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...

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“many historical documents are available digitally...[but] are also separated from their historical and documentary context.”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

Digital ecosystems An open community with no permanent centralized control or single role behaviours Characterized by:-  Balance  Engagement  Interaction  Self-organization  Leadership structures only as needed It is not:-  Peer-to-peer system  Grid architecture  Web service

Digital ecosystems Key operators: “Swarms” of commonly characterized agents Who:- collectively attempt to resolve problems or carry out tasks

The metadata architecture Medieval domain stresses the item

The metadata architecture WWI domain stresses the collection

EAG EAD METS MARC

William Shakespeare Hamlet Is Creator Of 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"

Intermediary schemas “Schemas which are not designed to act as the final delivery containers for metadata but a mediating mechanisms from which their final form is generated by XSLT transformations”

<lacuna lang="en" type="missing component" typeURI=" cause="mice" causeURI=" coverageID="cendari-sample-1-component1"> Years are missing as a result of fire damage Years are missing as a result of fire damage typeURI=" Ontologies or controlled vocabularies

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

CENDARI schemas Discoverability Assessment of relevance Cross-collection contextual information OntologiesResearch output

Thank you! Any questions?