USE MODEL

Use Model: Positions, Specific Duties, and Services

Oral History Project Manager

The Oral History Project Manager is primarily responsible for developing and planning oral history collection projects as well as public training, educational outreach, and public programming. The Oral History Manager will adopt Omeka S and linked open data principles into the oral history project workflow for ongoing and future collection projects. For projects outside of the Linking Lost Jazz Shrines where there does not exist a partner like the Semantic Lab that has the infrastructure and ontology to create linked data outside of an Omeka S environment, this will primarily take the form of collecting Library of Congress uniform resource identifiers (and/or URIs from other authorities) for eventual inclusion in a given project’s Omeka S site. This prepares data for more streamlined integration with other datasets, should the opportunity arise. He will also work closely with Development staff to identify resources and grant opportunities to support the use continued use of the collections as data. He will also continue to attend and present at forums and conferences as WHC’s authority on collections as data.

The Oral History Project Manager will be responsible for developing a curriculum with WHC's Education department, in which students learn more about Brooklyn history through engaging the WLJSB oral history collection and using Omeka S to create items and geolocate the venues identified in the oral history interviews. The curriculum will result in interactive maps for each interview that will live on the Lost Jazz Shrines site. The Oral History Project Manager will also establish new and strengthen existing collaborative relationships with local educational institutions, community leaders, organizations, and residents such as the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium members to optimize use of the collection and to enhance the reach of future Brooklyn jazz themed events.

Collections Manager

The Collections Manager is primarily responsible for ensuring ensuring the accessibility of Weeksville Heritage Center's collections, inclusive of the collections as data. The Collections Manager will be responsible for maintaining the Omeka S site, which serves as the initial access and discovery point of the project data, especially for the WHC community and those who may not have familiarity querying a Wikibase instance or accessing data via GitHub. The Collections Manager will also be responsible for supervising the addition of Library of Congress URIs to oral history interview metadata for new collection items by Research Department interns. The Collections Manager will also ensure the digitization of the physical materials and media related to the WLJSB collection.

The Collections Manager will ensure that the Linking Lost Jazz Shrines Omeka S site is added to WHC's website so website users and researchers can view the Lost Jazz Shrines oral histories collections, explore the collections as data through Semantic Lab at Pratt Wikibase URIs and Library of Congress URIs, and access the data through the GitHub repository

Preservation Manager

The Preservation Manager is responsible for collaborating with the Collections and Archives staff to develop a broad philosophy of preservation, conservation and maintenance for the historic Hunterfly Road Houses and other collections. The Preservation Manager will be responsible for identifying digital preservation priorities and ensuring the preservation of born-digital collection resources at WHC by developing a Preservation Manual for the historic Hunterfly Road Houses, objects, digital records, and their cataloging systems.

Use Model: Collaborations

Semantic Lab at Pratt

Linking Lost Jazz Shrines is a collaboration between Weeksville Heritage Center and Semantic Lab at Pratt using the Weeksville Lost Jazz Shrines of Brooklyn (WLJSB) oral history collection as source material for creating linked open data with the long term goal of integrating the Linking Lost Jazz Shrines data into the Linked Jazz network visualization (https://linkedjazz.org/network/).

The Semantic Lab and its Linked Jazz project provided a conceptual template of how to create data out of oral histories, and the Linking Lost Jazz Shrines oral histories served as content that could be transformed into linked data to incorporate into the Linked Jazz dataset and network, thereby making it more robust. Additionally, the Linking Lost Jazz Shrines project provided ideal content for the piloting of the Semantic Lab at Pratt’s Sélavy tool.

During the project, Linked Data Consultant Sarah Adams created the Semantic Lab Wikibase URIs for the Lost Jazz Shrines of Brooklyn collection and advises on a longer-term plan to continue the development of the Sélavy tool and the eventual integration of the Lost Jazz Shrines data into the Linked Jazz Network.

While the Semantic Lab’s Wikibase instance is not a Linking Lost Jazz Shrines deliverable in and of itself, it is included here as the living environment and triple store where the items, properties and (eventually) relationship data from the Linking Lost Jazz Shrines project live. WHC's continued collaboration agreement with the Semantic Lab at Pratt after the grant period ensures that the data remains available through the Wikibase. The data available in Wikibase will also continue to be enhanced as the collaboration between WHC and the Semantic Lab continues beyond the Collections as Data granting period.

Brooklyn Emerging Leaders Academy Charter School (BELA) & Brooklyn Institute of Liberal Arts (BILA)

Prior to the LLJS project, Obden, WHC’s Oral History Project Manager, had established relationships with the local schools. In collaborations with schools like Brooklyn Emerging Leaders Academy Charter School (BELA) and the Brooklyn Institute of Liberal Arts, he trained students to use WHC’s Omeka Classic to upload and exhibit their community-based oral history interviews alongside digital collages. Keeping in mind the lessons learned through the Linking Lost Jazz Shrines project, the Obden plans to incorporate both Omeka S training, inclusive of an introduction to linked data, into the curriculum of these workshops. Students would be able to create their own project Omeka S sites and collect Library of Congress uniform resource identifiers to incorporate into the oral history metadata.

Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium

The LLJS project enabled WHC to renew its relationship with the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium (CBJC), a vanguard organization in the borough. Bob Myers, the financial secretary and communications director for CBJC and former owner of Up Over Jazz Café, a pure jazz piano venue that was a popular Brooklyn “outpost” for NYC’s music aficionados, participated in the Linking Lost Jazz Shrines Symposium in June 2020. The strengthening of this relationship and the programming possibilities it represents is integral to how the project reaches the intended audiences and communities. The Oral History Project Manager and the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium members are planning future programmatic and archival collaborations to both ensure the use of the collection and to enhance the reach of future Brooklyn jazz themed events.