Research Methods in Librarianship; Techniques and Interpretation.

Discussions of cataloging and metadata education are popular in social media outlets, scholarly literature, conference meetings, and so on. This article, the third installment of a longitudinal study on the state of information organization (IO) education, analyzes the recent literature to identify new and continuing themes related to IO education. It provides an overview of the curricula of the 58 library and information science graduate programs in the United States and Canada accredited by the American Library Association (ALA). It examines the current conditions in 2012–2013 and compares them to data from earlier studies. It provides an overview of the types of IO courses available, program requirements, the number of schools offering IO courses, and the number of schools teaching those courses.

Graduate Education for Information Organization, Cataloging, and Metadata

The CIDOC-CRM standard indicates that common events, actors, places and timeframes are important in linking together cultural material, and provides a framework for describing them. However, merely describing entities in this way in two datasets does not yet interlink them. To do that, the identities of instances still need to be either reconciled, or be based on a shared vocabulary. The WW1LOD dataset presented in this paper was created to facilitate both of these approaches for collections dealing with the First World War. For this purpose, the dataset includes events, places, agents, times, keywords, and themes related to the war, based on over ten different authoritative data sources from providers such as the Imperial War Museum. The content is harmonized into RDF, and published as a Linked Open Data service. While generally based on CIDOC-CRM, some modeling choices used also deviate from it where our experience dictated such. In the article, these deviations are discussed in the hope that they may serve as examples where CIDOC-CRM itself may warrant further examination. As a demonstration of use, the dataset and online service have been used to create a contextual reader application that is able to link together and pull in information related to WW1 from, e.g., 1914---1918 Online, Wikipedia, WW1 Discovery, Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America.

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WW1LOD: an application of CIDOC-CRM to World War 1 linked data

Libraries must continually adapt to meet the ever-changing needs of users. Doing so requires the ability to be flexible and respond quickly. This is a case study of how The George Washingto...

Agile Project Management in Libraries: Creating Collaborative, Resilient, Responsive Organizations

As librarians increasingly support digital publication platforms, they must also understand the user experience of these tools. This case study assesses use of Scalar, a digital humanities publishing platform for media-rich projects, at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Based on a survey, interviews, and content analysis, the study highlights the platform’s usability, its functionality, and its successes and failures in meeting user expectations. The media upload process, image annotation, and aesthetics factored into user issues. Writing pedagogy also emerged as an important consideration. Results suggest lessons for digital literacy instruction, as well as how and when Scalar might serve patrons’ publishing needs.

Assessing Digital Humanities Tools: Use of Scalar at a Research University

This article describes a case study in which a small team from the digital initiatives group and metadata services department at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) Libraries conducted a pilot of the Scrum project management framework. The pilot team organized digital initiatives work into short, fixed intervals called sprints—a key component of Scrum. Over a year of working in the modified framework yielded significant improvements to digital collection work, including increased production of digital objects and surrogate records, accelerated publication of digital collections, and an increase in the number of concurrent projects. Adoption of sprints has improved communication and cooperation among participants, reinforced teamwork, and enhanced their ability to adapt to shifting priorities .

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Digital Collections Are a Sprint, Not a Marathon: Adapting Scrum Project Management Techniques to Library Digital Initiatives

This study presents the results of interviews with twenty-two new professional catalogers in their first professional positions in an academic library. Interview questions focus on library education experiences, comfort with the theory and practice of cataloging, and overall level of preparedness provided by the master of library science (MLS) or equivalent degree. Interview results place great importance on practica, internships, or other practical experience during library education. The availability of more and better cataloging classes was also emphasized. Many interview respondents were unenthusiastic in their descriptions of the level of preparedness provided by the MLS.

New Cataloger Preparedness: Interviews With New Professionals in Academic Libraries

The University of Colorado at Boulder recently engaged in a grant-funded pilot project to use Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard (METS), Metadata Object Description Standard (MODS), and NISO Metadata for Images in XML Schema (MIX) for a collection of digitized Sanborn fire insurance maps of the state. This article will draw on this experience to outline the processes and decision making required to implement new metadata structures, and will offer some insights on planning strategically for an institution's first use of these increasingly important metadata standards.

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Providing Metadata for Compound Digital Objects: Strategic Planning for an Institution's First Use of METS, MODS, and MIX

Using online primary sources is both rewarding and challenging for users. Improving subject access is essential as these sources become increasingly important in educational curricula. A user needs assessment with humanities users showed improving findability and context for historical subjects were major needs. Linked Data can help by linking related concepts in the sources using specialized vocabularies, enriching them with outside resources, and enabling semantic services that empower users. This article discusses a project to enhance subject access in an online World War I collection by deep linking historical data on the civilian experience in occupied Belgium and France.

Michael Dulock

Papers

Digital Collections Are a Sprint, Not a Marathon: Adapting Scrum Project Management Techniques to Library Digital Initiatives

New Cataloger Preparedness: Interviews With New Professionals in Academic Libraries

Providing Metadata for Compound Digital Objects: Strategic Planning for an Institution's First Use of METS, MODS, and MIX

Using Linked Open Data to Enhance Subject Access in Online Primary Sources

dh+CU: Future Directions for Digital Humanities at CU Boulder