Presentations
ALA Annual 2016 - Linked Library Data Interest Group
Linking People: Developing Collaborative Regional Vocabularies
Description: The University of Utah was awarded an IMLS grant titled "Linking People: Developing Collaborative Regional Vocabularies." This project involves four phases: 1) investigating data models to express local/regional name authority data using linked data standards; 2) evaluation of tools used for creating, maintaining, and making this data available; 3) pilot implementation using the tools investigated in the second phase; 4) assessment of how this type of authority data can improve digital collection metadata on a local, regional, and national level. This presentation will foster a discussion about the benefits of collaborative regional authority control and encourage audience participation and feedback in articulating additional use cases for the development of local/regional ontologies. Current constraints for authority control in digital collections using linked data standards will be explored, as will the impact in discoverability on harvested metadata in an aggregated repository.
More information on ALA Connect
DLF Forum 2016
Scaling authority control: Issues (and solutions) for Authorities at the local, regional, and national level
As more libraries migrate to Linked Data, authority control becomes paramount. Authority control, or establishing and maintaining consistent descriptions of concepts, ensures resources are described accurately, and descriptions are repurposed. This panel discusses authorities work at University of Utah, University of Denver, Cornell University, and Digital Public Library of America.
Linking People: Collaborations Between Metadata Librarians and Programmers
In early 2016, the University of Utah was awarded an IMLS Grant to explore the metadata, workflows, technical requirements, and software that could be used to implement a collaborative, regional controlled vocabulary for personal names and corporate bodies for digital collections within the Mountain West region. This four phase project includes collaborations between metadata librarians and programmers to investigate tools that can be used to create and maintain this type of authority file. Currently the project is evaluating tools to use for local or regional authority control. In this phase, we are developing a set of evaluation criteria that can be used to rank these tools in order to make sure that the needs of a pilot implementation of this type of vocabulary are being met. This presentation will have information about the full grant project along with details regarding the evaluation criteria developed by metadata librarians and programmers and how the different tools rank according to that criteria.
DHU2: Digital Humanities Symposium Utah
The Western Name Authority File: Improving Access for Digital Collections and Archives
Libraries strive to provide access to digital collections to researchers, but searching for information across multiple institutions can often feel fragmented. Jeremy Myntti and Anna Neatrour at the University of Utah Marriott Library were awarded a 2 year planning grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a project centered on standardizing personal names and corporate bodies across multiple institutions, and creating a pilot linked open dataset that can be used as a conduit for visualizations and further exploration. A major goal of this project is to standardize metadata created at a variety of institutions in order to improve the discoverability for researchers who are performing known name searches and to collocate items from different institutions based on the creators of the content. This dataset will have the potential to improve metadata in local repositories as well as aggregated digital repositories such as the Mountain West Digital Library and the Digital Public Library of America.
This presentation will provide an overview of the issues the Western Name Authority File project is grappling with, ranging from data modeling, personal and corporate names normalization, tools exploration, and expressing information from library digital collections and archives in linked open data format. The dataset created by this project provides an example of a growing movement viewing library collections as research data, opening up new possibilities for researchers to visualize and explore linkages between institutions with overlapping holdings. Since the project is still in process, current progress and future plans will be outlined and similar research projects in the area of library linked open data will also be highlighted and discussed.
Cornell Shareable Authorities Meeting
The Western Name Authority File: Building shared authorities for regional digital collections
DPLAfest
Western Name Authority File: Creating a Collaborative Regional Vocabulary
In April 2016, the University of Utah received funding from IMLS for the Western Name Authority File project, a two-year planning grant designed to explore ways regional digital libraries can work together on issues of name authority control. This lightning talk will provide a brief overview of progress, which centered on collecting and evaluating baseline data from digital libraries in western states, collaboration with partner institutions, selecting a data model for the project, and testing tools and software to support shared creation and maintenance of a regional name authority file for personal names and corporate bodies. The talk will also explore how name authority control can improve discoverability for DPLA content providers in both local and regional aggregated digital library indexes.
OLAC Conference - Linked Data Initiatives Panel
Western Name Authority File: Preparing Charles Savage for Linked Data
In early 2016, the University of Utah was awarded an IMLS Grant to explore the metadata, workflows, technical requirements, and software that could be used to implement a collaborative, regional controlled vocabulary for personal names and corporate bodies using linked data standards for digital collections within the Mountain West region. This four phase project has included aggregating name authority data from multiple partner institutions, testing tools that can be used to create and maintain this controlled vocabulary, a pilot implementation of the vocabulary, and we will soon enter the assessment phase. This presentation will give details of all phases of the project in relation to making the data available as linked data.
ALA Midwinter 2018 - Linked Library Data Interest Group
Western Name Authority File: Linking People and Corporate Bodies
The Western Name Authority File (WNAF) project was funded by an IMLS planning grant in early 2016 to explore and pilot a system for developing a collaborative, regional authority file for personal names and corporate bodies from digital collection metadata. We presented the background and issues to be explored at the Linked Library Data Interest Group at ALA Annual 2016, and now as we near the end of the two year grant, we will provide an update on the data model we've chosen for our vocabulary, what we've done to collect and reconcile names from a variety of partner institutions, and the emerging vocabulary workflows that we're in the process of developing in order to make the WNAF available as linked open data.
NISO Open Data Projects Virtual Conference
Western Name Authority File: An Open Data Approach to Digital Collections Authority Control
The Western Name Authority File (WNAF) project was funded by an IMLS planning grant in early 2016 to explore and pilot a system for developing a collaborative, regional authority file for personal names and corporate bodies from digital collection metadata. As we near the end of the two year grant, we will provide information on the data model we've chosen for our vocabulary, what we've done to collect and reconcile names from a variety of partner institutions, and the emerging vocabulary workflows that we're in the process of developing in order to make the WNAF available as JSON-LD. We will also discuss the platform we are using to make the data openly accessible.
ALA Annual 2018 - OCLC Linked Data Roundtable
Western Name Authority File
The Western Name Authority File (WNAF) project was funded by an IMLS grant to pilot a system for developing a regional authority file for personal names and corporate bodies from digital collection metadata. As we near the end of the two year grant, we will provide information on the data model, metadata wrangling steps, and emerging workflows and platforms being developed to make the WNAF openly available as JSON-LD.