Bringing Everyone to the Table--Collaborative Ontology Development

Metadata work thrives when it takes place in a collaborative context. Collaboration has increasingly been a part of bibliographic description, the description of digitized resources, digital humanities, ontology creation, and more. This presentations focuses on the work of the ArtFrame Group that resulted in the development of the ARM Ontology, a BIBFRAME ontology extension. This work was a collaboration between different community partners including Art Libraries Society of North America, Library of Congress and several libraries and museums

LD4P@Columbia, BIBFRAME and Art Properties

This presentation reviews a project to evaluate the suitability of the BIBFRAME model and vocabulary for describing art objects and to develop a profile for the description of art objects. The project used the Art Properties Collection at Columbia University as a test case

From Curatorial Files to Linked Open Data: Cataloging the Art Collection at Columbia University

Columbia University is relatively unique among American educational institutions with regard to its art collection. Rather than being housed in a traditional museum environment, artwork instead is organized as a special collection within Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. Overseen by the Art Properties department, the collection of over 12,000 works of art encompasses all time periods, cultures, and media. This paper presents a case study in which item-level records for the collection were exposed in the library’s online catalog and, in just five years, evolved from being an unsearchable resource to becoming an international model of linked open data for records for works of art. The first part of this presentation describes the original museum-style documentation used for organizing the collection, and the library cataloging standards implemented in recent years

Modeling and application profiles in the Art and Rare Materials BIBFRAME Ontology Extension

Since April 2016, the Art Libraries Society of North America's Cataloging Advisory Committee (CAC) and the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee (BSC) have collaborated with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded Linked Data for Production project on the Art and Rare Materials BIBFRAME Ontology Extension (ARM). BIBFRAME leaves some areas underdefined that need to be expanded by specialized communities. More specifically, ARM facilitates the descriptive needs of the art and rare materials communities in areas such as exhibitions, materials, measurements, physical condition and much more. Between April 2016 and February 2018, work focused on modeling. In February 2018, our focus shifted to development of SHACL application profiles for Art resources and a Rare Monographs, which we are using to define forms and display for the cataloging environment in VitroLib, an RDF-based, ontology agnostic cataloging tool being developed as part of the Linked Data for Libraries - Labs project that was discussed at DCMI 2017. Since these application profiles are being implemented in VitroLib, catalogers will be able to test the ARM modeling in a real-world environment, providing feedback to the project for potential future development. This presentation will provide an overview of select ARM modeling components, detail the process of creating and defining SHACL application profiles for ARM, and discuss challenges and opportunities for implementing these profiles in VitroLib. Further, we will discuss our strategy for low-threshold hosting of the ontology and administrative questions regarding long-term maintenance of this BIBFRAME extension

Improving Discovery of and Access to Digital Repository Contents Using Semantic Web Standards: Columbia University’s Academic Commons

This article describes the progress made towards developing Academic Commons (AC), Columbia University’s digital repository, as an interoperable repository through the use of RDF and non-RDF Semantic Web technologies. Approaches taken include the implementation of microdata to add semantic markup to HTML content; a collaboration with Oregon State University’s (OSU) digital repository, ScholarsArchive@OSU (SA@OSU), to implement an application that indexes RDF data from OSU for use in AC; as well as an exploration of the recently released MODS RDF

The Outcome of the ArtFrame Project, a Domain-Specific BIBFRAME Exploration

The presentation consists of three parts. Jason Kovari’s presentation examines the larger context of the various domain-specific explorations of BIBFRAME extension development, with particular focus on the overlap between art works and rare materials held in libraries. Melanie Wacker and Amber Billey then discuss the specifics of the ARTFRAME project including its initial goals, timeline, community outreach, outcome, as well as tools used and lessons learned throughout the project. Finally, Marie-Chantal L’Ecuyer-Coelho explores the contributions of ARLIS/NA's CAC as a community partner to the ARTFRAME project, highlighting its role in the process of delineating the requirements of art descriptive metadata, and developing an ontology extension suited to the specific characteristics of art objects

Unhiding the audiovisual past at Columbia University Libraries

As part of a larger hidden collections initiative, Columbia University Libraries initiated plans in 2018 to digitize their unique audiovisual holdings over seven years. In order to meet an ambitious target within a limited timeframe, staff across divisions and departments had to collaboratively develop shared workflows and efficiencies to maximize output while ensuring a high level of quality. Due to the unique challenges of working with audio and video collections, this collaborative effort was truly unprecedented in the history of Columbia Libraries. This project represented an excellent opportunity to test new functionalities of our locally developed digital asset management system Hyacinth and find robust methods to improve digital curation and preservation using tools like Archivematica digital preservation system. The scope of the project required that we develop efficiencies in our cataloging and metadata enhancement workflows including task automation in OpenRefine, sync metadata between systems including our Voyager ILS and Hyacinth, and plan for new initiatives such as the implementation of a rights management module and integration of crosswalks to ArchivesSpace. One additional outcome of the project’s first year is a deeper analysis of project statistics and workflows using project management methods to inform the future development and planning of the project for years 2-7. This presentation will examine the development of these shared workflows across curatorial, preservation, metadata, and digital technology units, challenges overcome, and lessons learned

Future Proof: Preserving and Providing Access to Columbia's Audio Visual Collections

As part of a larger hidden collections initiative, in 2018, Columbia University Libraries embarked on a seven year project to digitize their unique audiovisual holdings. In order to meet an ambitious target within a limited timeframe, staff across divisions and departments had to collaboratively develop shared workflows and efficiencies to maximize output while ensuring a high level of quality. Due to the unique challenges of working with analog film/video collections, this collaborative effort was truly unprecedented in the history of Columbia Libraries. This project represented an excellent opportunity to test new functionalities of our locally developed digital asset management system Hyacinth and find robust methods to improve digital curation and preservation using tools like Archivematica digital preservation system. The scope of the project required that we develop efficiencies in our cataloging and metadata enhancement workflows including task automation in OpenRefine, sync both published and unpublished metadata between systems including our Voyager ILS and Hyacinth, and plan for an exponential increase in how digital media collections would be used by both patrons and staff. This presentation will examine the development, implementation, and lessons learned of these cross-departmental workflows as they pertain to the complex landscape of large-scale digital media preservation and access within research libraries

Making Software into a Program: Columbia University Libraries' Hyacinth User Group

This presentation, delivered at the 2019 meeting of the Digital Library Forum, highlights the work of the Hyacinth User Group at Columbia University Libraries. The group has members from many divisions of the library including Application Development, Cataloging, Digital Collections, Institutional Repository and Digital Conversion. These staff members have come together to administer Hyacinth, Columbia’s metadata and content management application. This presentation focuses on two case studies that show the value such an administrative group can bring to the shared use of software - implementing relatedness statements and managing controlled vocabularies. In the case of relatedness statements, the group navigated the varied expressions of relatedness required by different library divisions avoiding collisions and blocks to future development. Shared management of controlled vocabularies has required the group to produce robust documentation and develop clear user permissions to prevent alteration of terms as well as a remediation process for safely removing erroneous terms from the system and records. In the pursuit of these projects, we have seen the vital need for software developers and metadata practitioners to work together. Each has a unique perspective of the problems at hand. The developers have created a powerful tool to organize and publish metadata to numerous websites and digital collections. The Hyacinth User Group has developed the policies and communication flows to ensure the application’s diverse group of users can wield that tool effectively and efficiently

Testing Resource Description and Access (RDA) with Dublin Core

Resource Description and Access (RDA) is a new standard for describing all types of resources. Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign evaluated the guidelines by means of the Dublin Core element set during the U.S. National Libraries RDA Test, held from October to December 2010. This paper speaks to the issues which emerged during the test and what each institution did to address them. Test set-ups employed, and tools used, as well as a selection of problems encountered are described in the following summation of findings