metadata is catnip to digital scholars / jennifer schaffner
TRANSCRIPT
Metadata is Catnipto Digital Scholars
Jennifer Schaffner
RDA & Rare Materials SeminarEdinburghFriday 6th November 2015
Metadata is Catnipto Digital Scholars
Metadata is Catnipto Digital Scholars
Jennifer Schaffner
RDA & Rare Materials SeminarEdinburghFriday 6th November 2015
Metadata is Catnipto Digital Scholars
“Metadata is Catnip” RDA and Rare Materials Seminar
36 November 2015
documents.cerl.org/publications/cerl_papers_ii.pdf
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to scholars,“metadata” can…
• describe digital or physical objects• be any level of granularity• be automatically captured
(preferable)• be manually produced (of necessity)
6 November 2015
“Metadata is Catnip” RDA and Rare Materials Seminar
56 November 2015
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What Middletown Read:metadata structure, interface…
6 November 2015
www.bsu.edu/libraries/wmr/
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76 November 2015
www.english.qmul.ac.uk/drwilliams/portal.html
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“a research project”
6 November 2015
www.ustc.ac.uk
“Metadata is Catnip” RDA and Rare Materials Seminar
96 November 2015www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/orlando
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orlando.cambridge.org
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Early Novels Database (END)
6 November 2015
“Metadata is Catnip” RDA and Rare Materials Seminar
“conceived out of sheer frustration”
126 November 2015
ebba.english.ucsb.edu and ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
“Metadata is Catnip” RDA and Rare Materials Seminar
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Republic of Letters
6 November 2015
republicofletters.stanford.edu
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“expanding the Republic of Letters – India” Mitch Fraas
"Historical" texts and their circulation c. 1750-1800
mappingbooks.blogspot.com/2013/07/expanding-republic-of-letters-india-and.html
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Tamboti
6 November 2015
multilingual data architecture
kjc-sv016.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de:8080/exist/apps/tamboti/
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booktraces.org
6 November 2015
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observations so far…• scholars and academics doing their research…
– use catalogues and bibliographies
– create catalogues and bibliographies
– transcribe printed and handwritten catalogues and circulation records
– wish that they could do more (contribute, update, correct)
• scholars need and desire paratext…
– copy-specific metadata (bibliographic provenance)– relationships (archival context)
• one person’s bibliographic metadata is another person’s research dataset
• specific and circumscribed academic projects tend to grow larger
• frustrated scholars must reinvent the wheel
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for librarians…“metadata for all”
ScholarlyLibrariesArchivesMuseums
6 November 2015
DCRM
?
?
?
?
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• when to support?• when to collaborate?• and when to lead?
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CUL Incunabula Project before and after inc.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk
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Chronica Hungarorum Ratdolt: Augsburg, 1488
• 1590 • 1488 1488 • 1664 • 1542 • 1591 1640 • 1585 • 1560
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Cambridge University Libraries
“…our digital ambitions must be equally sensitive to current research trends…”
- Ed Potten, CUL
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www.linkedincunables.net
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to librarians, demos can…• prove the research value of metadata:
– tools for scholars, academics, and researchers– tools for paedogogy– increase access and use of rare books– unanticipated uses– new discoveries
• show monetary value of metadata – ($$ ££ €€)
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library director logic…?• library increasingly disintermediated from academics
• need programmatic support from central administration – £££ €€€ $$$
• demonstrate value of the library
• what is distinctive about this library
• valorise public purpose of rare and unique materials
the intersection of special collections and academics is…
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metadata that academics
make and use
• names (entities, authorities)• timelines (dates)• maps and geotags (place names, provenance)• annotations (provenance)• lash up with manuscripts and archives (finding aids)• lash up with digital, digitised and TEI (digital libraries)• biographies, prosopography (biographical dictionaries)• complete the oeuvre (catalogue raisonné)• relationships with contemporaries, correspondence,
translations (provenance, “context”)• who’s reading what (institutional records of library collections
and library lending)• links to academic articles (secondary sources)• integrate “transcribed” catalogues, lists, ledgers,
bibliographies (converting hidden, handwritten and print-only metadata, adding discoveries)
• multilingual sources and metadata, or at least “non-western” metadata for “non-western” sources (ahem…)
• holdings (yay) and circulation records (argh)• (insert more flavours of metadata here)• (insert unanticipated future research interests here)
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thank you!Jennifer Schaffner
please do not hesitate to pass along more
academic research projects
that use pools of library
and archives metadata
as “primary sources”
6 November 2015
thanks to OCLC Research, Jim Michalko, Ricky Erway,and the library directors and rare book librarianswhom I have consulted for guidance