2010 New England Technical Services Librarians Spring Conference: Crosswalks to the Future: Library Metadata on the Move

Report on the 2010 New England Technical Services Librarians (NETSL) Spring Conference, held on April 15, 2010 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts

Toward Semantic Metadata Aggregation for DPLA and Beyond: A Report of the ALCTS CaMMS Heads of Cataloging Interest Group, Orlando, June 2016

DPLA content hubs and service hubs face similar challenges in aggregating metadata. These include quality assurance, reconciliation of terms, and conforming source data to the DPLA application profile. An area receiving special attention is the clarification and mapping of rights statements. In some cases, there is no information in the record and it needs to be supplied. In others, there may be notes with vague or irregular wording, and these need to be mapped to a controlled vocabulary in order to be useful in discovery systems (e.g., through faceting and filtering). Rightsstatements.org is helping to make this possible by providing unambiguous statements backed up by persistent URIs. For both the NYPL and the MDL, serving as a DPLA hub aligns with their institutional missions. By aggregating and enriching cultural heritage data from hub participants, they make their collections more discoverable on the Web and provide a valuable public service. And in order to provide additional value, both the NYPL and the MDL hubs are considering ways to push enhanced metadata (e.g., place names enriched with geographic coordinates) back to their original repositories. Practitioners and managers of cataloging and metadata services have an important role to play in large-scale aggregation. They can ensure that when data sets from multiple sources are combined and normalized, that the underlying data semantics are preserved. Knowledge of resource description standards and controlled vocabularies continue to be highly valued, but must be applied at scale. An understanding of schema crosswalks continues to be important for aligning metadata with target applications. Metadata audits and index-based faceting can expose problems, while tools like Open Refine and Python can be used for programmatic remediation

Computing environments for reproducibility: Capturing the 'Whole Tale'

The act of sharing scientific knowledge is rapidly evolving away from traditional articles and presentations to the delivery of executable objects that integrate the data and computational details (e.g., scripts and workflows) upon which the findings rely. This envisioned coupling of data and process is essential to advancing science but faces technical and institutional barriers. The Whole Tale project aims to address these barriers by connecting computational, data-intensive research efforts with the larger research process—transforming the knowledge discovery and dissemination process into one where data products are united with research articles to create “living publications” or tales. The Whole Tale focuses on the full spectrum of science, empowering users in the long tail of science, and power users with demands for access to big data and compute resources. We report here on the design, architecture, and implementation of the Whole Tale environment

Intelligent support for knowledge sharing in virtual communities

Virtual communities where people with common interests and goals communicate, share resources, and construct knowledge, are currently one of the fastest growing web environments. A common misconception is to believe that a virtual community will be effective when people and technology are present. Appropriate support for the effective functioning of online communities is paramount. In this line, personalisation and adaptation can play a crucial role, as illustrated by recent user modelling approaches that support social web-groups. However, personalisation research has mainly focused on adapting to the needs of individual members, as opposed to supporting communities to function as a whole. In this research, we argue that effective support tailored to virtual communities requires considering the wholeness of the community and facilitating the processes that influence the success of knowledge sharing and collaboration. We are focusing on closely knit communities that operate in the boundaries of organisations or in the educational sector. Following research in organisational psychology, we have identified several processes important for effective team functioning which can be applied to virtual communities and can be examined or facilitated by analysing community log data. Based on the above processes we defined a computational framework that consists of two major parts. The first deals with the extraction of a community model that represents the whole community and the second deals with the application of the model in order to identify what adaptive support is needed and when. The validation of this framework has been done using real virtual community data and the advantages of the adaptive support have been examined based on the changes happened after the interventions in the community combined with user feedback. With this thesis we contribute to the user modelling and adaptive systems research communities with: (a) a novel framework for holistic adaptive support in virtual communities, (b) a mechanism for extracting and maintaining a semantic community model based on the processes identified, and (c) deployment of the community model to identify problems and provide holistic support to a virtual community. We also contribute to the CSCW community with a novel approach in providing semantically enriched community awareness and to the area of social networks with a semantically enriched approach for modeling change patterns in a closely-knit VC.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Design and Implementation of a Research Data Management System: The CRC/TR32 Project Database (TR32DB)

Research data management (RDM) includes all processes and measures which ensure that research data are well-organised, documented, preserved, stored, backed up, accessible, available, and re-usable. Corresponding RDM systems or repositories form the technical framework to support the collection, accurate documentation, storage, back-up, sharing, and provision of research data, which are created in a specific environment, like a research group or institution. The required measures for the implementation of a RDM system vary according to the discipline or purpose of data (re-)use. In the context of RDM, the documentation of research data is an essential duty. This has to be conducted by accurate, standardized, and interoperable metadata to ensure the interpretability, understandability, shareability, and long-lasting usability of the data. RDM is achieving an increasing importance, as digital information increases. New technologies enable to create more digital data, also automatically. Consequently, the volume of digital data, including big data and small data, will approximately double every two years in size. With regard to e-science, this increase of data was entitled and predicted as the data deluge. Furthermore, the paradigm change in science has led to data intensive science. Particularly scientific data that were financed by public funding are significantly demanded to be archived, documented, provided or even open accessible by different policy makers, funding agencies, journals and other institutions. RDM can prevent the loss of data, otherwise around 80-90 % of the generated research data disappear and are not available for re-use or further studies. This will lead to empty archives or RDM systems. The reasons for this course are well known and are of a technical, socio-cultural, and ethical nature, like missing user participation and data sharing knowledge, as well as lack of time or resources. In addition, the fear of exploitation and missing or limited reward for publishing and sharing data has an important role. This thesis presents an approach in handling research data of the collaborative, multidisciplinary, long-term DFG-funded research project Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio 32 (CRC/TR32) “Patterns in Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere Systems: Monitoring, Modelling, and Data Assimilation”. In this context, a RDM system, the so-called CRC/TR32 project database (TR32DB), was designed and implemented. The TR32DB considers the demands of the project participants (e.g. heterogeneous data from different disciplines with various file sizes) and the requirements of the DFG, as well as general challenges in RDM. For this purpose, a RDM system was established that comprises a well-described self-designed metadata schema, a file-based data storage, a well-elaborated database of metadata, and a corresponding user-friendly web interface. The whole system is developed in close cooperation with the local Regional Computing Centre of the University of Cologne (RRZK), where it is also hosted. The documentation of the research data with accurate metadata is of key importance. For this purpose, an own specific TR32DB Metadata Schema was designed, consisting of multi-level metadata properties. This is distinguished in general and data type specific (e.g. data, publication, report) properties and is developed according to the project background, demands of the various data types, as well as recent associated metadata standards and principles. Consequently, it is interoperable to recent metadata standards, such as the Dublin Core, the DataCite Metadata Schema, as well as core elements of the ISO19115:2003 Metadata Standard and INSPIRE Directive. Furthermore, the schema supports optional, mandatory, and automatically generated metadata properties, as well as it provides predefined, obligatory and self-established controlled vocabulary lists. The integrated mapping to the DataCite Metadata Schema facilitates the simple application of a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for a dataset. The file-based data storage is organized in a folder system, corresponding to the structure of the CRC/TR32 and additionally distinguishes between several data types (e.g. data, publication, report). It is embedded in the Andrew File System hosted by the RRZK. The file system is capable to store and backup all data, is highly scalable, supports location independence, and enables easy administration by Access Control Lists. In addition, the relational database management system MySQL stores the metadata according to the previous mentioned TR32DB Metadata Schema as well as further necessary administrative data. A user-friendly web-based graphical user interface enables the access to the TR32DB system. The web-interface provides metadata input, search, and download of data, as well as the visualization of important geodata is handled by an internal WebGIS. This web-interface, as well as the entire RDM system, is self-developed and adjusted to the specific demands. Overall, the TR32DB system is developed according to the needs and requirements of the CRC/TR32 scientists, fits the demands of the DFG, and considers general problems and challenges of RDM as well. With regard to changing demands of the CRC/TR32 and technologic advances, the system is and will be consequently further developed. The established TR32DB approach was already successfully applied to another interdisciplinary research project. Thus, this approach is transferable and generally capable to archive all data, generated by the CRC/TR32, with accurately, interoperable metadata to ensure the re-use of the data, beyond the end of the project

Metadata Management System (MMS)

Much have been said about metadata which is "data about data" used for classification and retrieval of information. However, metadata is not created by itself. This paper will present the design, interface and implementation of our own metadata tool called Metadata Management System, MMS that was developed to facilitate the creation, maintenance and storage of metadata. This metadata tool supports two well-known metadata models, Dublin Core and SCORM 1.2 (IEEE Learning Object Metadata). The author will also elaborate on the implementation of metadata in the Malaysia Grid for Learning, (MyGfL) portal. These would include the usage of MMS by MyGfL potential content providers, problems encountered and their feedback about the MMS

Using the Getty Vocabularies as Linked Open Data in a Cataloging Tool for an Academic Teaching Collection: Case Study at the University of Denver

This case study examines the collaboration of two units at the University of Denver to create a new cataloging tool for the university’s teaching and learning object management system. The Visual Media Director for the School of Art and Art History, the University Library’s Digital Infrastructure and Technology Coordinator, and the Library’s Senior Systems Analyst successfully developed the Art History Metadata Management System (MMS) in 2013. The collaborators were able to harness the power of Linked Open Data (LOD) from vocabularies from the Getty Research Institute and the Library of Congress to facilitate the creation of metadata in MMS. This case study examines LOD in the context of cataloging cultural objects using integrated controlled vocabularies to ensure metadata integrity. This study also demonstrates principles of agile software development that encourage frequent communication contributing to the success of a multi-departmental project