Descriptive metadata, iconclass, and digitized emblem literature
10 Jun 2012-pp 111-120
TL;DR: A digital library Web application designed to better support the ways emblem scholars search for and use digitized emblem books, focusing on metadata design, issues of resource granularity and identification, and the use of Linked Data Web services for Iconclass, a multilingual classification system for cultural heritage art and images is described.
Abstract: Early Modern emblems combined text and image. Though there were many variants, the archetypical emblem literary form (mid-sixteenth through mid-eighteenth centuries) consisted of an image (the pictura), a text inscription (the inscriptio), and a text epigram (the subscriptio), the last usually in verse. Digitized emblem literature poses interesting challenges as regards content and metadata granularity, the use of interdisciplinary controlled vocabularies, and the need to present digitized primary sources in a complex network of associated sources, derivatives, and contemporaneous context. In this paper, we describe a digital library Web application designed to better support the ways emblem scholars search for and use digitized emblem books, focusing on metadata design, issues of resource granularity and identification, and the use of Linked Data Web services for Iconclass, a multilingual classification system for cultural heritage art and images. Outcomes to date, achieved by emblem scholars and librarians working in collaboration, provide a case study for multi-faceted, interactive approaches to curating mixed text-image digital resources and the use of Linked Data vocabulary services. Lessons learned highlight the value of librarian-scholar collaboration and help to illustrate why digital libraries need to move beyond merely disseminating digitized book surrogates.
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TL;DR: Using a test set of MARC21 records describing 30,000 retrospectively digitized books, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library explored options for adding links, transforming into non-library specific LOD-friendly semantics, and deploying as RDF to maximize the utility of these records.
Abstract: Today researchers search for books in various ways. Once discovered, a variety of Web technologies can be used to link to related resources and/or associate context with a book. This environment creates an opportunity for libraries. The linked open data (LOD) model of the Web offers a potential foundation for innovative user services and the wider dissemination of bibliographic metadata. However, best practices for transforming library catalog records into LOD are still evolving. The practical utility on the Semantic Web of library metadata transformed from MARC remains unclear. Using a test set of MARC21 records describing 30,000 retrospectively digitized books, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library explored options for adding links, transforming into non-library specific LOD-friendly semantics, and deploying as RDF to maximize the utility of these records. This paper highlights lessons learned during this process, discusses findings to date, and suggests possible avenues for furt...
34 citations
TL;DR: This paper examines the ways in which scholars engage with the special collections contained within Emblematica Online through analysis of interviews and proposes that the diverse and complex uses of digital special collections require libraries and archives to consider expanding the capabilities of their digital content and platforms.
Abstract: Researchers increasingly engage with the digital archives built by libraries, archives, and museums, but many institutions still seek to learn more about researchers' needs and practices with these digital collections. This paper presents a user assessment study for Emblematica Online , a research digital library that provides digitized versions of emblem books from leading rare book collections. This paper examines the ways in which scholars engage with the special collections contained within Emblematica Online through analysis of interviews. The authors propose that the diverse and complex uses of digital special collections require libraries and archives to consider expanding the capabilities of their digital content and platforms.
7 citations
TL;DR: How cataloging and metadata services units have been exploiting information technologies and creating new scalable workflows to adapt to these changes, and what is required to establish and maintain these workflows are discussed.
Abstract: Purpose
Academic and research libraries have been experiencing a lot of changes over the last two decades. The users have become technology savvy and want to discover and use library collections via web portals instead of coming to library gateways. To meet these rapidly changing users’ needs, academic and research libraries are busy identifying new service models and areas of improvement. Cataloging and metadata services units in academic and research libraries are no exception. As discovery of library collections largely depends on the quality and design of metadata, cataloging and metadata services units must identify new areas of work and establish new roles by building sustainable workflows that utilize available metadata technologies. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper discusses a list of challenges that academic libraries’ cataloging and metadata services units have encountered over the years, and ways to build sustainable workflows, including collaborations between units in and outside of the institution, and in the cloud; tools, technologies, metadata standards and semantic web technologies; and most importantly, exploration and research. The paper also includes examples and uses cases of both traditional metadata workflows and experimentation with linked open data that were built upon metadata technologies and will ultimately support emerging user needs.
Findings
To develop sustainable and scalable workflows that meet users’ changing needs, cataloging and metadata professionals need not only to work with new information technologies, but must also be equipped with soft skills and in-depth professional knowledge.
Originality/value
This paper discusses how cataloging and metadata services units have been exploiting information technologies and creating new scalable workflows to adapt to these changes, and what is required to establish and maintain these workflows.
4 citations
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: How humanities scholars increasingly are integrating digital resources into multiple aspects of their scholarly and pedagogical practices is considered.
Abstract: Introduction Academic libraries have a long history of creating digital content, but there have been few investigations into the efficacy of digital collections for the user communities they were designed to assist. This paper presents the preliminary results of a user study for Emblematica Online, a digital humanities project currently supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities’ grant to expand and enrich a digital archive of Renaissance emblem books from rare book collections around the world. Based on a preliminary analysis of how humanities scholars use Emblematica Online in research and teaching, this paper considers how humanities scholars increasingly are integrating digital resources into multiple aspects of their scholarly and pedagogical practices.
2 citations
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: Why the emerging need for granularity of access and description makes the cataloging and metadata process a highly collaborative work is discussed, and a way to design and create a metadata schema for describing granular levels of resources is suggested.
Abstract: Meeting: 80 — Inspired moments in cataloguing — Cataloguing Abstract: As libraries collect and provide more resources in digital formats, new units of granularity have emerged in access and description. Digital surrogates or born-digital resources make it possible for users to access resources at more granular levels, e.g., a book or journal title can be accessed at chapter level, article level, and page level in addition to the book or journal title as a whole. To provide granular levels of access, metadata should be created at granular levels as well. This paper discusses why the emerging need for granularity of access and description makes the cataloging and metadata process a highly collaborative work, and suggests a way to design and create a metadata schema for describing granular levels of resources.
2 citations
References
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TL;DR: The humanistic articulation of the significance of scientific change that announces a new episteme, a world-altering, even metaphysical, transformation is the work of humanists as discussed by the authors, who consolidate those experimental findings, explain them, and aggregate their impact in such a way that we suddenly have not just the new but an epochdefining paradigm shift.
Abstract: There has never been a great age of science and technology without a corresponding flourishing of the arts and humanities. In any time or place of rapid technological advance, those creatures we would now call humanists—literary commentators, historians, philosophers, logicians, theologians, linguists, scholars of the arts, and all manner of writers, musicians, and artists—have also had a field day. Perhaps that generalization is actually a tautology. Great ages of science are great ages of the humanities because an age isn't a historical period but a construct, and constructs are the work of humanists. Throughout history, there have been many momentous scientific discoveries that simply drift into the culture, are adapted without any particular new social or philosophical arrangements. It is the humanistic articulation of the significance of scientific change that announces a new episteme, a world-altering, even metaphysical, transformation. While scientists and engineers are responsible for the discoveries and inventions, humanists consolidate those experimental findings, explain them, and aggregate their impact in such a way that we suddenly have not just the new but an epoch-defining paradigm shift. (E = mc is an equation; the concept of relativity is a defining intellectual model.) The humanistic turn of mind provides the historical perspective, interpretive skill, critical analysis, and narrative form required to articulate the significance of the scientific discoveries of an era, show how they change our sense of what it means to be human, and demarcate their continuity with or difference from existing ideologies.
72 citations
21 Jun 2010
TL;DR: It is found that the use of source materials in scholarship is not a simple, straight-forward examination of a document in isolation, but a complex ecosystem of inquiry that seeks to understand both the text being studied and the context in which that text was created, transmitted and used.
Abstract: Despite the growing prominence of digital libraries as tools to support humanities scholars, little is known about the work practices and needs of these scholars as they pertain to working with source documents. In this paper we present our findings from a formative user study consisting of semi-structured interviews with eight scholars.We find that the use of source materials (by which we mean the original physical documents or digital facsimiles with minimal editorial intervention) in scholarship is not a simple, straight-forward examination of a document in isolation. Instead, scholars study source materials as an integral part of a complex ecosystem of inquiry that seeks to understand both the text being studied and the context in which that text was created, transmitted and used. Drawing examples from our interviews, we address critical questions of why scholars use source documents and what information they hope to gain by studying them. We also briefly summarize key note-taking practices as a means for assessing the potential to design user interfaces that support scholarly work-practices.
29 citations
TL;DR: djatoka is introduced, an open source JPEG 2000 image server with an attractive basic feature set, and extensibility under control of the community of implementers, and called upon the community to engage in further development of djatoka.
Abstract: The ISO-standardized JPEG 2000 image format has started to attract significant attention. Support for the format is emerging in major consumer applications, and the cultural heritage community seriously considers it a viable format for digital preservation. So far, only commercial image servers with JPEG 2000 support have been available. They come with significant license fees and typically provide the customers with limited extensibility capabilities. Here, we introduce djatoka, an open source JPEG 2000 image server with an attractive basic feature set, and extensibility under control of the community of implementers. We describe djatoka, and point at demonstrations that feature digitized images of marvelous historical manuscripts from the collections of the British Library and the University of Ghent. We also caIl upon the community to engage in further development of djatoka.
9 citations
Book•
31 Dec 1999
5 citations