2013 RBMS Premodern manuscript application profile presentation

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Using a Dublin Core Application Profile for

Description and Teaching

Planning metadata

• Collaboration and responsibilities• Documentation• What is “good” metadata?

Planning metadata: collaboration and responsibilities“Metadata creation is an incremental process that should be a shared responsibility among various parts of an institution.”

A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections

• Existing metadata?– Finding aids? Codicological description? Provenance?

• Subject specialists– Description

• Technicians– File format, extent, color management

• Administrators– Access rights

• Users?– Reviews, comments, tags

Planning metadata: documentation

• Documentation–Best practices–Local decisions, application profile– “Data dictionary”

• Plan for the future–Preservation and migration–Maintenance

Planning metadata: what is “good” metadata?

• Appropriate to objects in collection• Appropriate to users and use• Appropriate to system and resources• Use of standards • Interoperable and shareable

Good metadata: appropriate to objects

Format(s) & file type(s)– Images? Text? – JPEG, XML files, MP3, MPEG, PDF– More than one format in collection?

Images courtesy of Western Michigan University Libraries

Good metadata: appropriate to objects

• Genre(s)– Manuscripts? Maps? Cultural objects? Music?– More than one genre in collection?

• Subject matter

Images courtesy of ArtStor

Good metadata: appropriate to users

• Who are your primary users?– Medieval scholars? Undergraduate students?

• How will they expect to search?– Searching skills?

• What will they be looking for?• What “language” do they speak?– Community of practice? Vocabulary?

Communities of Practice & Metadata• Library community

– Mission: access, description, organization– Shared records using shared standards

• Museum community– Mission: outreach, education, interpretation– Records created primarily for internal use

• Archives community– Mission: archive, preservation– Collection-level records, finding aids

• Research and education community– Mission: research and collaboration– Shared records using a variety of standards

Good metadata: appropriate to intended use

• How do people use it now?

• Education or research?

• What are their expectations?

• What is their interest in the material?– Botany, hagiography, art, language, music?

• What are other ways it may be used in the future?

Image courtesy of Western Michigan University Libraries

How will it be used?

• Example of pre-printing press, handmade book

• Study of artwork, pigments, symbolism

• Study of paleography

• Study of the text – grammar, words & word usage

• Study of the text – people, places, subjects

• Comparison to other manuscripts – for textual variants, relationships between copies, identifying scribes or artists

Good metadata: appropriate to system & resources

• System– CONTENTdm– Luna Insight– DLXS– DSpace

• Resources– One-time grant money vs. budget line-item– Knowledge, skill, time of people– Availability of existing metadata

Metadata for images vs. text

• Image– Metadata is everything

• Text– Transcription and

markup

• Text as image– Image of the manuscript

page– Full-text in metadata

Image courtesy of ArtStor

Describing images

Ofness

Who? what? where? when?–People–Objects/activities–Places, times

Image courtesy of ArtStor

Describing images

Aboutness• What is the meaning of the work?

• What is expressed by the work?

• What do the objects, events, etc., depicted in the work symbolize?

• How may the image be interpreted?

• What was the intention of the work’s creator?

• How has the work been interpreted historically?

Image courtesy of ArtStor

Metadata Schema & standards selection

Schemas or Element sets

• Dublin Core

• VRA (Visual Resources Assoc. Core)

• TEI (Text Encoding Initiative)

• EAD (Encoded Archival Description)

• MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging)

Simple Dublin Core – Title

– Creator

– Subject

– Description

– Publisher

– Contributor

– Date

– Type

– Format

– Identifier

– Source

– Language

– Relation

– Coverage

– Rights

Expanded/Qualified Dublin Core

• Accrual Method

• Accrual Policy

• Accrual Periodicity

• Audience

• Instructional Method

• Provenance

• Rights Holder

• Description– Abstract

• Identifier– Bibliographic citation

• Relation– Is Part Of– Is Referenced By

• Title– Alternative title

What is an application profile? “There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ metadata schema” Tony Gill, et al.

• Draw elements from more than one set

• Tailor set of elements to serve your user requirements

• Document decisions, provide guidelines for use

Premodern Manuscript Application Profile

• Adds medieval manuscript description fields from ENRICH

• Can be used as teaching tool – http://

web.library.wmich.edu/DIGI/reference/PMAP_Data_DictionaryTOC.pdf

• Audience– Catalogers who are not medievalists– Researchers who are not technicians

• Easy to use with CMS like CONTENTdm– Will be included in 6.5 release

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PMAP Elements• Manuscript Identifier (R)• Title (R)• Incipit (O)• Author (M)• Origin Date (M)• Origin Location (M)• Description (R)• Provenance (M)• Manuscript Parts (O)• Explicit (O)• Secundo Folio (O)• Extent (O)• Subject (O)• Dimensions (O)• Material (O)• Collation (O)

• Foliation (O)• Binding (O)• Decoration Description (O)• Contributor (O)• Description of Hands (O)• Musical Notation (O)• Additions and Marginalia (O)• Relation-Is Part Of (RA)• Publisher (R)• Date-Issued (R)• Type (R)• Format (R)• Format-Extent (RA)• Identifier (R)• Relation-Is Referenced By (O)• Rights (RA)

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Required Elements

• Manuscript Identifier

• Title

• Description

• Publisher

• Date-Issued

• Type

• Format

• Identifier

Image courtesy of WMU

Mandatory if Available

• Author

• Origin Date

• Origin Location

• Provenance

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Recommended as Appropriate

• Relation-Is Part Of • Format-Extent • Rights

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Optional Elements• Incipit • Manuscript Parts • Explicit • Secundo Folio • Extent • Subject • Dimensions • Material • Collation

• Foliation• Binding • Decoration Description • Contributor • Description of Hands • Musical Notation • Additions and Marginalia • Relation-Is Referenced By

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Content, Carrier, Context• Content = text or work (author/title)

• Carrier = cultural/physical artifact

• Context = historical record (provenance)

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Content

• Title

• Author

• Incipit

• Explicit

• Language

• Subject

• Musical Notation

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Carrier

• Extent

• Dimensions

• Material

• Collation

• Foliation

• Secundo folio

• Description of hands

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Context

• Binding

• Provenance

• Origin Date

• Origin Location

• Relation-Is Part Of

• Relation-Is Referenced By

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Where can you find metadata?

• Catalog entries• Seller’s descriptions• Provenance– Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts http://

dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/schoenberg/index.html

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Controlled vocabularies

• Library of Congress Authorities

• Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)

• Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)

• ICONCLASS

• Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM)

• DCMI Type Vocabulary

Why use controlled vocabularies? “Do it once, do it right (consistent schemas, controlled vocabularies), and you can

re-purpose metadata in a wide variety of ways.” Murtha Baca

• Improve search retrieval– Precision – how many retrieved records are relevant?

– Recall – how many relevant records retrieved?

• Database organization– Allow for preset searches, lists of categories

• Name disambiguation– People, places, organizations

Differences in vocabularies-meaning"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.“ –

The Princess Bride

• Initials – RBMS– Provenance

evidence

• Initials – AAT, TGM & LCSH– Layout feature

Image courtesy of Artstor

Differences in vocabularies-specificity

• TGM– Initials

• LCSH and AAT– Historiated initials

• AAT– Factotum initials– Figure initials– Historiated initials– Inhabited initials

Differences in vocabularies-Interoperability

ULAN: Buonarroti, Michelangelo (Italian sculptor, painter, and architect, 1475-1564)

LCNAF: Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564

AAT: IlluminationsLCSH: Illumination of books and

manuscripts

Content standards & Best Practices

• Descriptive Cataloging of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Manuscripts (AMREMM)

• Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO)

• Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books

• CDP Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices

• TEI Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange

• Best Practices for CONTENTdm and Other OAI PMH ‐Compliant Repositories: Creating Sharable Metadata, Version 3.0

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Why are standards important?• Interoperability

– “The goal of interoperability is to help users find and access information objects that are distributed across domains and institutions.” NISO

• Agreed upon terminology– antiphoner, antiphonal, antiphonies, antiphonary

• Easier to share data– OAI harvesting– Digital Scriptorium– Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance– Semantic Web/Linked Data

Linked Data – Tim Berners Lee (2006)

• Use URIs as names for things

• Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names.

• When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information

• Include links to other URIs so that they can discover more things.

Planning for the Semantic Web

40http://lod-cloud.net/versions/2011-09-19/lod-cloud.html

RDF triples

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Subject ObjectPredicate

RDF triples

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manuscript Antiphonarieshas subject

Planning for the future: Use standard vocabularies

“In order to make it easier for applications to understand Linked Data, data providers should use terms from widely deployed vocabularies to represent data wherever possible.” Tom Heath and Christian Bizer (2011) Linked Data: Evolving the Web

into a Global Data Space

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Record for digital object• Title: Hymnal for the

Sanctoral Cycle and Common of Saints, f. 150 r.

• Origin Location: Abbazia di Morimondo

• Contributor: Reoldus, Bertramus, 13th century-14th century (scribe)

• Subject: Antiphonaries

Linked data: breaking record into data

Reoldus, Bertramus, 13th century-14th century

Antiphonaries

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has contributor

has subject

has location

Abbazia di Morimondo

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http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85005734

(Antiphonaries)

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2013029609

(Reoldus, Bertramus, 13th century-14th century)

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

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

contributor

Linked data: Unambiguous identifiers

http://luna.library.wmich.edu:8180/luna/servlet/s/td1586

(has contributor)

(has subject)

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr93035920

(Abbazia di Morimondo)

http://www.geonames.org/maps/google_45.352_8.955.html 49

What are the possibilities?

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Questions?

Sheila Bair, Metadata & Cataloging Librarian

sheila.bair@wmich.edu

Susan Steuer, Head of Special Collectionssusan.steuer@wmich.edu Western Michigan University Libraries

Image courtesy of WMU Libraries