Bringing archival collections to Wikipedia with the Remixing Archival Metadata Project (RAMP) editor

Book chapter preprint. Chapter published (2018) in "Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge" (pp. 197-213). Chicago, IL: ALA Editions.Wikipedia has been in existence for 16 years, but it was not until recently that GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) institutions started to see it as a trusted source and one they were interested in contributing to. Libraries and archives, in particular, have been slowly embracing the idea of contributing to Wikipedia, often motivated by the prospect of increasing the visibility and impact of their distinctive collections, which have been carefully curated by librarians and archivists alike. Different approaches have been taken by libraries and archives when it comes to contributing to Wikipedia. Some institutions have focused on adding links to Wikipedia articles in order to point back to their unique archival collections, whereas others have concentrated on enhancing the content of existing articles. Another way in which librarians and archivists can work together to share our collections is to collaborate on projects to enrich and repurpose the metadata that has already been created to describe them. The University of Miami Libraries took this approach and developed a tool to facilitate the creation of Wikipedia articles using relevant metadata from the libraries’ finding aids (documents that describe the scope, content, and context of archival collections). In this chapter, we will introduce the RAMP (Remixing Archival Metadata Project) editor and share our experience working on a pilot project conducted to test its viability

AI, Cataloging & Metadata

This presentation explores the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on cataloging and metadata, presenting examples of AI-based cataloging. It provides a few examples of utilizing ChatGPT, Bard and Bing Chat Enterprise for tasks such as creating a MARC record, classifying a book and assigning thesaurus terms. The discussion covers AI’s potential in cataloging and metadata within the library field, along with its advantages and disadvantages. It also addresses how cataloging and metadata professionals should navigate the integration of AI in this new environment. The initial presentation took place at the University of Central Florida Libraries’ AI Interest Group meeting, and a slightly expanded version was later shared during the Cataloging department’s meeting

Expanding the Metadata Librarian Horizon: Reflections on the Metadata Practices in the Web and Digital Repositories

The growing amount of digital resources on the web and in libraries have been rapidly changing the ways data is organized, shared and discovered, and the Metadata Librarians’ roles and practices have been constantly reshaped under this larger environment. In light of related literature and the author’s experiences in web archiving and working with several digital repositories including CONTENTdm, Islandora, Digital Commons, DSpace and Omeka, this presentation will discuss the ongoing changes in metadata practices in various areas, such as identity management, authority control, repository design and capability, metadata, its presentation and discovery, and linked data. It will also reflect on the metadata practices in the library community and the web practices in classifying and discovering data, and explore the web’s impact on library cataloging and the metadata profession. The changing environment and practices call for the Metadata Librarian’s flexibility in working with different digital library systems and personnel from other departments, an open mindset, and new understandings and skill sets related to vocabulary management, document encoding, data processing, and innovative ways of or semi-auto cataloging and classification

Metadata Librarians for Open Access: A Path Towards Sustainable Discovery and Impact for Open Access Resources

Support by academic libraries for open access (OA) over the past three-plus decades has largely focused on the development of digital infrastructure, promotion of open access publishing, support of policy-driven access mandates, and more recently, adoption of transformative agreements. Libraries have correspondingly created a broad array of scholarly communication roles to support these varied approaches. Surprisingly, one area of open access support that has received less attention from libraries is the facilitation of description and discovery of open access resources through the creation of robust original metadata. Expertise in Organization of Recorded Knowledge and Information represents a core competency of librarianship, yet the current academic library landscape shows few positions that specifically apply this expertise towards support for OA resources. Efforts to describe OA resources typically fall below those dedicated to licensed resources and pale in comparison to OA advocacy work, repository, publishing and other services. This case study offers an example of how one large academic library has introduced a metadata librarian position focused on description of open access resources into its activities supporting open access.  For decades, commercially licensed resources have benefitted from metadata enhanced layer by layer by commercial and library professionals alike. With increased focus and funding being devoted to open access driven by governmental, institutional, and private funders, attention is critically needed to ensure that these new resources obtain the description necessary to allow them to be useful. Metadata librarians focused on open access resources can work with array of positions, such as repository managers and other digital asset management professionals, to ensure that open access resources are properly ingested and managed, and that metadata practices are aligned with best practices for preservation and long-term access. OA metadata librarians could be responsible for developing and implementing metadata standards and practices for open access resources like scholarly articles, data sets, and other digital objects. These standards would help ensure that open access resources are accurately described and discoverable alongside purchased resources, making them more accessible to researchers and other users.   In addition to their technical responsibilities, OA metadata librarians can also play key roles in advocating for open access resources and educating library staff and users about the importance of metadata in supporting discoverability and accessibility. Through participation in professional organizations and initiatives focused on open access and metadata, OA metadata librarians can help raise awareness of the importance of metadata in supporting open access resources, their sustainability, and ultimately, their impact

The Convergence of Digital-Libraries and the Peer-Review Process

Pre-print repositories have seen a significant increase in use over the past fifteen years across multiple research domains. Researchers are beginning to develop applications capable of using these repositories to assist the scientific community above and beyond the pure dissemination of information. The contribution set forth by this paper emphasizes a deconstructed publication model in which the peer-review process is mediated by an OAI-PMH peer-review service. This peer-review service uses a social-network algorithm to determine potential reviewers for a submitted manuscript and for weighting the relative influence of each participating reviewer's evaluations. This paper also suggests a set of peer-review specific metadata tags that can accompany a pre-print's existing metadata record. The combinations of these contributions provide a unique repository-centric peer-review model that fits within the widely deployed OAI-PMH framework.Comment: Journal of Information Science [in press

Transforming Technical Services: Evolving Functions in Large Research University Libraries

Technical services functions in academic libraries have evolved in response to fiscal pressures and advances in technology. In this study the author investigates how technical services in large research university libraries are adapting to support the changing roles of academic libraries. The author conducted hour-long phone interviews in early 2014 with the representatives from nineteen out of the twenty-five university libraries in the Technical Services Directors Large Research Libraries Interest Group. This paper presents the results and discussion based on the interview data: use of the name, Technical Services; new and emerging functions of technical services; organizational structure of technical services units; change drivers that are affecting technical services now, and those that will soon; and challenges in managing technical services. Five models of a technical services organizational structure were developed from participants’ organizational charts and interview data. This research also highlights the skills needed among technical services personnel.UT Librarie

Invest to Save: Report and Recommendations of the NSF-DELOS Working Group on Digital Archiving and Preservation

Digital archiving and preservation are important areas for research and development, but there is no agreed upon set of priorities or coherent plan for research in this area. Research projects in this area tend to be small and driven by particular institutional problems or concerns. As a consequence, proposed solutions from experimental projects and prototypes tend not to scale to millions of digital objects, nor do the results from disparate projects readily build on each other. It is also unclear whether it is worthwhile to seek general solutions or whether different strategies are needed for different types of digital objects and collections. The lack of coordination in both research and development means that there are some areas where researchers are reinventing the wheel while other areas are neglected. Digital archiving and preservation is an area that will benefit from an exercise in analysis, priority setting, and planning for future research. The WG aims to survey current research activities, identify gaps, and develop a white paper proposing future research directions in the area of digital preservation. Some of the potential areas for research include repository architectures and inter-operability among digital archives; automated tools for capture, ingest, and normalization of digital objects; and harmonization of preservation formats and metadata. There can also be opportunities for development of commercial products in the areas of mass storage systems, repositories and repository management systems, and data management software and tools.

Harvesting for disseminating, open archives and role of academic libraries

The Scholarly communication system is in a critical stage, due to a number of factors.The Open Access movement is perhaps the most interesting response that the scientific community has tried to give to this problem. The paper examines strengths and weaknesses of the Open Access strategy in general and, more specifically, of the Open Archives Initiative, discussing experiences, criticisms and barriers. All authors that have faced the problems of implementing an OAI compliant e-print server agree that technical and practical problems are not the most difficult to overcome and that the real problem is the change in cultural attitude required. In this scenario the university library is possibly the standard bearer for the advent and implementation of e-prints archives and Open Archives services. To ensure the successful implementation of this service the Library has a number of distinct roles to play