BCC2010/MD/3
Report
from the ALCTS Metadata Interest Group
and
other metadata-related meetings
Jenn
Riley,
Chair, Metadata Subcommittee, MLA BCC
ALCTS Metadata
Interest Group (Formerly Networked Resources and Metadata
Interest Group)
Annual Meeting, June 27, 8:00-10:00 AM
The
ALCTS Metadata Interest Group (MIG) held its regular
business meeting, and invited two external speakers to discuss metadata
efforts
that expand into new areas. The first speaker was Rebecca Guenther, who
discussed the http://id.loc.gov
service, which
exposes LC-maintained controlled vocabularies as Linked Data. The
service
provides access to several different types of vocabularies, including
pick
lists, code lists, and thesauri. It was developed for a variety of
reasons:
facilitating the development and maintenance of LC vocabularies, making
the
vocabularies themselves openly available to both human and programmatic
users,
providing comprehensive information about the controlled terms in these
vocabularies, allowing LC to experiment with Semantic Web technologies
and
Linked Data, and exposing LC vocabularies to wider communities. LCSH
was posted
in the service in April 2009, and the TGM, MARC Relator Codes, and
other
vocabularies were added in April 2010. Bulk download of these
vocabularies is
also available in several serializations. Next steps include adding new
vocabularies such as language codes, country codes, various PREMIS
vocabularies, and LC name authorities; and an OWL representation of
MADS to
allow the specification of subject subdivisions, which the current SKOS
encoding cannot do.
The
second speaker was Sara Russell Gonzalez from the University
of Florida on the collaborative VIVO project. VIVO has several goals:
facilitating libraries’ involvement in the research process,
helping
researchers to find collaborators and stay abreast of new developments,
and
providing data on researcher activities to educational and grant
administrators. VIVO itself is an open source Semantic Web application
to build
researcher profiles. These profiles are built automatically by a
variety of
data sources, and can be updated manually by researchers themselves.
VIVO
operates on a library support model, using existing library skills and
infrastructure to feed data to the application. For representing
researcher
information, a core VIVO ontology has been developed, building on FOAF
and
BIBO.
Following
these presentations, a business meeting
was held. MIG officers serving
for the coming year are: Chair—Jennifer O'Brien Roper,
University of Virginia; Vice Chair—Michael
Dulock, University
of Colorado at Boulder; Program
Co-Chairs—Rhonda Marker, Rutgers University and
Amanda Harlan, Baylor
University; Publications Co-Chairs—Kevin
Clair, Pennsylvania State University Libraries and Shawn Averkamp,
University
of Alabama; Secretary—Mary
Aycock, University of Missouri—Columbia; Blog
Coordinator—Kristin Martin, University of
Illinois at Chicago;
CC:DA Liaison—Nathan
Putnam, George
Mason University; LITA Liaison—Susan
Cheney, Saint Joseph’s University.
The
MIG also sponsored the session “Converging Metadata
Standards in Cultural Institutions: Apples &
Oranges,” held June 26, 2010,
at 8 AM. This session covered metadata initiatives that cross library,
archive,
and museum boundaries. The first presentation was by Danielle Plummer,
Coordinator for the Texas Heritage Online (http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/tho/)
Project. This project provides training for staff members at
institutions
across Texas, from library special collections, archives and museums,
to
contribute metadata to a statewide digital resource delivery system.
Training
was done mainly in 2-day in person modules, with an instructor team
made up of
a professional trainer from Amigos and a practitioner.
Course modules were developed for digital
project planning and management basics, digital library systems and
applications, metadata standards and crosswalks, controlled vocabulary
and
thesaurus design, and digital preservation management. Work has begun
to
migrate the training content to an online instructional medium.
The
second speaker at the Apples & Oranges session was
Ching-Hsien Wang, Chief Information Officer at the Smithsonian
Institution.
Ching-Hsien described a “one-stop discovery system”
that provides access to
records for content throughout the various Smithsonian museums and
libraries.
The system provides access to 4.6 million records, 445,000 images, and
derives
from 40 different data sources. It features both a keyword search and a
controlled-vocabulary driven faceted browse. The system is built on the
premise
that the source data is designed according to the professional
traditions of
the unit that created it, and that these traditions need to be
respected. A
long processing queue normalizes metadata, and unfortunately it does
not appear
that the many scripts written to perform these tasks can be easily
reused by
other institutions.
The
third and final speaker at the Apples & Oranges
session was Joyce Chapman, Library Fellow at North Carolina State
University.
Joyce presented work she performed to study in detail the cost vs.
value of
various aspects of EAD creation, inspired by the ALCTS Task Force on
Cost/Value
Assessment of Bibliographic Control (http://connect.ala.org/node/106017).
She collected data on the time needed to generate abstract, bioghist,
scopecontent, subjects, and collection inventory data in EAD, and then
interviewed researchers to determine the relative value of these
elements in
relation to the FRBR Identify user task. While a few researchers valued
the
bioghist element, it was the lowest ranked option by researchers for
identification purposes. Collection inventories were the most expensive
but the
most valued, and abstract the second-most valued but least expensive.
This
research has some admitted drawbacks, for example only studying a
single user
task and the overlap in meaning of scopecontent and abstract in EAD.
This
methodology could be expanded to analyze other metadata formats and
other user
tasks.
The
Metadata Interest Group maintains a blog at which
summaries and links to presentation slides from other ALA meetings and
presentations relevant to metadata issues are listed. This blog has
recently
moved, and now may be found at http://www.alcts.ala.org/metadatablog/.
Presentation slides from MIG-sponsored sessions and additional
information may
be found in ALA Connect at http://connect.ala.org/node/65847.
ALCTS Preservation
and Reformatting Section (PARS), Audio Metadata Task Force
The
BCC Metadata Subcommittee in late 2009 and early 2010 partnered with
this Task
Force to produce an online resource “Metadata Standards and
Guidelines Relevant
to Digital Audio” (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/resources/preserv/audio_metadata.pdf). With the
release of this resource, the Task Force’s charge is largely
complete. The Task
Force held an informal lunch meeting at the ALA 2010 Annual Conference
to
discuss wrapping up loose ends. Members
believe the audio metadata standards document needs to have ongoing
review and
revision (either annually or semi-annually), and has asked the PARS Preservation
Standards & Practices Committee to assume ownership of this
document in to
the future for this purpose.
Task Force members will also look for opportunities to facilitate
knowledge and
use of this document, including sponsoring sessions at future ALA
conferences.
Other ALA Annual 2010
Sessions of Interest to MLA Members in the Area of Metadata
The
FRBR Interest Group met Friday, June 25, 2010, from 10:30
AM – Noon, with the following presentations:
Presentation
slides from the session may be found at http://presentations.ala.org/index.php?title=Friday%2C_June_25#FRBR_Interest_Group_Meeting.
The
MODS/MADS Editorial Committee sponsored a session
through LITA on MODS and MADS: Current Implementations and Future
Directions,
Sunday June 27, 2010, from 10:30 AM – Noon, with the
following presentations:
Return
to the 2010 Documents Menu
Return
to BCC Historical Documents Menu
Return
to BCC Home Page
Last updated August 17, 2010