Metadata Games: Improving Access to Humanities Artifacts

Our team received Level II Start Up funding to create a pilot of Metadata Games (MG), a software system that uses computer games to collect information about artifacts in libraries and archives as they strive to go digital. Games are useful in that they can entice those who might not visit archives to explore humanities content while contributing to vital records, and they create much more metadata than typical staff can do alone in the same timeframe. The system is open-source and is easily customized to meet each institution’s needs. The full project employs new techniques to make the system smarter and more trustworthy. We will also create new game components. MG can be used to enhance knowledge about artifacts in particular disciplines and fields, or with interdisciplinary collections. MG has the potential to unearth new knowledge that could radically enhance scholarship in the humanities, expanding what records we can encounter in our quest to understand the human experience

Modernien tutkimustietokantojen ja tiedonjalostusmenetelmien mahdollisuudet historiantutkimukselle : Tapaus Diplomatarium Fennicum

Peer reviewe

Content metadata created by users and information professionals: a comparative analysis

The master thesis is focused on professional and user-generated metadata with emphasis on content metadata. It describes metadata in general, their important characteristics, functions, and types, and defines other related terms. The professional content metadata and user-generated metadata are described in more detail. The analytical part aims to compare professional and user-generated content metadata. For this purpose, a dataset of metadata statements on fiction books collected from dozens of databases was used. It also aims to determine whether user-generated metadata bring additional information to metadata created by professionals.Diplomová práce pojednává o profesionálních a uživatelských metadatech, zejména se zaměřuje na metadata obsahová. Jsou zde popsána metadata obecně, jejich důležité charakteristiky, funkce a typy. Detailněji jsou popsána profesionální obsahová metadata a uživatelská metadata, definovány jsou také další termíny, které jsou v práci využívány. Cílem analytické části bylo porovnání profesionálních a uživatelských obsahových metadat. Probíhalo za pomoci souboru obsahových metadatových výroků popisujících beletristické knihy a sebraných z několika desítek databází. Zároveň bylo cílem analýzy určit, zda existují některá uživatelská metadata, která přinášejí nové informace oproti metadatům profesionálním.Institute of Information Studies and LibrarianshipÚstav informačních studií a knihovnictvíFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

AIUCD2017 - Book of Abstracts

Questo volume raccoglie gli abstract degli interventi presentati alla conferenza AIUCD 2017. AIUCD 2017 si è svolta dal 26 al 28 Gennaio 2017 a Roma, ed è stata verrà organizzata dal Digilab, Università Sapienza in cooperazione con il network ITN DiXiT (Digital Scholarly Editions Initial Training Network). AIUCD 2017 ha ospitato anche la terza edizione dell’EADH Day, tenutosi il 25 Gennaio 2017. Gli abstract pubblicati in questo volume hanno ottenuto il parere favorevole da parte di valutatori esperti della materia, attraverso un processo di revisione anonima sotto la responsabilità del Comitato di Programma Internazionale di AIUCD 2017

Creating immersive, play-anywhere handheld augmented reality stories, through remote user testing

This thesis outlines new instances of Extended Reality (XR) stories as well as associated user studies with them, to create more immersive story experiences delivered at a user’s choice of location through a mobile phone. This extends prior work on Location Based Experiences (LBEs), which have typically been designed to offer a game or story at a pre-determined location. A play-anywhere experience offers potential to open up LBEs to a wider audience, as well as to those may prefer to take part individually or closer to home, such attitude shifts becoming increasingly more common. The current research adopted an in the wild approach combining practice, studies and theory, with most user data being collected remotely. Each story application developed is subsequently referred to as an app, with each app offering a bespoke story incorporating Augmented Reality (AR) features, to better bring users’ location inline with the narrative. Testing the apps across various locations matched their intended use, and resulted in new guidelines for both incorporating AR into such LBEs, as well as for conducting remote user studies. A final app offered a site-specific curated story, with all study participants taking part under similar conditions at the same location, the ability to observe them using the app providing additional insights. The story apps used available local map data alongside Handheld Augmented Reality (HAR), to overlay interactable virtual objects on top of the physical environment, and visible on the phone’s display. Guidelines from related methodologies were used to better allow for the variety of factors that might influence different users’ immersion and engagement. These included the implementation of the AR features, the story itself, real world activity, and personal preferences including onboarding requirements. The approach taken contributed a reverse methodology to a lot of related research, that would typically begin with laboratory testing before moving to public spaces. User studies with the five mobile apps contributed guidelines for such experiences, that could benefit both practitioners and researchers in related fields. In the later case, a need was identified to develop new research tools specifically suited to the subtleties of handheld play-anywhere LBEs, such issues explored within the apps tested. The guidelines identified for offering more effective XR LBEs were also implemented in the creation of a new open source Unity project, called Map Story Engine. This offers a tool to test new features, as well as providing a fully customisable template for practitioners to author their own play-anywhere HAR stories and games

AIUCD2017 - Book of Abstracts

Questo volume raccoglie gli abstract degli interventi presentati alla conferenza AIUCD 2017. AIUCD 2017 si è svolta dal 26 al 28 Gennaio 2017 a Roma, ed è stata verrà organizzata dal Digilab, Università Sapienza in cooperazione con il network ITN DiXiT (Digital Scholarly Editions Initial Training Network). AIUCD 2017 ha ospitato anche la terza edizione dell’EADH Day, tenutosi il 25 Gennaio 2017. Gli abstract pubblicati in questo volume hanno ottenuto il parere favorevole da parte di valutatori esperti della materia, attraverso un processo di revisione anonima sotto la responsabilità del Comitato di Programma Internazionale di AIUCD 2017

Strengthening digital engagement to provide intersectional narratives within museums using user generated metadata: a case study at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium and the applications beyond.

Cultural heritage institutions have experienced a technological boom over the last fifty years, and digital access to collections has evolved from searchable catalogues available onsite with the aid of a research staff member, to a variety of modalities ranging from web-based, publicly available databases to interaction through social media platforms. As institutions look to capitalize on the new ways in which their collections are being discovered, cataloguing visual data and expanding metadata are necessary for staying relevant, on trend, and engaged with audiences. Metadata allows people to perform various operations with data, including searching, managing, structuring, preserving, and authenticating resources. Creating metadata is a labor intensive process, and one solution to the need for more extensive cataloguing is crowdsourcing, which over the last two decades has proven not only to increase access points to collections but also to enrich catalogue data. As well, crowdsourcing presents an opportunity for museums to make what has long been an opaque back-end process more transparent, turning metadata creation into a mission-supporting activity. Using an adapted practice-based methodology, this thesis examines projects I devised and led at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, Tag Along with Adler, as a case study in the benefits of crowdsourcing projects (and metadata tagging projects in particular) within cultural heritage institutions, not as mere outsourcing of labor but rather as participatory, even transformational experiences for an engaged public that also enhance and expand cataloguing. It also explores the successes and shortcomings of this case study and what these results suggest for the field at large with respect to language and metadata production. In particular, it demonstrates that there exists a semantic gap in the language and descriptive styles of museum professionals, on the one hand, and the public, on the other, and that crowdsourcing demonstrates promise to help bridge this gap while also providing an opportunity for the public to engage with museums directly