karate librarian

LOD-LAM Tools

2011-05-29T20:00:00.004-05:00

For the LOD-LAM community, here are resources gathered by the European Library Automation Group:

Introduction to Linked Data & Tools

RDF
RDF stands for Resource Description Framework and are the semantic web (W3C) standards.

SPARQL
SPARQL is a query language for RDF.

Lee FeigenbaumSPARQL cheatsheet
Lee Feigenbaum, Eric Prud’hommeaux SPARQL by example
Dave Beckett Introduction to RDF query with SPARQL
SPARQL specification SPARQL specification

Linked Data

Tim Berners-Lee. Linked data : design issues
Chris Bizer, Richard Cyganiak, Tom Heath. How to publish linked data on the Web
Tom Heath, Christian Bizer Linked data: evolving the Web into a global data space
Mike Bergman. The nature of connectedness
David Weinberger. The morality of links
Focused help:

Some Fine Questions

What constitutes data worth linking to?
How to find datasets suitable for interlinking?
How to automatically discover linkable data without human intervention?
How to make my dataset worth linking to?
How to encourage others to link to my data?

Linked Open Data - Libraries, Archives, Museums

2011-05-29T19:16:00.000-05:00

If there's one truly ahead-of-the-game area that librarians and archivists can claim, it's data consistency. Consistency and name authority files will propel libraries into deeper semantic engagement. Museums, archives & historical societies will vary and, in some cases, be more difficult, and possibly impossible (???) to engage with.

But, the value of museum & archive collections is HUGE.

That's the interest of Linked Open Data - Libraries, Archives, Museums (LOD-LAM).

The work of @musebrarian and the good folks building the Open-Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) could be one answer, but moving everyone into that standardized framework might be like pushing a boulder up a cliff.

How can we work with collections as they are?

Google Scholar abandoned OAI-PMH (a traditional library standard for integrating collections) in favor of using sitemaps and metadata embedded in HTML.

But, this is just one approach to organizing data and doesn't include crawling, indexing and ranking or other SEO & data-mining tactics.

My two cents in reply to @musebrarian's questions re: should we build LOD onto of OAI-PMH, I say absolutely. We should leverage all work that's been done and look for solutions to engage the wonkie, disorganized collections.

After working with data from many county historical societies and normalizing it to be exposed in a single portal, I can't help but wonder, is there a solution that doesn't require normalization of collections?

Content strategy wordlized

2011-02-17T21:31:00.000-06:00

Partner for Collection Access. Gitty Up!

2010-07-29T09:24:00.003-05:00

Libraries, archives and museums everywhere are struggling to get their collections online. Working with the county historical societies in Minnesota was testament to this barrier. Some mini organizations are able to use Omeka and other free web software -- but the barriers to entry, even with free software, are still too much.

This is why models like the Minnesota Digital Library are a great solution! County historical societies can send their physical collections of images, maps, etc. to participating institutions, they are given metadata templates to help guide their data input, and then the MDL puts their content online.

This is also why data consortia like the Great Rivers Network are hugely beneficial. The GRN then comes along and crawls the MDL's site to display MDL results on the GRN site, the Minnesota History Center site and the participating organization's website (if they have one)!

Daily, on library and archive blogs, I read about the trials and tribulations collection institutions are having mounting their collections online. Partnerships are key and the access to the collections partnerships garner is a huge benefit to the collection organization.

One of the most widely used tool for getting collections online is DSpace.

Another method, widely used by museums is ContentDM.

These tools are the start to bridging the gap collection organizations have to getting their content out there. But, they're still lacking the sophistication and reach that the collections deserve. What will fill the gap? What do collections need?

Coming Soon..... OCR Lessons Learned

2010-05-10T10:18:00.002-05:00

In less than one month we created access to the content in a collection that had been inaccessible for 37 years simply by scanning the news indexes and OCRing the images. The OCR is excellent and now we can search the collection.

Coming soon: Work-flow, tools and lessons learned.....

Ready...Set...ARCHIVE!! It's Personal Archiving Day~~

2010-05-10T10:14:00.004-05:00

The Library of Congress has proclaimed that May 10th is now Personal Archiving Day. Here's what they're offering:

Pass It On: Personal Archiving Day at the Library of Congress Digital Preservation News

Memories should last a lifetime and be passed on to future generations. Advice on how to safeguard precious digital and traditional photos, documents, recordings and more will be presented at Pass It On: Personal Archiving Day at the Library of Congress.

Library staff will discuss practical strategies for preserving personal collections from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday, May 10, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are needed.

The Library's preservation experts will talk directly with individuals about managing their materials in all formats-everything from e-mail to home movies to digital photographs and recorded sound. For security reasons, visitors are asked not to bring their collection materials to the Library; no appraisals will be provided. For information about visiting the Library, go to www.loc.gov/visit/.

Pass It On: Personal Archiving Day at the Library of Congress celebrates the first national Preservation Week (May 9-15), www.ala.org/preservationweek/. It is sponsored by Library of Congress, the American Library Association (ALA), the Institute for Museum and Library Services and partner organizations. This joint initiative highlights libraries and other collecting institutions as good sources of preservation information.

The Library of Congress' Personal Archiving Day is co-sponsored by the Library's Office of Strategic Initiatives and Library Services.

Dayreels are Searchable!!!!!!

2010-04-29T11:23:00.004-05:00

After a silly amount of work, MPR's news Dayreel listings from 1972-1996 are now SEARCHABLE!!!!!

MPR Dayreels

Prior to digitizing these dayreel sheets, the only access to the content was to pull a reel off the shelf and read the attached sheet. Not to easy to find what's on 36,000 reels!

Yay MPR Archivists!!!!

Pulitzer Winner T.J. Stiles Heralds Newspaper Digitization

2010-04-13T12:05:00.002-05:00

Pulitzer winner T.J. Stiles wins the 2010 'Biography' category for his book "The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt." In an interview with MPR's Cathy Wurzer, Stiles heralds newspaper digitization as his source for the creative analysis that gave his book such original propulsion!

Check out the Library of Congress National Digital Newspaper Digitization project Chronicling America

Digital Archivist at Minnesota Public Radio | American Public Media

2010-04-02T21:51:00.001-05:00

I'm delighted to say that I'm in my 3rd month at MPR as their Digital Archivist. Here's their archive situation.

-36,000 reels stored in two locations
-100,000 records stored in a digital media archive that has little, if no, interoperability
-loads of other types of unprocessed old media
-70 hours of programming coming in a week
-two (now) full-time archivists and a 30 hour a week digitizer (for at risk reels-- temporary)

Goal: digitize like mad, clean, clean clean, and get as much of the archive that's not online on the web..!

Up till now, the company policy has been to archive broadcast versions of content, but, there's loads of raw tape, interesting, valuable, raw tape roaming around. We're looking to harness it.

Also, no web data is being actively archived. It's not being deleted, but there's no system or strategy to archive it. We're looking into DAMs and other, more interoperable, archive solutions.

Happily digging in!

Is this a sign?

2009-10-16T12:47:00.001-05:00

LIBGIG has posted a job on Twitter advertising two Human Resources positions. I see that they are posting the position on behalf of Library Associates Companies but I wonder what these positions have to do with librarians. Are librarians so desperate for jobs that they are taking administrative positions.

This has been my experience the past few years. Since moving to MN, I've applied for every librarian position within a 50 mile radius and have not had a single interview. I'm working as a Program Assistant at the Minnesota Historical Society, which is a great place to work and I'm now doing collection work, but I think there's a real question about the future of librarian jobs in the workforce.

I was researching job trends and saw predictions that librarian jobs are on the decline.

Celebrate Cronkite --Thanks to YouTube

2009-07-22T14:21:00.000-05:00

Walter Cronkite inspires in this clip preserved by CBS and distributed on YouTube

Digital Preservation Sound Off

2009-07-17T16:21:00.001-05:00

Calling all librarians, archivists and preservationists: In this increasingly customizable web world, should be concerned about preserving individual’s and group/subject pages on Twitter, Facebook, etc.?

I have heard good arguements against the need to preserve individuals pages. TeachStreet’s Dave Shappell thinks that these networking tools are mostly noise and that the important stuff that comes out of them will surface in news articles, books, and other records that we librarians will eventually get around to preserving as the influence will be felt elsewhere.

I disagree with Dave and think the Iran riot phenononon on Twitter is an example of the need to find a way to dynamically preserve influential pages.

Many questions:

1. What to preserve? How to pick the subjects & people pages to save?

2. How to preserve?

3. Rights, rights, and more rights..

4. Who should do this?

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Media Archives in the US

2009-07-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

Media organizations have typically been either behind or completely out to lunch when it comes to organizing and maintaining their collections.

However, here are some that are working on it:

National Public Radio: They are doing an awesome job! They did get into a wonky agreement with the Library of Congress in the early 1970s regarding their Arts and Cultural programming. Therefore, the tape of all Arts programming is held in Culpepper, VA at the LOCs Recorded Sound division (my dream place to work!). NPR does pay 50 smackeroos a reel and wait about 2 weeks to access their content. But hey, the LOC has preserved it and they’ve done a fine job.

All of NPRs other content is either stored at “The Mothership” at 635 Mass. Ave in Washington, DC, where they’ve put in place a lovely cold storage facility. They bake reels there and transfer them to CD. They are also doing a magnificant job of cataloging their content and have a handful of full-time catalogers and other specialized librarians to maintain the collection. Some of the collection is also in storage at the University of Maryland.

The advantage to spending all this dough to keep their collection? They are now able to repackage the content they invested in and distribute it in new platforms! They also have keep a wonderful body of info regarding the last 40 years of our country's cultural heritage.

Okay, moving on.

Minnesota Public Radio | American Public Media: They got a grant in the early 1990s to build a Digital Media Archive and focused on their cash cow A Prairie Home Companion. They are still adding content to this 1996 system, which doesn’t wrap their audio with metadata. Not good. However, they’ve recently put the forward thinking and uber-concerned and talented audio engineers in charge of the archive.

They AT LEAST have a part-time archivist cataloging the collection and offering perspective on collection management. But, they need more librarians. Happily, they’ve recently received some funding to improve the situation. A leader is needed!

Also, they do have a physical archive, which is great, but it’s stored in a parking garage. No more to say on that.

Champion award-winning media archive goes to Channel THIRTEEN in New York. Spear-headed by Nan Rubin, Channel 13 in the public media industry for their foresight and skill with archiving.

Best media archivist in the US goes to Andy Lancet at WNYC. Andy arrived at WNYC in the 1990s. They had nearly 40 years of unorganized content. He masterfully organized it AND continues to promote it weekly to staff in a newsletter. Way to go Andy. You’re my archival hero!

A visit to the Washington Post image archive had me gasping in horror. They have unique, historic, and powerful images sitting in a hot, light-filled room. Come on Post.

National Geographic has a library and archive that could warm even the coldest of catalogers hearts! They have an unbelievably neat, organized, thorough, well-oiled machine. Bravo, National Geo. We love you!

Clearly, the Library of Congress is a leader in many areas and working their was like a librarians Disney Land. They have just about every function of a librarian happening in the building. Marvelous. Much more on the LOC later, so please stay tuned. And send me your media archive updates!!!!

This is Why Your Organization Needs Librarians!

2009-07-17T12:59:00.001-05:00

So, NASA reveals that they erased the magnetic tape of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. Good one, NASA!

Perhaps they shouldn’t have left Dick Nafzger, a TV specialist, in charge of the tape!

Digital Preservation Sound Off

2009-07-17T12:57:00.001-05:00