvania Convention Center, 102A

Add this meeting to your schedule: http://alamw14.ala.org/node/12762

We have two exciting programs that will discuss strategies and workflows for and challenges associated with large-scale metadata aggregation.

“The Other Side of Linked Data: Managing Metadata Aggregation,” presented by Diane Hillman.

Most of the current activity in the library LOD world has been on publishing library data out of current silos. But part of the point of linked data for libraries is that it opens up data built by others for use within libraries, and has the potential for greater integration of library data within the larger data world. The sticking point for most librarians is that data building and distribution outside the familiar world of MARC seems like a black box, the key held by others.  Traditionally, libraries have relied on specialized system vendors to build the functionality they needed to manage their data. But the discussions I’ve heard too often result in librarians wanting vendors to tell them what they’re planning, and vendors asking librarians what they need and want. In the context of this stalemate, it behooves both library system vendors and librarians to explore the issues around management of more fine-grained metadata so that an informed dialogue around requirements can begin. As part of this dialogue, there are a number of questions about goals that could be addressed:

* Will expression in MARC (and/or RDA and/or BibFrame) be part of the requirements?
* How does non-library data fit in (dbpedia, nytimes, amazon, onix)?
* How does schema.org and RDFa fit into the picture?
* Will some data be indexed and not displayed, and vice-versa?
* Who will decide what pieces of available data will be valued and what pieces required?
* Will there need to be an aggregation workflow in addition to a cataloging workflow, or are they best integrated?

To assist in discussion about what happens after those basic decisions, Diane will discuss a framework for managing aggregation of atomic level (fine grained) metadata. Drawing on experience aggregating metadata for the National Science Digital Library, she will describe specific tasks, workflow, data improvement strategies and other issues.

 

“Harvesting and Normalization at the Digital Public Library of America: Lessons from a Diverse Aggregation,” presented by Kristy Berry Dixon (Digital Library of Georgia), Sandra McIntyre (Mountain West Digital Library) and Amy Rudersdorf (Digital Public Library of America).

The Digital Public Library of America currently works with more than 21 digital collections hubs to crosswalk, enrich, and normalize their metadata to align with the DPLA Metadata Application Profile (dp.la/info/map). Metadata is shared in a variety of formats, standards, and readiness and is ingested and made available through the DPLA JSON-LD API (dp.la/info/developers/codex/). In developing the DPLA data model, DPLA staff worked closely with metadata designers from the Europeana Digital Library and from leading U.S. institutions, and has refined the model since launch in April 2013 in response to the experience of working with diverse hubs.

This talk will introduce and outline the challenges of aggregating disparate metadata flavors from the perspective of both DPLA staff and representative hubs. We will review next steps and emerging frontiers as well, including improvements to normalization at the hub level and wider adoption of controlled vocabularies and formats for geospatial metadata and usage rights statements. Finally, we will share plans for implementing Linked Data throughout the aggregated national network and discuss how that will expand opportunities for DPLA and its partners.

We hope to see you in Philadelphia!

On behalf of the Metadata IG,
Ivey Glendon, Program Co-Chair
Santi Thompson, Program Co-Chair

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CFP: Metadata Beyond the Library: Consultation and Collaboration with Faculty, Staff and Students (2014 Annual – LV, NV)

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Jason Kovari

The ALCTS Metadata Interest Group seeks proposals for presentations for the program “Metadata Beyond the Library: Consultation and Collaboration with Faculty, Staff and Students” at the ALA Annual Meeting 2014 in Las Vegas, NV. This program is scheduled on Saturday, June 28, 2014 from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Presentations are 30 minutes in total — 20 minutes for the presentation, 10 minutes for questions.

This program will discuss ways in which metadata experts can share expertise beyond traditional library settings.

Presenters may discuss:

  • Examples of successful metadata consulting initiatives with their constituent communities
  • Examples of training sessions, workshops, boot camps to share metadata expertise
  • Other venues for deploying metadata expertise outside the library

All presentations at ALA Annual Las Vegas 2014 will be recorded. Speaker agreements will be forwarded to all speakers and will require consent for video recording.

The deadline for proposals is December 9, 2013.  Proposals may be submitted through this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1H6kBzb8Vacrp5grsANPzjDHaKkZaDEacXir7NH0Lcao/viewform

If you have any difficulties with this form, please feel free to submit your proposals directly by email to sathompson3@uh.edu

Thank you!

ALCTS Metadata Interest Group Programming Chairs:
Ivey Glendon, University of Virginia
Santi Thompson, University of Houston

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CFP: Metadata and Indicators for Open Access (2014 Annual – LV, NV)

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Jason Kovari

The ALCTS Metadata Interest Group seeks proposals for presentations for the program “Metadata and Indicators for Open Access” at the ALA Annual Meeting 2014 in Las Vegas, NV. This program is scheduled on Saturday, June 28, 2014 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Presentations are 30 minutes in total — 20 minutes for the presentation, 10 minutes for questions.

This program addresses metadata needs of open access (OA) materials and the use of visual indicators to help users determine their access rights.

Presenters may discuss:

  • use of existing or new vocabularies, schema, and other projects, such as Crossmark, JISC/UKOLN’s Vocabularies for OA, and ONIX-PL in library systems
  • use of OA vocabularies and schema for faculty consultation and education related to scholarly communication, author’s rights, and open access
  • studies of OA indicator use and successes/failures

All presentations at ALA Annual Las Vegas 2014 will be recorded. Speaker agreements will be forwarded to all speakers and will require consent for video recording.

The deadline for proposals is December 9, 2013.  Proposals may be submitted through this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1erAnh66Y-GyEkrZO4xCY8lEuo0iOfo1l4f9eZlPukHI/viewform

If you have any difficulties with this form, please feel free to submit your proposals directly by email to sathompson3@uh.edu<mailto:sathompson3@uh.edu>

Thank you!

ALCTS Metadata Interest Group Programming Chairs:
Ivey Glendon, University of Virginia
Santi Thompson, University of Houston

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CFP: MIG Midwinter 2014 Presentations

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Jason Kovari

The ALCTS Metadata Interest Group invites speakers to present at the ALA Midwinter meeting in Philadelphia on Sunday, January 26, 2014 from 8:30 to 10am. Presentations will be approximately 30 minutes, including Q&A.

Our charge is to provide a broad framework for information exchange on current research developments, tools, and activities affecting networked information resources and metadata; coordinates and actively participate in the development and review of standards concerning networked resources and metadata in conjunction with the divisions’ committees and sections, other units within ALA, and relevant outside agencies; and develops programs and fosters and sponsors education and training opportunities that contribute to and enhance an understanding of networked resources and metadata, their identity, content, technology, access, control, and use.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

*Tools for metadata librarians, including those for creation and/or transformation
*Demos or light tutorials on tools
*Top-level overviews of tools/mechanisms for use in managing metadata
*Innovative workflow design focusing on the intersection of tools/mechanisms and staff education and training

Please email proposal abstracts to program co-chairs by Wednesday, October 30th, 2013.  Please contact us with questions.  Thank you!

Program co-chairs,
Ivey Glendon
Metadata Librarian
University of Virginia Library
(434) 243-0634 | img7u@virginia.edu

Santi Thompson
Metadata & Digitization Operations Coordinator
University of Houston Library
(713) 743-9685 | sathompson3@uh.edu

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MIG Officer Elections, 2013-2014

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Jason Kovari
New officers were elected during the 2013 ALA Annual ACLTS Metadata Interest Group business meeting; they join the returning officers for the coming year. The MIG officers for 2013-2014 are:
Chair : Maureen Walsh, The Ohio State University
Vice-Chair : Jennifer Miller, Rice University
Secretary : Steven Folsom, Cornell University
Program Co-Chair : Santi Thompson, University of Houston
Program Co-Chair : Ivey Glendon, University of Virginia
Blog Coordinator : Jason Kovari, Cornell University
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Trends in Linked Data Adoption, Erik Mitchell’s MIG Presentation – ALA Annual 2013

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Steven Folsom

During the Metadata Interest Group session this year’s ALA Annual Conference Erik Mitchell, Associate University Librarian at UC Berkeley, gave a presentation titled, “Trends in Linked Data Adoption,” based on his recent research.

Erik began his presentation by describing the model he used for evaluating metadata systems (citing Elings and Waibel’s terminology); this model provided a framework for comparing different approaches by three of the largest linked data initiatives in libraries to date (DPLA, BIBFRAME and Europeana). The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) approach to metadata includes harvesting, aggregating, republishing (similar to OAI), with some normalization for faceted access. BIBFRAME is still in the data modeling phase, and (because it is seen as a replacement for MARC) BIBFRAME is largely focused on serving as an exchange standard. Europeana uses a common schema, index, and dissemination system to bring together European libraries, museums, and other collections.

Erik elaborated on other methods (community discourse analysis, API use, and metadata visualization) he has used to gain insights into the three library linked data initiatives. In his early discourse analysis, Erik looked at word counts for different documents generated at the NISO Bibliographic Roadmap meeting and was able to break discussion up into themes. He also pointed out that relevant social media spaces and listserv content would be a good candidate for similar analysis. Erik explained how APIs for DPLA, BIBFRAME and Europeana are showing an increased overlap in serialization and exchange standards. The presentation also included a quick mention of a number of data visualization tools, namely Gephi and W3C’s RDF validator, that can be used to find implicit and explicit connections between different linked data. During the Q and A Jenn Riley offered Turtle as another option for visualizing linked data.

There was lively discussion during the session’s Q and A period about whether libraries should be migrating or mapping existing records to linked data formats and the pros and cons of reusing or minting new vocabularies. There seemed to be a preference amongst many in the room for an eventual migration of our data to linked data formats and for the reuse of existing vocabularies, but libraries are still trying to decide which data model/s, vocabularies, and format/s to develop and adopt.

Erik has a related publication due out in Library Technology Reports; slides for the MIG presentation can be found at: http://connect.ala.org/files/ALCTS_MIG_ALA2013_Mitchell_20130630.pdf.

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MIG Annual 2013 Meeting & Elections

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Jason Kovari

The Metadata Interest Group would like to invite you to join us in Chicago.  The group’s program/meeting will take place on June 30, 2013 in the McCormick Place Convention Center room N137 from 8:30am – 10:00am.

Erik Mitchell will start the program with “Library Linked Data: Research and Adoption” where he will present the results of a content-analysis study of metadata services within LOD systems being developed or in use in LAM settings. He will focus on highlights of the findings; give participants a tour of a collection of data and tools that can be used for independent exploration of LOD metadata, and point participants to other resources for continued study.

A business meeting will follow the program, during which elections for 2013-2014 officers will be held.

The following offices are open for election:

Vice Chair/Chair Elect (who will serve as Chair 2014-2015)
Programming Co-Chair (2013-2015)
Secretary

They will join the other officers: Maureen Walsh (chair), Ivey Glendon (program co-chair, and Jason Kovari (blog coordinator)

Anyone who is interested in standing for election to one of these offices is invited to get in touch with Teressa Keenan at teressa.keenan@umontana.edu by June 25.

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ALA Meeting Report – ALCTS Holdings Information Committee and Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee Forum

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Jeremy Myntti

I had the opportunity to present at the ALCTS Holdings Information Committee and Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee session at ALA Midwinter 2013 in Seattle. This session, titled “Linked Data for Holdings and Cataloging: the first step is the hardest,” started with Eric Miller from Zepheira discussing the use of Linked Data from a holdings perspective in the Bibframe model. Then Richard Wallis from OCLC presented on Linked Data from a cataloging perspective.

The second half of this session (which is the focus of this article) was dedicated to presenting some real life examples of what a couple of librarians were able to accomplish by using some of their data in Viewshare. Viewshare is a free service provided by the Library of Congress that allows users to import their own metadata in order to create custom and unique interfaces. Those working with Viewshare for this presentation were new to the platform and were able to put their projects together in a matter of minutes.

Violeta Ilik, Continuing Resources Cataloging Librarian from Texas A&M University, first showed how she was able to load data about faculty members from the Math Department at Texas A&M into Viewshare and then create some interesting interfaces to display that data through lists, pie charts, timelines, and a photo gallery.

The second presentation on a project using Viewshare was presented by me (Jeremy Myntti, Head of Cataloging and Metadata Services at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library). In my project with Viewshare, I used some metadata from one of our digital collections (Western Soundscape Archive) and created a map, some pie charts, and tag clouds to display the data. A major reason that I chose to work with this collection was that we have already been able to create some unique user interfaces with some basic hierarchical browsing and different map interfaces. Now using Viewshare, I wanted to see if there were additional things that we could do to present the collection to our users.

Throughout my presentation, I included screenshots that documented the process that I went through to create the collection, including exporting the data from CONTENTdm, manipulating it in Excel, loading it into Viewshare, augmenting the data with Viewshare tools, and creating user interfaces.

After completing this little project with Viewshare, there are a couple of major things that I took away. First off, it is never too late to audit your metadata. By loading and then playing around with a few of the views in Viewshare, I was able to see some of our metadata that is missing or that needs to be cleaned-up due to a number of inconsistencies such as the capitalization or spelling of different terms.

I also learned that it is not hard to use existing data in new ways. Playing around with tools like Viewshare can give you new ideas on ways to present your data which could help users more readily discover our collections. Using Viewshare was also very easy and user friendly, requiring no knowledge of programming, interface design, or linked data. If simple tools like Viewshare can help us move more towards a linked data environment, then we don’t need to be afraid of what might be coming in the future.

If you are interested in my presentation, you can view it on Slideshare. I have also included links to the Western Soundscape Archive and the Viewshare interface that I was able to create for a subset of this collection.

Slideshare Presentation

Western Soundscape Archive

Western Soundscape in Viewshare

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