Metadata Blog http://blogs.ala.org/nrmig.php en-US hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Open Access Digital Initiatives in the Humanities: Creation, Dissemination, Preservation http://blogs.ala.org/nrmig.php?title=open_access_digital_initiatives_in_the_h&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 2009-08-04T17:03:58Z haiyun ALA Annual 2009 ALA program organized by ACRL-LES at Annual Conference 2009 The panel explored the ways in which new media and digital technology were transforming how we do research and scholarship – and the place of the libraries in that transformation. All the presenters are all have background of English literature studies. As librarians and humanities faculty become increasingly involved in the creation and development of online resources, humanities librarians are strategically placed to use their knowledge, talents, and capabilities to create, organize, and exploit the resources. The presenters all involved with e-text creation and visualization projects, open-access journal publication, and resource development and discussed initiatives and issues in the burgeoning world of digital humanities. Digital humanities and humanities librarians, or, another day, another new thing Angela Courtney, Librarian for English Literatures, Indiana University, Bloomington Angela firstly discussed the definition of digital humanities. She referred to the book “A companion to digital humanities” edited by Susan Schreibman, etc. and the Digital humanities manifesto 2.0 published on the website of UCLA. As the manifesto states, digital Humanities is an array of convergent practices where print is no longer the only medium but digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social sciences. The Digital Humanities seeks to play an inaugural role to facilitate the formation of networks of knowledge production, exchange, and dissemination. And then she showed an experimental example of “Absalum, absalum! Electronic, Interactive! Chronology” by Stephen Railton, Dept of English, Univ of Virginia and Will Rourk, Digital Media Lab, Univ of Virginia. This resource is intended to use IT technology to help readers orient themselves inside the stories William Faulkner is telling in Absalom, Absalom! Angela then presented the Victorian women writers project, in which her home university, Indiana U got involved in. This project is to produce highly accurate transcriptions of works by British women writers of the 19th century. Angela introduced some features of this project, including the metadata standards, search and browse functions and keyword assignment. 18thConnect, a scholar-directed information architecture Laura Mandell, Professor of English Literature, Miami University of Ohio Laura mainly talked about 18thConnect, which is a collaborative initiative by the Universities of Illinois, Miami-Ohio, and Virginia for providing a comprehensive research environment of the long eighteenth century (1660-1800). In partnership with NINES, 18thConnect will build on the open source for digital humanities research--Collex and Juxta. Another thing about 18Connect is that, as NINES, it also aggregates materials from those commercial vendor but only institutions who are subscribers of those commercial databases have the access. Laura also stated that 18 Connect just was granted by National Center for Supercomputing Applications to use supercomputer time to run a parallelized optical character recognition (OCR) program on pages of images of 18th century printed texts, made available through its collaboration with Gale Group. This OCR software has been designed for recognizing the special print format of 18th century literature. By converting a vast archive of images into machine-readable texts, this project will provide a model for adapting OCR programs to field-specific problems that must be solved in order to preserve the full range of our cultural heritage. NINES, RaVoN and the Future of Academic Publishing Dino Franco Felluga, Associate Professor, Department of English, Purdue University Dino mainly talked about NINES, an open access digital humanities initiative. NINES is an initiative for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship. Dido firstly addressed the problems of current scholarly publishing. Commercial entities are ultimately concerned about profit; university presses are no longer driven exclusively by the intellectual value of the work but by what can sell; library acquisition are facing tighter budget because of the expensive subscriptions of e-resources. Based on the above problems, Dino posed a very positive attitude to open access. He stated that NINES reclaimed our own knowledge production, explored the emergent interpretive and social acts made possible by new technologies, established a coordinated network of peer-reviewed content and useful tools, decentralized scholarly work, allowed individuals and groups to work and archive scholarly materials in their own IT environments and at the same time integrate that work into a widely distributed network, provided content for free. NINES currently aggregate 404,268 objects, drawn from a variety of sources. Except MARC records, the majority of the research objects comes from free culture. NINES also aggregated all the Nineteenth-century articles archived by JSTOR and Project Muse, as well as collections by commercial enterprises like ProQuest and Gale. Now one can search all of above journals and databases from NINES, including full-text searching for all materials aggregated. The search engine, SOLR, allows faceted classification, so users can narrow their search by choosing certain facets. Folksonomy tagging allows objects to be dynamic and largely user-driven. The most exciting new feature of COLLEX is the ability now only to collect but also to exhibit and repurpose the objects in one’s “My NINES” collection. Finally, Dino talked about how did this impact university library. U of Virginia Library provides physical space and servers; NINES has inspired the library to develop a new open-source search interface; people in the NINES projects are playing important roles in digital research and implementation of the library. Over The Fence: Overcoming resistance to digital humanities Chad Curtis, Librarian for Literary Studies and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, New York University Chad talked his experience with digital humanities and open access from the point view of a subject and liaison librarian of humanities. He stated that “The library is a crucial partner in planning and envisioning the future of preserving, using, even creating scholarly resources.” This “requires the combined expertise of technical, professional, and scholarly personnel.” He mentioned the resistance of digital technology for humanities librarians. He believed no matter which media are being used, research is just research. He also addressed the three key points of the involvement: time, money and knowledge and how a humanities librarian to prepare himself for digital humanities. He said that time is an obstacle regardless of the task. While careful time management is the best solution, one will see how a solution more directly tied to money and knowledge helps balance this obstacle. Secondly, academia is fortunate that many research programmers share their open source products, which save money for developers and hardware. Finally, he listed some key IT technology which he believed was essential for humanities librarians, such as data modeling, web design, computer science, systems analysis and project management. He gave an good example for humanities librarians starting their own open access web resources, which he called personal sandbox, by installing free software including Sun’s VirtualBox (an operating system within your current operating system), TurnKey Linux (an operating system provided with Drupal, a content management software). The later one also provided other free tools, like MediaWiki WorkPress, or a LAMP stack to combine applications and develop freely. ALA program organized by ACRL-LES at Annual Conference 2009

The panel explored the ways in which new media and digital technology were transforming how we do research and scholarship – and the place of the libraries in that transformation. All the presenters are all have background of English literature studies. As librarians and humanities faculty become increasingly involved in the creation and development of online resources, humanities librarians are strategically placed to use their knowledge, talents, and capabilities to create, organize, and exploit the resources. The presenters all involved with e-text creation and visualization projects, open-access journal publication, and resource development and discussed initiatives and issues in the burgeoning world of digital humanities.

Digital humanities and humanities librarians, or, another day, another new thing

Angela Courtney, Librarian for English Literatures, Indiana University, Bloomington

Angela firstly discussed the definition of digital humanities. She referred to the book “A companion to digital humanities” edited by Susan Schreibman, etc. and the Digital humanities manifesto 2.0 published on the website of UCLA. As the manifesto states, digital Humanities is an array of convergent practices where print is no longer the only medium but digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social sciences. The Digital Humanities seeks to play an inaugural role to facilitate the formation of networks of knowledge production, exchange, and dissemination. And then she showed an experimental example of “Absalum, absalum! Electronic, Interactive! Chronology” by Stephen Railton, Dept of English, Univ of Virginia and Will Rourk, Digital Media Lab, Univ of Virginia. This resource is intended to use IT technology to help readers orient themselves inside the stories William Faulkner is telling in Absalom, Absalom! Angela then presented the Victorian women writers project, in which her home university, Indiana U got involved in. This project is to produce highly accurate transcriptions of works by British women writers of the 19th century. Angela introduced some features of this project, including the metadata standards, search and browse functions and keyword assignment.

18thConnect, a scholar-directed information architecture

Laura Mandell, Professor of English Literature, Miami University of Ohio

Laura mainly talked about 18thConnect, which is a collaborative initiative by the Universities of Illinois, Miami-Ohio, and Virginia for providing a comprehensive research environment of the long eighteenth century (1660-1800). In partnership with NINES, 18thConnect will build on the open source for digital humanities research--Collex and Juxta. Another thing about 18Connect is that, as NINES, it also aggregates materials from those commercial vendor but only institutions who are subscribers of those commercial databases have the access. Laura also stated that 18 Connect just was granted by National Center for Supercomputing Applications to use supercomputer time to run a parallelized optical character recognition (OCR) program on pages of images of 18th century printed texts, made available through its collaboration with Gale Group. This OCR software has been designed for recognizing the special print format of 18th century literature. By converting a vast archive of images into machine-readable texts, this project will provide a model for adapting OCR programs to field-specific problems that must be solved in order to preserve the full range of our cultural heritage.

NINES, RaVoN and the Future of Academic Publishing

Dino Franco Felluga, Associate Professor, Department of English, Purdue University

Dino mainly talked about NINES, an open access digital humanities initiative. NINES is an initiative for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship. Dido firstly addressed the problems of current scholarly publishing. Commercial entities are ultimately concerned about profit; university presses are no longer driven exclusively by the intellectual value of the work but by what can sell; library acquisition are facing tighter budget because of the expensive subscriptions of e-resources. Based on the above problems, Dino posed a very positive attitude to open access. He stated that NINES reclaimed our own knowledge production, explored the emergent interpretive and social acts made possible by new technologies, established a coordinated network of peer-reviewed content and useful tools, decentralized scholarly work, allowed individuals and groups to work and archive scholarly materials in their own IT environments and at the same time integrate that work into a widely distributed network, provided content for free. NINES currently aggregate 404,268 objects, drawn from a variety of sources. Except MARC records, the majority of the research objects comes from free culture. NINES also aggregated all the Nineteenth-century articles archived by JSTOR and Project Muse, as well as collections by commercial enterprises like ProQuest and Gale. Now one can search all of above journals and databases from NINES, including full-text searching for all materials aggregated. The search engine, SOLR, allows faceted classification, so users can narrow their search by choosing certain facets. Folksonomy tagging allows objects to be dynamic and largely user-driven. The most exciting new feature of COLLEX is the ability now only to collect but also to exhibit and repurpose the objects in one’s “My NINES” collection. Finally, Dino talked about how did this impact university library. U of Virginia Library provides physical space and servers; NINES has inspired the library to develop a new open-source search interface; people in the NINES projects are playing important roles in digital research and implementation of the library.

Over The Fence: Overcoming resistance to digital humanities

Chad Curtis, Librarian for Literary Studies and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, New York University

Chad talked his experience with digital humanities and open access from the point view of a subject and liaison librarian of humanities. He stated that “The library is a crucial partner in planning and envisioning the future of preserving, using, even creating scholarly resources.” This “requires the combined expertise of technical, professional, and scholarly personnel.” He mentioned the resistance of digital technology for humanities librarians. He believed no matter which media are being used, research is just research. He also addressed the three key points of the involvement: time, money and knowledge and how a humanities librarian to prepare himself for digital humanities. He said that time is an obstacle regardless of the task. While careful time management is the best solution, one will see how a solution more directly tied to money and knowledge helps balance this obstacle. Secondly, academia is fortunate that many research programmers share their open source products, which save money for developers and hardware. Finally, he listed some key IT technology which he believed was essential for humanities librarians, such as data modeling, web design, computer science, systems analysis and project management. He gave an good example for humanities librarians starting their own open access web resources, which he called personal sandbox, by installing free software including Sun’s VirtualBox (an operating system within your current operating system), TurnKey Linux (an operating system provided with Drupal, a content management software). The later one also provided other free tools, like MediaWiki WorkPress, or a LAMP stack to combine applications and develop freely.

]]> ALA Annual 2009: Write-Ups from Around the Internet http://blogs.ala.org/nrmig.php?title=ala_annual_2009_write_ups_from_around_th&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 2009-08-02T17:08:43Z kmarti ALA Annual 2009 Below is the round-up of write-ups around the Internet for ALA presentations that might be of interest to Metadata and Digital Librarians. Did I miss your write-up or presentations? Email me at kmarti@uic.edu and I will add it. Would you like to share your write-up of a conference on the blog? It's not too late! Contact me about that too. Friday Sessions 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/10 FRBR Interest Group Unit: ALCTS no write up yet 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM on 7/10 "Hot Topics" Forum: The Future of MARC Unit: ALCTS Links to Presentations from Cataloging Futures 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM on 07/10 Electronic Resources Management Interest Group Unit: ALCTS LITA Blog write-up Saturday Sessions 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11 Catalog Form and Function Interest Group discussion forum Unit: ALCTS Presentations posted at ALA Wiki 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11 Cataloging and Classification Research Interest Group Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS No write-up yet 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11 Electronic Resources Interest Group Location: Hilton in Continental B Unit: ALCTS 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11 Workflow Tools for Automating Metadata Creation and Maintenance Unit: ALCTS/LITA Write-up on Metadata Blog 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11 CRS College and Research Libraries Interest Group Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS No write-up yet 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/11 Catalog Management Interest Group Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS No write-up yet 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/11 Cataloging Norms Interest Group Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS Presentations on ALA Wiki 1:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11 Look Before You Leap: Taking RDA For a Test-Drive Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS Presentations on the ALA Wiki 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11 Emerging Technology Interest Group Unit: LITA Presentation from the OLE Project 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11 MARC Formats Interest Group Unit: ALCTS No write-up yet 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11 Giving Maps a Second Life with Digital Technologies Unit: ALA - Subunit: MAGERT No write-up yet 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11 Open Access Digital Initiatives in the Humanities: Creation, Dissemination, Preservation Unit: ACRL - Subunit: LES Write-up on Metadata Blog Write up from Re:Generations Sunday sessions 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/12 Digital Preservation Interest Group Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: PARS No write-up yet 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/12 Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group Discussion and Business Meeting Location: Hotel Intercontinental in St. Clair Unit: ALCTS Write-up on Metadata Blog 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/12 Continuing Resources Standards Update Forum Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS No write-up yet 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/12 Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: PARS Sarah Shreeves' presentation 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/12 Top Technology Trends Unit: LITA - Subunit: n/a Marshall's Top Tech Trends from LITA Blog Video of session from LITA Blog Write-up from Free-Range Librarian 1:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12 Catalog Use and Usability Studies: What Do They Show and How Should This Evidence Affect Our Decision-Making? Unit: ALCTS/RUSA No write-up yet 1:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12 The Future is Now: Global Authority Control Unit: LITA/ALCTS Presentations on the ALA Wiki Write-up from Lumagoo's Sphere 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12 You Got Me, Do You Like Me? Evaluating Next Generation Catalogs Unit: RUSA - Subunit: RSS No write-up yet 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12 Collecting for Digital Repositories: New Ways to Disseminate and Share Information Unit: ALCTS/ACRL Presentations on ALA Wiki 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12 OCLC From ONIX to MARC and Back Again: New Metadata Service Options at OCLC Unit: OCLC No write-up yet Monday sessions 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/13 From Legacy Data to Linked Data: Preparing Libraries for Web 3.0 Location: Hilton in Lake Ontario Unit: ALA - Subunit: GOVERNANCE Diane Hillman's presentation at Slideshare 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/13 Electronic Resource Management Systems: The Promise and Disappointment Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS Presentations on the ALA Wiki 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/13 Resuscitating the Catalog: Next-Generation Strategies for Keeping the Catalog Relevant Unit: ALCTS/LITA/RUSA - Subunit: n/a Write-up on LITA Blog Presentations on the ALA Wiki 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/13 Ex Libris: Continuing the Conversation: A Further Exploration of the Brave New World of Metadata Unit: Ex Libris Post on the Cataloguing Librarian includes link to Barbara Tillett's slides 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/13 OCLC Something for Everyone: How New Approaches to Metadata Management Enable Discovery Unit: OCLC No write-up yet 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/13 Continuing Resources Cataloging Update Forum Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS No write-up yet 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/13 The Ultimate Debate: Has Library 2.0 fulfilled its promise? Unit: LITA Write-up on LITA Blog Write-up on Infotoday Blog Write-up on Surf's Up Write-up on Librarian By Day 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/13 The Power of XML to Enhance Work Flow and Discovery Unit: ALCTS/LITA - Subunit: AS No write-up yet 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/13 Next Generation Catalog Interest Group Unit: LITA No write-up yet Posted by Kristin Martin Below is the round-up of write-ups around the Internet for ALA presentations that might be of interest to Metadata and Digital Librarians. Did I miss your write-up or presentations? Email me at kmarti@uic.edu and I will add it. Would you like to share your write-up of a conference on the blog? It's not too late! Contact me about that too.

Friday Sessions

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/10
FRBR Interest Group
Unit: ALCTS
no write up yet

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM on 7/10
"Hot Topics" Forum: The Future of MARC
Unit: ALCTS
Links to Presentations from Cataloging Futures

6:30 PM - 8:30 PM on 07/10
Electronic Resources Management Interest Group
Unit: ALCTS
LITA Blog write-up

Saturday Sessions

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11
Catalog Form and Function Interest Group discussion forum
Unit: ALCTS
Presentations posted at ALA Wiki

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11
Cataloging and Classification Research Interest Group
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
No write-up yet

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11
Electronic Resources Interest Group
Location: Hilton in Continental B
Unit: ALCTS

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11
Workflow Tools for Automating Metadata Creation and Maintenance
Unit: ALCTS/LITA
Write-up on Metadata Blog

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/11
CRS College and Research Libraries Interest Group
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS
No write-up yet

1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/11
Catalog Management Interest Group
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
No write-up yet

1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/11
Cataloging Norms Interest Group
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
Presentations on ALA Wiki

1:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11
Look Before You Leap: Taking RDA For a Test-Drive
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
Presentations on the ALA Wiki

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11
Emerging Technology Interest Group
Unit: LITA
Presentation from the OLE Project

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11
MARC Formats Interest Group
Unit: ALCTS
No write-up yet

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11
Giving Maps a Second Life with Digital Technologies
Unit: ALA - Subunit: MAGERT
No write-up yet

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/11
Open Access Digital Initiatives in the Humanities: Creation, Dissemination, Preservation
Unit: ACRL - Subunit: LES
Write-up on Metadata Blog
Write up from Re:Generations

Sunday sessions

8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/12
Digital Preservation Interest Group
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: PARS
No write-up yet

8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/12
Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group Discussion and Business Meeting
Location: Hotel Intercontinental in St. Clair
Unit: ALCTS
Write-up on Metadata Blog

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/12
Continuing Resources Standards Update Forum
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS
No write-up yet

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/12
Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: PARS
Sarah Shreeves' presentation

1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/12
Top Technology Trends
Unit: LITA - Subunit: n/a
Marshall's Top Tech Trends from LITA Blog
Video of session from LITA Blog
Write-up from Free-Range Librarian

1:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12
Catalog Use and Usability Studies: What Do They Show and How Should This Evidence Affect Our Decision-Making?
Unit: ALCTS/RUSA
No write-up yet

1:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12
The Future is Now: Global Authority Control
Unit: LITA/ALCTS
Presentations on the ALA Wiki
Write-up from Lumagoo's Sphere

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12
You Got Me, Do You Like Me? Evaluating Next Generation Catalogs
Unit: RUSA - Subunit: RSS
No write-up yet

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12
Collecting for Digital Repositories: New Ways to Disseminate and Share Information
Unit: ALCTS/ACRL
Presentations on ALA Wiki

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/12
OCLC From ONIX to MARC and Back Again: New Metadata Service Options at OCLC
Unit: OCLC
No write-up yet

Monday sessions

8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/13
From Legacy Data to Linked Data: Preparing Libraries for Web 3.0
Location: Hilton in Lake Ontario
Unit: ALA - Subunit: GOVERNANCE
Diane Hillman's presentation at Slideshare

8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/13
Electronic Resource Management Systems: The Promise and Disappointment
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS
Presentations on the ALA Wiki

8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 07/13
Resuscitating the Catalog: Next-Generation Strategies for Keeping the Catalog Relevant
Unit: ALCTS/LITA/RUSA - Subunit: n/a
Write-up on LITA Blog
Presentations on the ALA Wiki

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/13
Ex Libris: Continuing the Conversation: A Further Exploration of the Brave New World of Metadata
Unit: Ex Libris
Post on the Cataloguing Librarian includes link to Barbara Tillett's slides

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 07/13
OCLC Something for Everyone: How New Approaches to Metadata Management Enable Discovery
Unit: OCLC
No write-up yet

1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/13
Continuing Resources Cataloging Update Forum
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS
No write-up yet

1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/13
The Ultimate Debate: Has Library 2.0 fulfilled its promise?
Unit: LITA
Write-up on LITA Blog
Write-up on Infotoday Blog
Write-up on Surf's Up
Write-up on Librarian By Day

1:30 PM - 3:00 PM on 07/13
The Power of XML to Enhance Work Flow and Discovery
Unit: ALCTS/LITA - Subunit: AS
No write-up yet

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 07/13
Next Generation Catalog Interest Group
Unit: LITA
No write-up yet

Posted by Kristin Martin

]]> Metadata Interest Group Program http://blogs.ala.org/nrmig.php?title=metadata_interest_group_program&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 2009-07-17T02:59:32Z kmarti ALA Annual 2009 Metadata Interest Group Program, Sunday July 12, 2009, 8-10 AM Metadata Librarians Today: Roles and Competencies Myung-Ja Han, Assistant Professor and Metadata Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Patricia Hswe, Project Manager for NDIIPP Partner Projects, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Powerpoint presentation The study examined position descriptions for catalog librarians and metadata librarians from 2000-2008. It looked at job descriptions for both metadata librarian and cataloging librarian positions, focusing on preferred and required qualifications. It asked the following research questions: What is the required skill set in the position descriptions? What changes/differences can be detected over the time period of the study? What are differences between cataloging librarians and metadata librarians with regard to qualifications? Review of the literature indicated that professional catalog librarians are involved in instruction and training, database management, and developing standards for cataloging. Catalog librarians need to know about mark up language and schemas The first position with title “metadata librarian” appeared in late 1990s, probably because of increased non-book resources and libraries trying to provide access to them. Four key functions of metadata librarians are collaboration, research, education, standards development. Position descriptions were analyzed with an Excel spreadsheet. Some interesting findings: The number of metadata librarian positions increasing, while cataloging librarian positions decreasing Most jobs are in research universities and in technical services departments Job titles for “metadata librarians”: 21 different titles with term “metadata”; 48 of 86 had title “metadata librarian”; Recent surge in “metadata” appearing in title Catalog librarians position descriptions demonstrates shift in responsibility from original cataloging to coordinating descriptive activities 96% of metadata librarian positions called for MLS degree (many allowed equivalent), compared to 100% of cataloging librarian positions requiring MLS. Competencies for metadata librarians included knowledge of metadata standards (MARC most common, then Dublin Core), XML, knowing OAI and managing OAI provider. Cataloging librarian positions emphasized foreign languages, cataloging standards, bibliographic utilities, and cataloging experience. There was less emphasis on computers and XML. There was a broader range of knowledge and experiences required for metadata librarians. For work-related skills, metadata and cataloging librarian positions are almost the same: good communication, team environment, but "Willingness to Learn" only appeared in Metadata librarian positions Desired qualifications for Metadata librarian positions included data exchange protocols, xml, xslt Desired qualifications for both types of positions mirrored the required qualifications of the other type of position. Metadata librarian positions requested knowledge of foreign language and knowledge of bibliographic utilities, while cataloging librarian positions requested familiarity with metadata standards and non-book format cataloging. Questions for future study: Is the metadata librarian position replacing the cataloging librarian position or is it a new position? What are the metadata librarian’s responsibilities? How does LIS education evolve to meet changing requirements? Do the requirements for the position vary by the size of the staff of the institution? Do requirements change if the positions is for a fixed term or permanent? Discussion of Qualifications for Metadata Librarians After the presentation a discussion of qualifications and LIS education was led by Steve Miller, Senior Lecturer, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee School of Information Studies. [Rather than try to attribute each answer to a specific person, I’ve tried to group like comments underneath each question.] Question: Where did people learn the skills they needed for their position? Many people said they began their career as a cataloger and moved into position. They learned by taking workshops, reading, talking to colleagues, and learning project management. Self-training Working in digital initiatives while going to school, or taking internships in digital projects. Important skills learned: * Connecting the metadata design to the systems design * Knowing what the features of the element set needs to be included Having the “ability to learn” Taking computer science classes at grad school: digital publishing, xml. Certificate in web design through community college Workshop on data curation Taking classes in MLS program at Drexel Some other thoughts: It’s challenging to identify opportunities for professional development while balancing needs of the local institution and the need to share metadata outside of the organization Most people moved into metadata from something else: cataloging, programming, or digital initiatives. Does the age of the librarian affected how he/she has approached the job? Institutions are interested in bringing into new and adaptable people into the library—thinking about the big picture and how things are changing. The liaison role for manager-style metadata librarians is absolutely key Project management skills are needed by metadata librarians Should metadata librarian be a manager or a practitioner? * The room was evenly split between manager-styles jobs and practitioner-style jobs Metadata librarians have to be diplomatic about stepping on someone else’s territory. What did you learn in your MLIS program? Practicums and work experience were stressed over formal classes. Rutgers offers a practicum where students have a chance to work on digital production from start to finish—-selection, scanning, metadata, quality control, publishing—-this is seen as particularly valuable There is the need to combine formal education with practical experience to allow students to understand the application of what they are learning. There needs to be more opportunities to use tools and learn metadata skills. Metadata standards class and systems analysis class provide a good background. Keep classes with a user focus Grant writing experiences The program concluded with a business meeting. Notes by Kristin Martin Metadata Interest Group Program, Sunday July 12, 2009, 8-10 AM

Metadata Librarians Today: Roles and Competencies
Myung-Ja Han, Assistant Professor and Metadata Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Patricia Hswe, Project Manager for NDIIPP Partner Projects, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Powerpoint presentation

The study examined position descriptions for catalog librarians and metadata librarians from 2000-2008. It looked at job descriptions for both metadata librarian and cataloging librarian positions, focusing on preferred and required qualifications.

It asked the following research questions:

  • What is the required skill set in the position descriptions?
  • What changes/differences can be detected over the time period of the study?
  • What are differences between cataloging librarians and metadata librarians with regard to qualifications?

Review of the literature indicated that professional catalog librarians are involved in instruction and training, database management, and developing standards for cataloging. Catalog librarians need to know about mark up language and schemas The first position with title “metadata librarian” appeared in late 1990s, probably because of increased non-book resources and libraries trying to provide access to them. Four key functions of metadata librarians are collaboration, research, education, standards development.

Position descriptions were analyzed with an Excel spreadsheet. Some interesting findings:

  • The number of metadata librarian positions increasing, while cataloging librarian positions decreasing
  • Most jobs are in research universities and in technical services departments
  • Job titles for “metadata librarians”: 21 different titles with term “metadata”; 48 of 86 had title “metadata librarian”;
    Recent surge in “metadata” appearing in title
  • Catalog librarians position descriptions demonstrates shift in responsibility from original cataloging to coordinating descriptive activities
  • 96% of metadata librarian positions called for MLS degree (many allowed equivalent), compared to 100% of cataloging librarian positions requiring MLS.
  • Competencies for metadata librarians included knowledge of metadata standards (MARC most common, then Dublin Core), XML, knowing OAI and managing OAI provider.
  • Cataloging librarian positions emphasized foreign languages, cataloging standards, bibliographic utilities, and cataloging experience. There was less emphasis on computers and XML.
  • There was a broader range of knowledge and experiences required for metadata librarians.
  • For work-related skills, metadata and cataloging librarian positions are almost the same: good communication, team environment, but "Willingness to Learn" only appeared in Metadata librarian positions
  • Desired qualifications for Metadata librarian positions included data exchange protocols, xml, xslt
  • Desired qualifications for both types of positions mirrored the required qualifications of the other type of position. Metadata librarian positions requested knowledge of foreign language and knowledge of bibliographic utilities, while cataloging librarian positions requested familiarity with metadata standards and non-book format cataloging.

Questions for future study:

  • Is the metadata librarian position replacing the cataloging librarian position or is it a new position?
  • What are the metadata librarian’s responsibilities?
  • How does LIS education evolve to meet changing requirements?
  • Do the requirements for the position vary by the size of the staff of the institution?
  • Do requirements change if the positions is for a fixed term or permanent?

Discussion of Qualifications for Metadata Librarians
After the presentation a discussion of qualifications and LIS education was led by Steve Miller, Senior Lecturer, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee School of Information Studies.

[Rather than try to attribute each answer to a specific person, I’ve tried to group like comments underneath each question.]

Question: Where did people learn the skills they needed for their position?

  • Many people said they began their career as a cataloger and moved into position. They learned by taking workshops, reading, talking to colleagues, and learning project management.
  • Self-training
  • Working in digital initiatives while going to school, or taking internships in digital projects. Important skills learned:
  • * Connecting the metadata design to the systems design
  • * Knowing what the features of the element set needs to be included
  • Having the “ability to learn”
  • Taking computer science classes at grad school: digital publishing, xml.
  • Certificate in web design through community college
  • Workshop on data curation
  • Taking classes in MLS program at Drexel

Some other thoughts:

  • It’s challenging to identify opportunities for professional development while balancing needs of the local institution and the need to share metadata outside of the organization
  • Most people moved into metadata from something else: cataloging, programming, or digital initiatives.
  • Does the age of the librarian affected how he/she has approached the job?
  • Institutions are interested in bringing into new and adaptable people into the library—thinking about the big picture and how things are changing.
  • The liaison role for manager-style metadata librarians is absolutely key
  • Project management skills are needed by metadata librarians
  • Should metadata librarian be a manager or a practitioner?
  • * The room was evenly split between manager-styles jobs and practitioner-style jobs
  • Metadata librarians have to be diplomatic about stepping on someone else’s territory.

What did you learn in your MLIS program?

  • Practicums and work experience were stressed over formal classes. Rutgers offers a practicum where students have a chance to work on digital production from start to finish—-selection, scanning, metadata, quality control, publishing—-this is seen as particularly valuable
  • There is the need to combine formal education with practical experience to allow students to understand the application of what they are learning.
  • There needs to be more opportunities to use tools and learn metadata skills.
  • Metadata standards class and systems analysis class provide a good background.
  • Keep classes with a user focus
  • Grant writing experiences

The program concluded with a business meeting.

Notes by Kristin Martin

]]> Workflow Tools for Automating Metadata Creation and Maintenance http://blogs.ala.org/nrmig.php?title=workflow_tools_for_automating_metadata_c&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 2009-07-16T20:20:59Z saideng ALA Annual 2009 Workflow Tools for Automating Metadata Creation and Maintenance Saturday, July 11th, from 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon. Sponsored by ALCTS, co-sponsored by LITA. As digital projects become less peripheral and more integral to library operations, institutions must begin to address the implications of this change. With the increasing amount of digital content libraries are expected to create and maintain, data curation has emerged as a key objective. Intended for librarians who are involved with the development and management of metadata, this session will present examples of current work and discussion opportunities for collaborative development of tools among institutions. Slides available at ALA Conference Materials Archive. Herding Cats Ann Caldwell, Coordinator, Digital Production Services, Brown University. “Herding cats” seems like a fascinating title. As Caldwell explained, she spent lots of time working with faculty. Besides one-to-one basis meetings, she recently worked with the entire engineering division to assist their re-accreditation process. During this process, a set of tools were developed to allow faculty and users to easily contribute digital objects to Brown’s repository. (In the accreditation case, the “cats” may also refer to the digital objects, “materials needed to be deposited for the accreditation team: syllabus/outline, website, homework, lab reports and graded student work, project and graded student work, exams and graded student work and student assessments…”) The set of tools include a file uploading folder system, a MODS editor and a file tracking system. Caldwell emphasized two problems in dealing with digital objects in Brown and the tools developed to tackle these problems. The first one is to keep track of materials. The solution is “Project Manager”, a previously developed system that can help track the engineering accreditation materials as well. This pretty sophisticated tool “tracks projects, equipment, software, users, as well as processes”. The second problem is to create metadata which is not a problem for digital services but for faculty and bibliographers. They wanted to create a user-friendly metadata editing interface that can hide the xml encoding. The result is a MODS editor: it can list a couple of fields including required fields, add restrictions to the names (e.g. define type: personal, corporate, conference and the role) and to the date, and allow viewing of the raw xml file. Before metadata can be added, they built a file uploading folder system to assist file deposit. The professors can create communities and have their personal folders. An example of a community can be all the classes a professor teaches. She discussed the project workflow including both behind the scene and in front of the scene processes. The first half can be summarized as: authentication, user uploading file, “item digitized” and recorded in the tracking system, JHOVE validating the file and MIX record created, tracking system marking “metadata created”, a bundle folder created, and MODS record saved to this bundle folder. Now the bundle is ready to load. An API program will automate file uploading and allow querying of the folder. Next, the bundle will be scripted into a METS record. Currently they are developing a Fedora ingester “that will suck in the METS record and spit out a FoXML record” to create the Fedora object. Finally, the system will “detect new Fedora object and automatically update SOLR index”. Caldwell indicated that the Engineering Department will continue using the system to deposit their digital materials for future accreditation due to the success of the project, and other departments might try the same in the future. Using Schematron for Analyzing Conformance to Best Practices for EAD, TEI, and MODS(and some other thoughts on workflow tools) Jenn Riley, Metadata Librarian, Indiana University Digital Library Program. Riley works with System design and programmers. She helps to design the system and one of her visions is to make metadata creation systems work well. Her experiment is an example of those tools that could improve workflow in a larger environment. She first provided some context on why they implement Schematron to analyze file conformance against guidelines. She suggested that one of the biggest challenges in text encoding is metadata consistency, a component of quality. While it is easier to make data centric xml (e.g. MODS, DC…) consistent (because you already have the fields and you can decide what to put in), it is much harder to encode document centric xml (e.g. EAD, TEI...) consistently. In the latter case, the text is available already and needs to be marked up. At Indiana University Libraries, they do lots of TEI and EAD encoding. They work with xml directly instead of using Archivist’s Toolkit. There are some tools available to help achieve consistency, such as schema validation in XML editor, tag libraries, xml templates, examples, workflow documentations and guidelines. In developing the Schematron plug-in, they got inspiration from RLG EAD report card, which takes EAD guidelines and defines them in a machine readable way. It is an online tool downloadable to a server or a desktop, and it will report problems of the xml documents against those guidelines. Riley elaborated on the Schematron plug-in in Indiana University Libraries and how it works. They added Schematron checks into the xml editor Oxygen and check files against their local guidelines. The schematron technology was wrapped as a Java plug-in in Oxygen. They call it XTF Validator. Actually it only performs one additional layer of validation. She showed some of the errors and warnings produced by the validator and said that the correct expressions could be copied and pasted to the original xml file. In her TEI poem sample, the plug-in reports that the page break needs to have an id attribute and the id attribute must match a certain pattern. She further explained how schemetron technology works and how to implement the package. Schematron is an xml assertion language, and it can make an assertion on how an xml document should look like. It organizes into patterns, patterns have rules, and rules have context (e.g. an EAD header). Assertions exist within rules. A user can define rules and tests which were written in XPath language and the tests will generate error reports. The schemetron website is at http://www.schematron.com and the software is downloadable. It runs under XSLT 1.0 and 2.0 processors, both of which include a set of stylesheets running in sequence. The result is a schematron validator file. When running the instance document against the validator file, an xml report will be produced. This report can also be rendered as html pages and several reports can be combined on a repository level. After showing Indiana University’s experiment with Schematron, Riley put Schematron in a larger context and showed an example from DLF Aquifer. DLF collects MODS from different institutions and has guidelines for those MODS files. They come up with levels of adoption (and requirements) and make the guidelines machine readable. An interface using schematron technology was created for contributors to check their records. Finally, Riley discussed some general issues related to metadata workflow and tools. For example, what should new workflow look like? She emphasized on automating, streamlining and validating. She suggested that tools should be configurable, modular, connected with other tools and sharable among different institutions and environments. She also touched on some related issues such as usability of the cataloging tools and user interfaces. Workflow Tools for Automating Metadata Creation and Maintenance
Saturday, July 11th, from 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 noon. Sponsored by ALCTS, co-sponsored by LITA.

As digital projects become less peripheral and more integral to library
operations, institutions must begin to address the implications of this
change. With the increasing amount of digital content libraries are
expected to create and maintain, data curation has emerged as a key
objective. Intended for librarians who are involved with the
development and management of metadata, this session will present
examples of current work and discussion opportunities for
collaborative development of tools among institutions.

Slides available at ALA Conference Materials Archive.

Herding Cats
Ann Caldwell, Coordinator, Digital Production Services, Brown University.

“Herding cats” seems like a fascinating title. As Caldwell explained,
she spent lots of time working with faculty. Besides one-to-one basis
meetings, she recently worked with the entire engineering division to
assist their re-accreditation process. During this process, a set of tools
were developed to allow faculty and users to easily contribute digital
objects to Brown’s repository. (In the accreditation case, the “cats”
may also refer to the digital objects, “materials needed to be
deposited for the accreditation team: syllabus/outline, website,
homework, lab reports and graded student work, project and graded
student work, exams and graded student work and student
assessments…”) The set of tools include a file uploading folder system,
a MODS editor and a file tracking system.

Caldwell emphasized two problems in dealing with digital objects in
Brown and the tools developed to tackle these problems. The first one
is to keep track of materials. The solution is “Project Manager”, a
previously developed system that can help track the engineering
accreditation materials as well. This pretty sophisticated tool “tracks
projects, equipment, software, users, as well as processes”. The
second problem is to create metadata which is not a problem for
digital services but for faculty and bibliographers. They wanted to
create a user-friendly metadata editing interface that can hide the xml
encoding. The result is a MODS editor: it can list a couple of fields
including required fields, add restrictions to the names (e.g. define
type: personal, corporate, conference and the role) and to the date,
and allow viewing of the raw xml file. Before metadata can be added,
they built a file uploading folder system to assist file deposit. The
professors can create communities and have their personal folders.
An example of a community can be all the classes a professor teaches.

She discussed the project workflow including both behind the scene
and in front of the scene processes. The first half can be summarized
as: authentication, user uploading file, “item digitized” and recorded
in the tracking system, JHOVE validating the file and MIX record
created, tracking system marking “metadata created”, a bundle folder
created, and MODS record saved to this bundle folder. Now the
bundle is ready to load. An API program will automate file uploading
and allow querying of the folder. Next, the bundle will be scripted into
a METS record. Currently they are developing a Fedora ingester “that
will suck in the METS record and spit out a FoXML record” to create
the Fedora object. Finally, the system will “detect new Fedora object
and automatically update SOLR index”.

Caldwell indicated that the Engineering Department will continue
using the system to deposit their digital materials for future
accreditation due to the success of the project, and other
departments might try the same in the future.

Using Schematron for Analyzing Conformance to Best Practices for EAD, TEI, and MODS(and some other thoughts on workflow tools)
Jenn Riley, Metadata Librarian, Indiana University Digital Library Program.

Riley works with System design and programmers. She helps to design the system and one of her visions is to make metadata creation systems work well. Her experiment is an example of those tools that could improve workflow in a larger environment.

She first provided some context on why they implement Schematron to analyze file conformance against guidelines. She suggested that one of the biggest challenges in text encoding is metadata consistency, a component of quality. While it is easier to make data centric xml (e.g. MODS, DC…) consistent (because you already have the fields and you can decide what to put in), it is much harder to encode document centric xml (e.g. EAD, TEI...) consistently. In the latter case, the text is available already and needs to be marked up. At Indiana University Libraries, they do lots of TEI and EAD encoding. They work with xml directly instead of using Archivist’s Toolkit. There are some tools available to help achieve consistency, such as schema validation in XML editor, tag libraries, xml templates, examples, workflow documentations and guidelines. In developing the Schematron plug-in, they got inspiration from RLG EAD report card, which takes EAD guidelines and defines them in a machine readable way. It is an online tool downloadable to a server or a desktop, and it will report problems of the xml documents against those guidelines.

Riley elaborated on the Schematron plug-in in Indiana University Libraries and how it works. They added Schematron checks into the xml editor Oxygen and check files against their local guidelines. The schematron technology was wrapped as a Java plug-in in Oxygen. They call it XTF Validator. Actually it only performs one additional layer of validation. She showed some of the errors and warnings produced by the validator and said that the correct expressions could be copied and pasted to the original xml file. In her TEI poem sample, the plug-in reports that the page break needs to have an id attribute and the id attribute must match a certain pattern.

She further explained how schemetron technology works and how to implement the package. Schematron is an xml assertion language, and it can make an assertion on how an xml document should look like. It organizes into patterns, patterns have rules, and rules have context (e.g. an EAD header). Assertions exist within rules. A user can define rules and tests which were written in XPath language and the tests will generate error reports. The schemetron website is at http://www.schematron.com and the software is downloadable. It runs under XSLT 1.0 and 2.0 processors, both of which include a set of stylesheets running in sequence. The result is a schematron validator file. When running the instance document against the validator file, an xml report will be produced. This report can also be rendered as html pages and several reports can be combined on a repository level.

After showing Indiana University’s experiment with Schematron, Riley put Schematron in a larger context and showed an example from DLF Aquifer. DLF collects MODS from different institutions and has guidelines for those MODS files. They come up with levels of adoption (and requirements) and make the guidelines machine readable. An interface using schematron technology was created for contributors to check their records.

Finally, Riley discussed some general issues related to metadata workflow and tools. For example, what should new workflow look like? She emphasized on automating, streamlining and validating. She suggested that tools should be configurable, modular, connected with other tools and sharable among different institutions and environments. She also touched on some related issues such as usability of the cataloging tools and user interfaces.

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