Uniting Libraries And Archives: How An Integrated Metadata

Strategy Can Produce a Common Research Environment

Richard Gartner, King's College London

An explosion in digital library collections...

http://crln.acrl.org/content/71/6/286.short

Digitization of unique library collections will increase and require a larger share of resources..libraries often must reallocate fiscal resources to support these projects

The definition of the library will change as physical space is repurposed and virtual space expands

“many historical documents are available digitally...[but] are also separated from their historical and documentary context.”

Mark Vajcner

Natalis de Wailly (1841)

Respect des fonds

Working Group on Standards for Archival Description (WGSAD) (1989)

'archival description, that is ‘the process of capturing, collating, analysing, and organizing any information that serves to identify, manage, locate, and interpret the holdings of archival institutions and explain the contexts and records systems from which those holdings were selected’

to group, without mixing them with others, the archives (documents of every kind) created by or coming from an administration, establishment, person, or corporate body. (Michel Duchein)

For the researcher, archives and libraries are equally important resources.

To establish a coherent research environment which does not allow important material to become invisible it is important to devise a metadata strategy which unites both approaches.

‘Enquiry environment’disparate collections linked and interrogated in new ways

→ shared virtual research infrastructures.

Techniques data mining Visualizations online annotation

->all in multilingual environments.

CENDARI: what we aim to do

The metadata architecture

Medieval domain stresses the item

The metadata architecture

WWI domain stresses the collection

EAG

EAD

METS

MARC

William Shakespeare

HamletIs Creator Of

http://www.w3.org/People/EM83889

http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator

http://www.loc.gov/catalog_entries/839840982098

An RDF (Resource Description Framework) “triple”

Components can be re-used flexibly Complex semantic relationships between objects

and components are easily established Linking can take place at any level of granularity

Complexity of data often requires substantial developer time

Data modelling is very time-consuming Data cleansing and maintenance is often difficult Reusing and exchanging data has proved harder

than expected Archival robustness of RDF data?

"We have yet to see any real examples of benefit [from linked data for library metadata] emerging from JISC projects in this area, or elsewhere"

EAG

EAD

METS

MARC

Components can be re-used flexibly Complex semantic relationships between objects

and components are easily established Linking can take place at any level of granularity

Complexity of data often requires substantial developer time

Data modelling is very time-consuming Data cleansing and maintenance is often difficult Reusing and exchanging data has proved harder

than expected Archival robustness of RDF data?

‘Enquiry environment’disparate collections linked and interrogated in new ways

→ shared virtual research infrastructures.

Techniques data mining Visualizations online annotation

->all in multilingual environments.

CENDARI: what we aim to do

Thank you!

Any questions?

richard.gartner@kcl.ac.uk