1. Sonia Yaco, Arkalgud Ramaprasad, Saleha Rizvi SAA Research Forum 2016
How we can use what we already know to learn more: an ontology for linking curriculum to cultural heritage
Sonia Yaco, Arkalgud Ramaprasad, Saleha Rizvi
SAA Research Forum
2016

2. Need more ways to link curriculum to collections
The problem:
Need more ways to link curriculum to collections
Collections in academic repositories are underutilized. Our rich storehouses of metadata, representing decades of work, make access to holdings possible from across the world. Yet they are little used when faculty look for primary sources for their courses.
Cultural heritage professionals - librarians, archivists, museum curators do programming, outreach, meet with faculty and so on but we still don’t penetrate many courses. I’m going to talk about some possible solutions to augment traditional approaches.

3. Solution One: Throw a party
Curricular data
Course descriptions
Donors
Textbooks
Collection data
Cultural heritage professionals
Faculty
Students
Financial stakeholders
Administrators
Solution one:
Imagine, if you will, that you host a campus party to promote the use of primary sources in curriculum. A large crowd of students, faculty, archivists, librarians, advisors, administrators, and donors attend – perhaps because you supplied the free food and alcohol.
You’ve asked each guest to bring a name tag listing keywords for a course, collection, textbook, research area, or possible manuscript donation. As an icebreaker, you ask people to find other people with matching keywords. To your great pleasure it works – you hear the guests talking about collections that are related to courses and textbooks that are tied to manuscript holdings.

4. As the discussion turns to how and why they currently connect collections to curriculum, the guests find more common threads.
Now imagine a system to replicate this in-person matching. How? Similar tasks and goals do not a system make. ?

5. Solution two: AN ontology
“Conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged”
Willard Van Orman Quine From a Logical Point of View.
An ontology can provide a definition of the problem and goals using a structure that can be understood by all stakeholders.
To create an ontology, “We adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged.” Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press, Boston, MA, USA.

6. A system to … Acquire/Collect Create/Edit/Delete Organize/Arrange
Index/Describe/Represent
Store/Preserve/Sustain
Secure/Authenticate
Retrieve
Process
Distribute
Data
Cultural heritage
Courses
Information
Collections
Curriculum
Knowledge
Cultural
Pedagogical
Let’s start mapping what we do as a profession, and the party conversations
We describe information about collections

7. A system to … Acquire/Collect Create/Edit/Delete Organize/Arrange
Index/Describe/Represent
Store/Preserve/Sustain
Secure/Authenticate
Retrieve
Process
Distribute
Data
Cultural heritage
Courses
Information
Collections
Curriculum
Knowledge
Cultural
Pedagogical
We arrange collections
Academic programming staff create data about courses
index curriculum
describe information about curriculum
researches cultural heritage knowledge
Information literacy instructor distributes knowledge about pedagogy

8. … to match cultural heritage collections to …
Syllabi
Course content
Textbooks
Learning Outcomes
Faculty
Students
Pedagogy
Course assessment
we match cultural heritage collections to course content

9. … to match cultural heritage collections to …
Syllabi
Course content
Textbooks
Learning Outcomes
Faculty
Students
Pedagogy
Course assessment
An museum curator matches collections to students
Faculty tries to match collections to course content

10. … to aid … Cultural heritage to Access and investigate Educate about
Students
Faculty Members
Cultural heritage Professionals
IT Professionals
Administrators
Academic Advisors
Financial Stakeholders
General Public
Access and investigate
Educate about
Communicate about and publicize
Document and preserve
Manage, assess and plan
Visualize and contextualize
Enjoy to
We to help ch prof to educate about cultural heritage

11. … to aid … Cultural heritage to Access and investigate Educate about
Students
Faculty Members
Cultural heritage Professionals
IT Professionals
Administrators
Academic Advisors
Financial Stakeholders
General Public
Access and investigate
Educate about
Communicate about and publicize
Document and preserve
Manage, assess and plan
Visualize and contextualize
Enjoy to
Development tries to help donors and other financial stakeholders to enjoy cultural heritage
Faculty tries to help students access and investigate
We do it to:
to help students to investigate cultural heritage
so donors can enjoy our holdings
to help faculty members can put collections in context.

12. the ontology
A system to describe collection information to match collections to content to aid ch prof to educate about cultural heritage.

13. What’s next? Fine-tune ontology Map current literature onto ontology
Develop or adapt commercial software
Fine-tune ontology
Map current literature onto ontology
Develop or adapt commercial software