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

A tool for metadata analysis

We describe a Web-based metadata quality tool that provides statistical descriptions and visualisations of Dublin Core metadata harvested via the OAI protocol. The lightweight nature of development allows it to be used to gather contextualized requirements and some initial user feedback is discussed

Experiences in deploying metadata analysis tools for institutional repositories

Current institutional repository software provides few tools to help metadata librarians understand and analyze their collections. In this article, we compare and contrast metadata analysis tools that were developed simultaneously, but independently, at two New Zealand institutions during a period of national investment in research repositories: the Metadata Analysis Tool (MAT) at The University of Waikato, and the Kiwi Research Information Service (KRIS) at the National Library of New Zealand. The tools have many similarities: they are convenient, online, on-demand services that harvest metadata using OAI-PMH; they were developed in response to feedback from repository administrators; and they both help pinpoint specific metadata errors as well as generating summary statistics. They also have significant differences: one is a dedicated tool wheres the other is part of a wider access tool; one gives a holistic view of the metadata whereas the other looks for specific problems; one seeks patterns in the data values whereas the other checks that those values conform to metadata standards. Both tools work in a complementary manner to existing Web-based administration tools. We have observed that discovery and correction of metadata errors can be quickly achieved by switching Web browser views from the analysis tool to the repository interface, and back. We summarize the findings from both tools' deployment into a checklist of requirements for metadata analysis tools

Geoscience after IT: Part L. Adjusting the emerging information system to new technology

Coherent development depends on following widely used standards that respect our vast legacy of existing entries in the geoscience record. Middleware ensures that we see a coherent view from our desktops of diverse sources of information. Developments specific to managing the written word, map content, and structured data come together in shared metadata linking topics and information types

Educational Technology as Seen Through the Eyes of the Readers

In this paper, I present the evaluation of a novel knowledge domain visualization of educational technology. The interactive visualization is based on readership patterns in the online reference management system Mendeley. It comprises of 13 topic areas, spanning psychological, pedagogical, and methodological foundations, learning methods and technologies, and social and technological developments. The visualization was evaluated with (1) a qualitative comparison to knowledge domain visualizations based on citations, and (2) expert interviews. The results show that the co-readership visualization is a recent representation of pedagogical and psychological research in educational technology. Furthermore, the co-readership analysis covers more areas than comparable visualizations based on co-citation patterns. Areas related to computer science, however, are missing from the co-readership visualization and more research is needed to explore the interpretations of size and placement of research areas on the map.Comment: Forthcoming article in the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learnin