Embedding Microdata in Library Online Services for Better Discovery of Content

HTML5 has seen the day of light and with this the much awaited microdata mechanism has also become a standard. Browsers conventionally use the HTML tags for better readability of webpages for humans. There are cases when it is felt to provide structures to the HTML pages and the inability of HTML tags defined in the HTML specifications to handle such structure. The new specifications of HTML, HTML5 provide a very good mechanism to define structure in webpages. The mechanism popularly known as microdata is easier to implement than the other formats such as, microformats and RDFa. No doubt these structures are machine-readable providing the machines/software programs to search for specific types of information. Recently, some of the popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing joined hands to support microdata. This collaboration resulted in introduction of Schema.org, a collection of terms that webmasters can use to markup their pages to improve the display of search results. This paves a way for libraries to also augment and implement their web pages with microdata. The present article focuses on the techniques and elements used to create a semantic structure for a webpage using microdata. The paper starts by discussing various efforts going on in the arena of Microdata and micro formats etc. then it puts forth the ways by which libraries can use it. The various available tools, and the know how for publishing microdata is also discussed in detail keeping in mind the libraries will be benefited at large

Report of the Stanford Linked Data Workshop

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) conducted at week-long workshop on the prospects for a large scale, multi-national, multi-institutional prototype of a Linked Data environment for discovery of and navigation among the rapidly, chaotically expanding array of academic information resources. As preparation for the workshop, CLIR sponsored a survey by Jerry Persons, Chief Information Architect emeritus of SULAIR that was published originally for workshop participants as background to the workshop and is now publicly available. The original intention of the workshop was to devise a plan for such a prototype. However, such was the diversity of knowledge, experience, and views of the potential of Linked Data approaches that the workshop participants turned to two more fundamental goals: building common understanding and enthusiasm on the one hand and identifying opportunities and challenges to be confronted in the preparation of the intended prototype and its operation on the other. In pursuit of those objectives, the workshop participants produced:1. a value statement addressing the question of why a Linked Data approach is worth prototyping;2. a manifesto for Linked Libraries (and Museums and Archives and …);3. an outline of the phases in a life cycle of Linked Data approaches;4. a prioritized list of known issues in generating, harvesting & using Linked Data;5. a workflow with notes for converting library bibliographic records and other academic metadata to URIs;6. examples of potential “killer apps” using Linked Data: and7. a list of next steps and potential projects.This report includes a summary of the workshop agenda, a chart showing the use of Linked Data in cultural heritage venues, and short biographies and statements from each of the participants

Beyond "Showing What We Have": Exploring Linked Data for Archival Description

Research explores current professional attitudes, applications, and potential impact of linked data in archival repositories, through eight structured interviews with archivists and early adopters of linked data and semantic web practices within the archival community. Interviews evaluate current archival practitioners' perceptions of the benefits and challenges of applying linked data practices to archival description, to examine the current barriers and potential solutions in integrating linked data with archival description. Analysis investigates ways in which linked data and the semantic web may impact archival descriptive practices and user experience in accessing archival materials, and ways to facilitate greater engagement with linked data within the archival community.Master of Science in Library Scienc

Integrating data and analysis technologies within leading environmental research infrastructures: Challenges and approaches

When researchers analyze data, it typically requires significant effort in data preparation to make the data analysis ready. This often involves cleaning, pre-processing, harmonizing, or integrating data from one or multiple sources and placing them into a computational environment in a form suitable for analysis. Research infrastructures and their data repositories host data and make them available to researchers, but rarely offer a computational environment for data analysis. Published data are often persistently identified, but such identifiers resolve onto landing pages that must be (manually) navigated to identify how data are accessed. This navigation is typically challenging or impossible for machines. This paper surveys existing approaches for improving environmental data access to facilitate more rapid data analyses in computational environments, and thus contribute to a more seamless integration of data and analysis. By analysing current state-of-the-art approaches and solutions being implemented by world‑leading environmental research infrastructures, we highlight the existing practices to interface data repositories with computational environments and the challenges moving forward. We found that while the level of standardization has improved during recent years, it still is challenging for machines to discover and access data based on persistent identifiers. This is problematic in regard to the emerging requirements for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data, in general, and problematic for seamless integration of data and analysis, in particular. There are a number of promising approaches that would improve the state-of-the-art. A key approach presented here involves software libraries that streamline reading data and metadata into computational environments. We describe this approach in detail for two research infrastructures. We argue that the development and maintenance of specialized libraries for each RI and a range of programming languages used in data analysis does not scale well. Based on this observation, we propose a set of established standards and web practices that, if implemented by environmental research infrastructures, will enable the development of RI and programming language independent software libraries with much reduced effort required for library implementation and maintenance as well as considerably lower learning requirements on users. To catalyse such advancement, we propose a roadmap and key action points for technology harmonization among RIs that we argue will build the foundation for efficient and effective integration of data and analysis.This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreements No. 824068 (ENVRI-FAIR project) and No. 831558 (FAIR- sFAIR project). NEON is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and managed under cooperative support agreement (EF-1029808) to Battell

Resource discovery in heterogeneous digital content environments

The concept of 'resource discovery' is central to our understanding of how users explore, navigate, locate and retrieve information resources. This submission for a PhD by Published Works examines a series of 11 related works which explore topics pertaining to resource discovery, each demonstrating heterogeneity in their digital discovery context. The assembled works are prefaced by nine chapters which seek to review and critically analyse the contribution of each work, as well as provide contextualization within the wider body of research literature. A series of conceptual sub-themes is used to organize and structure the works and the accompanying critical commentary. The thesis first begins by examining issues in distributed discovery contexts by studying collection level metadata (CLM), its application in 'information landscaping' techniques, and its relationship to the efficacy of federated item-level search tools. This research narrative continues but expands in the later works and commentary to consider the application of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), particularly within Semantic Web and machine interface contexts, with investigations of semantically aware terminology services in distributed discovery. The necessary modelling of data structures to support resource discovery - and its associated functionalities within digital libraries and repositories - is then considered within the novel context of technology-supported curriculum design repositories, where questions of human-computer interaction (HCI) are also examined. The final works studied as part of the thesis are those which investigate and evaluate the efficacy of open repositories in exposing knowledge commons to resource discovery via web search agents. Through the analysis of the collected works it is possible to identify a unifying theory of resource discovery, with the proposed concept of (meta)data alignment described and presented with a visual model. This analysis assists in the identification of a number of research topics worthy of further research; but it also highlights an incremental transition by the present author, from using research to inform the development of technologies designed to support or facilitate resource discovery, particularly at a 'meta' level, to the application of specific technologies to address resource discovery issues in a local context. Despite this variation the research narrative has remained focussed on topics surrounding resource discovery in heterogeneous digital content environments and is noted as having generated a coherent body of work. Separate chapters are used to consider the methodological approaches adopted in each work and the contribution made to research knowledge and professional practice.The concept of 'resource discovery' is central to our understanding of how users explore, navigate, locate and retrieve information resources. This submission for a PhD by Published Works examines a series of 11 related works which explore topics pertaining to resource discovery, each demonstrating heterogeneity in their digital discovery context. The assembled works are prefaced by nine chapters which seek to review and critically analyse the contribution of each work, as well as provide contextualization within the wider body of research literature. A series of conceptual sub-themes is used to organize and structure the works and the accompanying critical commentary. The thesis first begins by examining issues in distributed discovery contexts by studying collection level metadata (CLM), its application in 'information landscaping' techniques, and its relationship to the efficacy of federated item-level search tools. This research narrative continues but expands in the later works and commentary to consider the application of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), particularly within Semantic Web and machine interface contexts, with investigations of semantically aware terminology services in distributed discovery. The necessary modelling of data structures to support resource discovery - and its associated functionalities within digital libraries and repositories - is then considered within the novel context of technology-supported curriculum design repositories, where questions of human-computer interaction (HCI) are also examined. The final works studied as part of the thesis are those which investigate and evaluate the efficacy of open repositories in exposing knowledge commons to resource discovery via web search agents. Through the analysis of the collected works it is possible to identify a unifying theory of resource discovery, with the proposed concept of (meta)data alignment described and presented with a visual model. This analysis assists in the identification of a number of research topics worthy of further research; but it also highlights an incremental transition by the present author, from using research to inform the development of technologies designed to support or facilitate resource discovery, particularly at a 'meta' level, to the application of specific technologies to address resource discovery issues in a local context. Despite this variation the research narrative has remained focussed on topics surrounding resource discovery in heterogeneous digital content environments and is noted as having generated a coherent body of work. Separate chapters are used to consider the methodological approaches adopted in each work and the contribution made to research knowledge and professional practice

D-Lib Magazine Pioneered Web-Based Scholarly Communication

The web began with a vision of, as stated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, “that much academic information should be freely available to anyone”. For many years, the development of the web and the development of digital libraries and other scholarly communications infrastructure proceeded in tandem. A milestone occurred in July, 1995, when the first issue of D-Lib Magazine was published as an online, HTML-only, open access magazine, serving as the focal point for the then emerging digital library research community. In 2017 it ceased publication, in part due to the maturity of the community it served as well as the increasing availability of and competition from eprints, institutional repositories, conferences, social media, and online journals – the very ecosystem that D-Lib Magazine nurtured and enabled. As long-time members of the digital library community and frequent contributors to D-Lib Magazine, we reflect on the many innovations that D-Lib Magazine pioneered and were made possible by the web, including: open access, HTML-only publication and embracing the hypermedia opportunities afforded by HTML, persistent identifiers and stable URLs, rapid publication, and community engagement. Although it ceased publication after 22 years and 265 issues, it remains unchanged on the live web and still provides a benchmark for academic serials and web-based publishing

Bibliographic Control in the Digital Ecosystem

With the contributions of international experts, the book aims to explore the new boundaries of universal bibliographic control. Bibliographic control is radically changing because the bibliographic universe is radically changing: resources, agents, technologies, standards and practices. Among the main topics addressed: library cooperation networks; legal deposit; national bibliographies; new tools and standards (IFLA LRM, RDA, BIBFRAME); authority control and new alliances (Wikidata, Wikibase, Identifiers); new ways of indexing resources (artificial intelligence); institutional repositories; new book supply chain; “discoverability” in the IIIF digital ecosystem; role of thesauri and ontologies in the digital ecosystem; bibliographic control and search engines